At Wonsulting, we've helped thousands of underdogs turn into winners especially during COVID-19. Whether it's sharing strategies without applying online through social media like on Forbes or helping International students land jobs, we love to help job-seekers land jobs.
Some of the best videos we've had on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have been regarding Resume Tips and LinkedIn Tips; however, Interview tips are vitally important to landing offers. In this article, I interviewed people in our Wonsulting Community to talk about what their best interview tips are that helped them land offers at Snapchat, Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Accenture, Udemy and more. These are the best interview tips they had to share:
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One of the most important interview tips that Iâve personally used when interviewing at Snapchat is to do your own research on potential questions for your interviews. Whether itâs asking your recruiter for the potential questions or looking at Glassdoor, itâs important to do the following to prepare for your interviews:
When you do  your research on potential questions, youâll notice that many of them are similar to each other. Thus, you can have correlating answers directly pertaining to the topic of the question. For example, some of the most common interview questions have to do with collaboration, conflict, data-driven decisions, and the âwhyâ. At Wonsulting, weâve identified 3 questions that are asked the most during interviews which are as follows:
By preparing for these 3 questions, youâll be able to crush your first part of your interviews which will translate to you answering your other questions in an efficient manner. Iâd also recommend checking out our Wonsulting Interview Prep Template which you can utilize to crush your interviews and more!
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One interview tip that most job-seekers forget to do is simply âSmileâ. Throughout your interview, youâre more inclined to slouch, frown, and have a bad body posture; however, by smiling, you express happiness and being excited for your interview which then gives energy to your answers and to the interviewer too.
When Jerry Lee, Co-Founder and COO of Wonsulting, was interviewing at Google and Lucid, he utilized this technique to crush his interviews. By smiling, the interviewer opened up more and made the interview more conversational rather than scripted. Heâs shared this knowledge on TikTok regarding career tips which has helped tens of thousands of his followers learn more about how to crush your interviews.
The same goes with one of the Wonsulting mentees and mentors of The20, a Wonsulting Company, Ami. When Ami Patel was interviewing for her Product Manager role at Microsoft, she utilized this tip to be more welcoming to the interviewer which allowed her to break the ice, feel more confident, and create a refreshing atmosphere. It eventually led her to the true definition of ârejection is redirectionâ Â with her story and willingness to help underdogs turn into winners.
All in all, remember this: Smiling is contagious, so smile. This goes with everything in life, not just the job search.
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One of the mistakes many have during their interview process is providing âtoo long ofâ answers to interview questions. Your answers to questions shouldnât be longer than 2 minutes with the âsweet spotâ being around 1 minute 30 seconds.
When I was interviewing at Goldman Sachs, I remember I didnât know much about structuring my interview answers. During the interview, one of the associates asked me a question; I babbled for 3+ minutes, and the interviewer cut me off to go to the next question. The reason I did terribly in answering the question was because I rushed my answer and didnât give a structure of how to answer the question. At Wonsulting, we recommend using STAR Method: Situation, Task, Action, Result. Hereâs an example of how you can structure a question in STAR below.
Question: Tell me about a time when you failed.
Situation: A time when I failed was during my college career. During the beginning of my college career, I was not focused in school; I would be distracted by other things and did not have my priorities straight. This ultimately affected me by having low grades as well as no idea what I was going to do in my career.
Task: My task was to figure out how I was going to bounce back from failing some classes and not being focused in my career.
Action: The action steps I took were to focus more on my career by hanging with friends and influential figures that would help motivate and inspire me to do well in whatever I did. I made an action plan regarding what goals I had for the year, specifically bringing my GPA back up as well as interning every summer. I made sure to connect with people who could be my mentors and ultimately able to pick me up from the failures I previously had.
Result: What resulted from this was that I was able to pick up my grades significantly, bouncing back from having a 3.0 GPA beginning Junior Year to a 3.5 GPA at the end of Senior year, ultimately receiving Cum Laude honors. I was also able to focus more on my career, networking to land 4 internships in my last two years and being in 3 leadership positions including the ASUCR Elected CHASS Senator, Director of Finance for UCRâs School of Business, and ALPFAâs Director of Professional Development.
Alvin Meledath, who works in CX at Softchoice and is the Founder of Customer Buds, echoes this advice but also brings a twist to it. He says that if he didnât know the answer to an interview question, he asked the interviewer for a minute to collect his thoughts so he wouldnât rush his answer and feel more composed to deliver a quality one. What we suggest at Wonsulting is doing something similar but not for all questions; for example, an easy structure when you donât know the answer to an interview question can be like this (referencing the last question):
By doing this strategy, youâll be able to be more clear and concise to share your story.
This is a given, but practicing your story and pitch is very important so you can be able to convey your experiences in your interviews. Yifan Gong, who currently works as a Manager of Recruiting Coordination & Operations at Udemy and was selected as their Rookie of the Year award, says that itâs important to make your interview answers personal and to go one or two levels deeper than you think. He also says to have answers that no one else has; rather than saying âIâm passionate about mentoringâ, he says to include the following:
An example of a great answer according to Yifan, who also worked in LinkedInâs Business Leadership Program (BLP) when he graduated, is saying âIâm passionate about mentoring because I wouldnât be here today without mentors in my life. I want to extend that hand behind me and be able to help others as well, thatâs why I mentor.â
Jason Tsao, a Technology Consulting Analyst at Accentureâ, also agrees with this interview tip. One of his best interview tips is to know your story but also to not simply âmemorize answer answers to specific questionsâ; rather, it's much more effective to know how your experiences could apply to a wide range of questions. He says not to just memorize the "Top 100 Interview Questions"; always be prepared for curveball questions, and thatâs why itâs important to know your story so you can adapt your answers based on the questions asked.
In conclusion, remember that interviews are two-way streets; be yourself and showcase your skills/experiences that you bring to the table. Never just âwingâ interviews; itâs important to prepare for these, whether itâs practicing your pitch, conducting research for potential questions, and most of all being confident.
Always remember this: If you werenât good enough, you wouldnât be interviewing. Receiving an interview means you are good enough, itâs up to you to prove them right.
As we always say at Wonsulting, you got this!
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Jonathan Javier is the CEO/Founder of Wonsulting, which mission is to âturn underdogs into winnersâ. Heâs also worked in Operations at Snap, Google, and Cisco coming from a non-target school/non-traditional background. He works on many initiatives, providing advice and words of wisdom on LinkedIn and through speaking engagements. In total, he has led 210+ workshops in 9 different countries including the Mena ICT Forum in Jordan, Resume/Personal Branding at Cisco, LinkedIn Strategy & Operations Offsite, Great Place To Work, Talks at Google, TEDx, and more. Heâs also been featured as a Top Job Search Expert in articles from Forbes, Business Insider, DailyMail, Yahoo News, LinkedIn News, Jobscan, Brainz Magazine, and more. Heâs amassed 700K+ followers on LinkedIn, Instagram,& TikTok as well as 30+ million impressions monthly on his content.
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Check out his Social Media links here:
Interested in working together? Check out wonsulting.com or email us at hello@wonsulting.com (reference this article too)!
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