How to stand out in a job interview?

[Zest4Life]

Hello everyone,

I’m beginning my search for a new position in the IT industry and would really appreciate your advice.

What strategies have you used to differentiate yourself during a technical or behavioral interview? Which key points should I always highlight?

From your experience—regardless of role or seniority—how do you effectively present your skills and accomplishments? What do hiring managers most want to see?

What questions do you pose to interviewers to learn about the team and the company? What signs during an interview indicate a great company culture?

Finally, what approaches have you found successful when it comes to negotiating compensation and benefits?

[LastThursday]

Just some low hanging fruit to consider:

• Write your resume/CV well. Good spelling, grammar, easy layout. Be truthful about your skills and experience on there.
• For an in-person interview be reasonably well groomed, and be punctual.
• Hirers will be interested in your soft skills: do you have basic communication skills, do you show interest in the company or their products, do you partake in hobbies and other activities?

For IT work hirers will want to know if you can actually solve problems. You should know the basics in the type of work you're applying for. If it's software, then you should have some coding ability and even better showcase existing work you've done. Even if you've worked in a different industry previously, then you can talk about the specific problems you helped solved there. Showing a logical and systematic approach will help you.

Some hirers will show you around their offices during the interview, so you'll immediately get a vibe from that. Ask about any social activities or team building events the company gets up to. Ask about any personal development they might embark you on, or about the chances for promotion and about the general structure of the company. Ask about travel opportunities if you think it's appropriate to the job position. Ask about how much annual leave you get. Private health insurance, private pension etc.

If you're new to the industry then realistically you'll have less leverage regarding compensation and benefits, but, generally this sort of negotiation will happen after the interview has taken place and if they say "yes". You will have more leverage and choice if you have multiple offers. If they're paying too little, then be firm about what you think you're worth, and if they don't budge then decline. Don't overvalue yourself however, expect the market rate in general for the level of your experience.

A lot of what makes or breaks an interview, is who you're up against, and a lot of the non-verbal stuff, and whether the interviewer clicks with you.

 

[Michael569]

Make your CV achievement focused rather than an accumulation of endless bullet points glorifying every aspect of your personality, recruiters hate that because those are indistinguishable from eachother 

Think about major projects you worked on and where you could tie those to what the new role requires

• Specific deliverables , what exactly were the outcomes you achieved 
• On what way did you contribute to the goal of the project ?
• In what ways did you have to demonstrate creativity and problem solving.
• Who did you support?
• Do you or did you consult often other people with your expertise.

Basically what makes you stand out.

The white collar market is changing. Heavily operational roles that AI can do will soon be replaced. Take ownership of your career and present yourself as someone who you yourself would hire, if you were the owner.

Show them you care

Demonstrate that YOU are the best fit 

Demonstrate your passion for what you do and if you don't have it, try to think of ways to kindle it because that's what they want to see.

Hope that helps

[SwiftQuill]

I'm a software engineer with 4 years of experience and I've had about a hundred interviews. The topic of job interview skills specifically in the tech industry is very very wide. You need to do a lot of research on many topics. Here is a short list of important points you should consider:

How to stand out:

I've figured the best way to stand out is to communicate why you want to work for that company in specific. Let me give you an example: "I am very interested in this company because it's one of the largest and most famous IT consultant companies in (your country). I've done some digging and I learned the company offers high value courses to its employees because it has a partnership with Microsoft, which is something I value a lot. I've not see many companies with a Microsoft partnership so this alone got me interested."

Ideally, you would specify that you love the niche within that tech industry (tech for Finance, or tech for Healthcare, or whichever it is the business).

One other method I use is compliment the project. For instance, if they ask me at the end of the interview, after presenting me the company and the potential project I'll be working for, I'll say something like "I'm very interested in this project. I've never worked on a project that involves such a variety of tech tools before. This alone I believe would be a great learning opportunity for me, to be exposed to a new software architecture and different technologies.

On the topic of tech questions:

This is by far the most obnoxious and hardest part in tech interviews. 

• Bullshit IT questions - often times they will ask you questions regarding your field. In my case, it's .net Core. So the interviewer asks me about .net core libraries I've used, .net core architectures, the programming patterns, SOLID. I am a good programmer but I'm really bad at explaining concepts verbally, without even looking at code. So I suggest you look up "Programming language X interview questions" and see which are most common.
• Bullshit algorithm question - not super often, but once in a while they ask you an arbitrary question to test your logical reasoning skills. A question might be "How many light bulbs are there in your entire neighborhood?". There's no right or wrong, they ask you just to see if you can form a step by step method to calculate the value.
• Bullshit coding test - I hate this the most. Often times they will make you do a coding exercise in the worst IDE imaginable like leetcode and expect you to perform as well as if you were coding normally. For this, I recommend trying a sample set of exercises and mastering them (binary trees, reversing characters in a text, converting json to text, etc). As for O(n) complexity, to solve those, try to use dictionaries when possible.

On the topic of overall interview questions:

• Bullshit personality questions (your biggest flaws, your biggest strengths)
• "Tell us about a time you screwed up in your past project and how you learned from it" (I hate this one a lot)

Sallary and negotiations:

• So you want to study the market beforehand. See other job ads from your area, for the same role. Try to get an average value. Maybe if you can't find job ads with the sallary, look up a study - there are plenty of studies on IT roles and sallaries per location. If this is your first time in the tech field, be humble. Don't go for a high sallary yet. If you've been in the tech field for a while then THE OPPOSITE. DON'T LOWBALL YOURSELF.

[Yimpa]

@SwiftQuill I'd hire you based on your profile picture alone!

 

I'm the CEO of a baby sitting company!

Edited Wednesday at 09:51 PM by Yimpa

[SwiftQuill]

@Yimpa I have a giraffe as my pfp here, and on discord, and as my phone's wallpaper, and as my blog's background, and I've written a novel titled "Invisible Giraffe".

Also on the topic of this forum, my next major life goal (after I complete my Master's) is to bootstrap a small business to assist in CV editing services and mock interviews and career planning. I've been doing a lot of research on the topic. Which is why this thread interested me.

And your pfp is cute as well.

Edited Wednesday at 10:19 PM by SwiftQuill

[Zest4Life]

On 5/6/2025 at 10:28 PM, LastThursday said:

Write your resume/CV well. Good spelling, grammar, easy layout

Two of my friends got a really high paying jobs as system administrators, and when I looked at their CV, I was like "ain't no way". Very simple layout, no bullet points whatsoever, and job experience was described in like one or two sentences. No buzz words, nothing crazy, just briefly explained their previous job experiences. Now when I think about it, most people probably won't even read 80% of your resume if there's a ton of text. The other thing why I think it worked is because it created a bit of intrigue that would be revealed in an interview. Simple things somehow always work. 

 

On 5/8/2025 at 0:18 AM, SwiftQuill said:

Also on the topic of this forum, my next major life goal (after I complete my Master's) is to bootstrap a small business to assist in CV editing services and mock interviews and career planning. I've been doing a lot of research on the topic. Which is why this thread interested me

Interestingly, the friend I was talking about above, after he got this job, he helped 20 or so people with their resumes. So yeah, in my opinion, your next goal is an evergreen industry. A lot of people have technical knowledge, but don't know how to present it and/or explain it. And in general, the very intelligent people usually don't handle the social interactions very well. So it really makes sense to make something like mockup interviews. Even the diamonds were at some points just a piece of dirty rock. They were just shaped and polished. The core is the same.

 

Edited yesterday at 06:24 PM by Zest4Life

[LastThursday]

@Zest4Life I've been on both ends of the hiring process. Believe me when you have to read through 100s of CVs, you instantly have to make a judgement just based on presentation. If there's anything that makes it hard to read, unclear, waffle, too much text, bad layout, bad spelling, inconsistencies, too many pages, it's out. Definitely keep it simple and concise and all the important and recent stuff on one page. On my CV I list all my software skills right at the top, literally a list of acronyms, before I even list the places I've worked at. Anything which makes it easier to take it all in at a glance, is the way to go.

[Zest4Life]

7 hours ago, LastThursday said:

On my CV I list all my software skills right at the top, literally a list of acronyms, before I even list the places I've worked at.

I was actually thinking about this the entire week, whether the list of skills should be at the very top of resume or not. But it makes sense to be. 

 

7 hours ago, LastThursday said:

Definitely keep it simple and concise and all the important and recent stuff on one page.

How would you go about jobs that aren't relatable to the one youre applying for? Should you leave the gaps in a resume?