I was an engineer for years and then a recruiter before starting interviewing.io.
After having hosted ~60K mock interviews, I agree with one of the big takeaways here. Practice practice practice. It's not the same as working problems on your own. But after 5 or so, many of our users reach an inflection point.
As for cover letters and getting in the door in the first place, no one at large companies reads them. However, best thing you can do is find an engineer at that company and send them an earnest, short email about why you admire their work and why you want to be a part of it. Don't talk to recruiting... unless you fit a very narrow, specific mold, they're not incentivized to take risks.
If a mock interview averages 30 minutes from start to end, including the time to get on the call and take notes and give feedback, that's 30,000 hours of mock interviewing. Working 8 hours a day that's 3750 workdays, and with 261 working days a year that means you've done mock interviews full time for more than 14 years? Are the interviews super short? I feel like I'm missing something here.
She's the founder of interviewing.io, which is a mock interviewing platform. So I'm guessing her insight comes from looking at all the metrics (e.g. pass rate, strengths/weaknesses of candidates) from the mock interviews hosted on the platform.
That being said, I'm sure she has conducted her fair share of interviews.
@leeny i signed up to do peer interviews but i wasn't getting credit for interviewing other with no explanation as to why . Is it a missing feature that will tell interviewers why they aren't getting interview credit or part of your secret sauce?
Either way i bailed after feeling cheated out of time.
After having hosted ~60K mock interviews, I agree with one of the big takeaways here. Practice practice practice. It's not the same as working problems on your own. But after 5 or so, many of our users reach an inflection point.
As for cover letters and getting in the door in the first place, no one at large companies reads them. However, best thing you can do is find an engineer at that company and send them an earnest, short email about why you admire their work and why you want to be a part of it. Don't talk to recruiting... unless you fit a very narrow, specific mold, they're not incentivized to take risks.