How to improving my chance at passing interviews with the hiring manager?
Hello I wanted to get some advice. I noticed I can make it to the recruiter, but I keep failing when it goes to the hiring manger side. I'm not interviewing with any engineers - Any ideas on how I can improve this?
Discussion
(8 comments)- 2
7 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroDoes this mean that you're interviewing with the recruiter on a phone screen and after that call, you don't get scheduled for another round? If this is the case, I recommend you check out this part of our master job searching course: https://www.jointaro.com/course/ace-your-tech-interview-and-get-a-job-as-a-software-engineer/recruiter-screen/
The fail rate for recruiter screens is surprisingly high. As mentioned in the above course lesson, I have talked with several recruiters with screen pass rates of only 50-60%, which means that nearly half of engineers aren't making past this round. This makes sense to me as most engineers I've talked to are incredibly bad with behavioral rounds.
If you're making it past the recruiter screen but failing at the hiring manager round, it's possible that you don't have strong enough technical stories to tell in that interview.
No matter what, the probable root cause is that you need to amp up your behavioral interview skills. I'll make a course about this later, but in the meantime, check this out: [Taro Top 10] Behavioral Interviews
- 07 months agoEntry-Level Software Engineer [OP]Unemployed
Yeah when you put it like that it seems like my resume gets interest from the recruiter then when they ask about my background and pass it on to the team generally I don't even move forward
- 07 months agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
My interpretation of "I keep failing when it goes to the hiring manger side" means that you do get an interview with the hiring manager, but fail that interview. Is that right?
Usually the hiring manager is an engineer, though... What types of questions are you getting in these interviews? Can you share 4-5 of them here, then we can look for patterns?
- 07 months agoEntry-Level Software Engineer [OP]Unemployed
Sorry for the confusion I get past the recruiter screen but when they pass my resume to the hiring manager I just end up getting rejected
- 07 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
When I hear "pass the recruiter screen", I generally think that you've gotten to the next round (i.e. you have sort of technical phone screen). Overall, if someone tells me that they're not making past a certain person, I am assuming that they talked to that person.
Are you sure you're passing the recruiter screen? I would introspect on how those go: https://www.jointaro.com/course/ace-your-tech-interview-and-get-a-job-as-a-software-engineer/temper-your-expectations/
If you don't have enough experience for a role, it's usually caught at the recruiting layer and they won't give you a recruiter screen. It's possible the recruiter is taking the answers you give during your screen with them, socializing them some amount with the hiring manager, and you're getting rejected from that as your recruiter screen performance wasn't impressive enough.
- 07 months agoEntry-Level Software Engineer [OP]Unemployed
Sorry for the confusion I get past the recruiter screen but when they pass my resume to the hiring manager I just end up getting rejected
- 07 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
If your resume isn't strong enough, there's 2 primary angles here:
- Side projects: Follow the advice here - [Taro Top 10] Building Impressive Side Projects
- Open-source: Follow the advice here - "How to start contributing to open source?"
- 1
7 months agoFounding ML Engineer @ Lancey (YC S22)Honestly this is super relatable. As Rahul said, the rejection rate in recruiting screening is super high. My guess is that it happens bc the HM is looking for a very specific candidate with experience in X,Y,Z tech and maybe you just dont have it. There's thousands of candidates and the HM has no incentive to pick a candidate who isnt already using their tech stack. I am guessing the recruiter probably doesnt have a deep understanding of what specific skills/tech stack the HM wants and how transferrable some of the skills are
