Discussion on "How To Crack Your Next Software Developer Job Interview: An Actionable Guide"

Sunil Kumar · 2021-04-10T05:18:07.867Z

I was job hunting recently and went through 50+ interviews and have received 5 great offers. 3 of them are from unicorns in India. Having been gone through the phase of job search in this competitive market, I wanted to share all the experiences and ...

Thank you for the superbly detailed article and resources Sunil Kumar. I've book marked it for reading for when I interview next.

I have two questions which highlight my struggles with interviews.

When one gets the first offer while job interviewing and hunting, there's normally a tight date under which that company wants you to sign up with them. How do you plan to give more interviews and leverage the offers that you've already got while interviewing for next companies? Is it that you plan to give a lot of interviews in a strict band of time ( say a week ? ), so that whenever offers start rolling out, they mostly do during the same time? So that you can leverage one for the other? How do you make it work?
When one reaches out to existing employees of the companies one has got offers from, what are the questions that you ask them? I realise that the questions that you'd ask them might differ from the ones that I might, but I ask this because I still haven't figured out for myself what parameters I value more from a company.

This is an awesome article! I am sure this will help anyone whether they are just starting out or they are someone who is looking to make a switch.

It is really a nice article which covers all parts in job hunting. I have two questions Sunil.

How to answer when HR ask for current and expected salary? Since our current salary can be lesser as per market standard so there can be big difference in what we are expecting?
When they ask for notice period negotiation what does that really mean?

You need tobe transperent about your current salary. If your current is below market standards, you can mention the same as your reason for higer expectations. Also good companies generally have bands. They will give you salary based on your experience level & expertise. Your current salary doesn't matter. One more way to make sure your salary meets market standards is to get get multiple offers and negotiate.
Generally the hiring companies want you to join as early as possible. But your current employer may want you to serve the complete notice period. But companies generally agree for early release if you're not a very critical resource and not any critical release depends on your presence in the company. But in the worst case scenario you can tell your future employer that you can join only after serving the complete notice period, which they generally agree for.

Thanks you very much for explanation.

Amit Sharma

I'd also highly suggest going through the following resources:

Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued — by Patrick McKenzie, works at Stripe

Fearless Salary Negotiation Website — Proven salary negotiation strategies and tactics for Software Developers

I also learned some very useful tactics from Ramit Sethi's resources on salary negotiation. In his book for example, there's a chapter on salary negotiation. I'll cite one useful sentence that absolutely helped me not tell my current compensation first, so that I could prevent bias and still not hurt relations with the HR over the call ( because remember HR across companies do what they do 4-5 times each week. Software engineers on the other hand, do this every 2-3 years ). Ramit says Don't make the first offer

That's their job. If they ask you to suggest a number, simile and say "Now come on, that's your job. What's a fair number that we can both work with"

More than anything, through these resources I learnt to use an acceptable language that is neither rude nor docile, which immensely helps while talking to negotiate.

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How To Crack Your Next Software Developer Job Interview: An Actionable Guide

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