hi my name is jeff h site from practiceinterviews.com where we offer a host of services and we have a ton of free resources check out our website in this video we are going to cover the interview with the recruiter there are so many questions that are coming up from our clients and in our lives every week that ask a lot of questions about this interview and i want to really focus on the fact that i have about 12 to 13 years of recruiting experience i've done thousands of these initial candidate interviews and i want to
give you a little bit more insight into what they look like and we're going to talk about everything we're going to talk about the preparation considerations logistics what will be asked of you and then finally what types of questions you should ask and i'm going to dump a ton of information in the youtube description to really help and guide you if you like my content please like if you have any comments please comment below and if you like my overall content please subscribe item one is prep and there's a few ways that you can prep
for this conversation item one the job description so i'm actually going to pin a link down in the youtube description where you can join and get into our free course where we really walk through this exercise but a couple of things i want you to think about i want you to create a streamlined overview and then i want you to identify keywords and i want you to go back through and do this exercise a few times to just kind of identify what is most important what appear to be the most important skills and needs for
the role just going through this simplistic exercise is a critical part of your prep and will help you feel more prepared for this recruiter conversation the second item is company research some recruiters will literally ask you what do you know about our company or why this company or what is your favorite product or name your three favorite product or what happened recently in the news and we'll get back to this later on in our conversation but along with the jd it's important that you've at least done some basic research some recruiters will want to challenge
your knowledge about the organization and it's just to see how much you've prepared if you really really care because if you have you'll have done just a little bit of research not a ton the last is domain and technical knowledge and so when it comes to specific domain knowledge i mean that's going to be an area where either you really have it or you don't but there are some ways you can up your game just a little bit in terms of prep let's say you spent the last three years working on aws or with aws
technologies and now you're interviewing for gcp well understand some of the basics just the basics remember your recruiter's not supposed to be an expert in this space but if you learned a little bit about gcp it could help your conversation you can also build up just a little bit of that specific product knowledge as well that's something else to consider and then lastly on the technology side and we're going to reference this later but there are some interviews that are going to have some technical questions so just understanding some of the fundamentals that might be
important for the role that can also be helpful lastly is questions we will deep dive into this section later on but you're going to want to really prep those questions here's the good news i've prepped those questions for you and i'll put them in the youtube description for you item 2 is considerations so i want to take a little bit of a different lens here this is something that other people talk about but i want to put it all together it's a pretty big item so let's dive in and talk through a few of these
things so the purpose why are we having this conversation with the recruiter it's really two items it's going to be skill alignment and communication skills so they just want to check that you have the minimum qualifications needed to do this job and specifically maybe the hiring manager has told them a few of their specific needs based on what they want overall or based on what they've seen from the recent candidate pool now your communication skills this is the bigger bucket so what are all the things we want to focus in on things we've talked a
lot about before being positive and showing great gratitude but then there's more of the excitement enthusiasm engagement even smiling they can hear your smile over the phone if it's a phone conversation which is a likely recruiter interview so make sure you smile a lot they can hear that in your voice and then bring in that active listening piece really let them lead and guide the conversation and that's a great segue into the brevity piece so you're gonna have a limited time in this conversation and i want you to ask a ton of questions so in
your communication style less is more if they want more data they'll ask follow-up questions so just make sure that you're being really brief then let's talk about the partnership component your relationship with your recruiter is a partnership you want the job and their job is to fill the role so let them be an advocate for you work with them and remember that they do have influence and pull this is a win-win situation you want to build that strong relationship it will really help the last kind of a little bit more random nuance i want you
to think about is just roles so let's say a recruiter reached out to you for a role and or you found another role that you really like or interested in just be prepared to talk about that with them what the process would look like if you were going to interview for both roles or if you wanted to switch over roles do you need to switch recruiters et cetera et cetera so if there are or is another position or positions that you're interested in it's just another consideration to think about item three logistics this will be
nice and sweet the number one item is be on time this is a super big challenge that i've found for candidates it's the lack of respect coming in to this recruiter interview they're not on time they miss it they say they had another important meeting recruiters are treated with very little respect and so this was always something that i noted did they missed the call were they not on time did they pretend like i wasn't important being on time is a courtesy item be on time you'd be shocked at how many people are miss or
are late for recruiter interviews secondly stant i'm standing right now for this video and if it's a phone interview again which is the likely scenario your voice will just have a little bit more energy it will come through a little bit better if you stand be somewhere quiet again this goes back to the respect thing if you're just going to be in a noisy area and treat it casually the recruiter is going to note that in their mind and say this person isn't that serious and then the last piece from a logistics perspective is if
you are considering interviewing for a more technical role you'll want to reach out to them beforehand and just kind of understand hey i'm looking forward to our conversation my technical questions be covered so i can tell you i used to hire customer engineers um in my last year at google and i would hire technical solutions engineers and i would give them like 10 or 15 technical questions and if they had a little bit of time to prepare on the fundamentals like we mentioned earlier they would have done better sometimes they just came in not really
knowing that that was going to be a focus area okay let's dive in to the questions that you should anticipate so item four is the recruiter's questions in no way shape or form do these questions encapsulate all of what you might face in this recruiter interview but these are going to be the high level themes what we just see most commonly and most classically in these types of interviews and i want to kind of just take a step back for a second there are three types of questions that i would always ask and do always
ask when i'm doing and on the recruiting side of things so the number one question i ask is why why did you apply or why did you respond to me reaching out to you this why will really help me uncover and gather a lot of data so that's always my first question my second question is also always the same what's most important to you this helps me determine motivations drivers and these initial two questions are very open-ended i can learn a lot about the candidate with just these two questions number three i would always ask
my hiring manager hey sue what are the questions that this candidate absolutely needs to be able to answer to do well in this job to be qualified for this job and i would always try and get those questions at least two or three and those would be my role related questions now of course depending on the domain that could go in a lot of different areas now let's dive over to the commonly asked questions number one tell me about yourself what's the one piece of advice one minute or less walk me through your resume one
minute to 90 seconds a lot a little bit more time for walking through the resume why this company one minute or less think about three items the rule of three on these types of questions can be really powerful why are you looking to leave your current job focus on their job their opportunity make it super positive how would your current manager or teammates describe you this is essentially the strengths question so just be thinking about your top three skills or strengths especially as they correlate to the role and that's how you'd answer that question what
do you know about our company you can actually ask follow-up questions to that i can tell you what's going on in the news about my favorite products etc so just do your research what are you looking for in your next opportunity again go back to the job description think about the key skills for this job the culture of the organization and really align it there that will help you have success what is your current situation or timing the timing questions almost always going to be coming up so be prepared to answer that what is your
current compensation that can still be asked in a number of countries still a number of states if it can't be asked they're going to ask for your salary expectations my advice is never give them any data people will disagree with that they'll say how do you know if it's aligned you should have done some research on comp and know that it's going to at least hit close to your target number but i say deflect deflect deflect and i'll throw a card up there just you can see my philosophy here and then the last question is
are you actively interviewing and you should provide that data because that data is going to be helpful for them it goes back to the partnership item lots of times especially at google i would have candidates i would say are you interviewing anywhere else and then we'd be at the phone interview stage and they'd say hey i just got two offers i'd say good luck i can't help you you didn't provide this information for me up front it's critical that you are providing massive clarity there not only in the beginning in this initial conversation but throughout
let them know what's going on it will allow them to push the process okay i know that this just scratched the surface but these are some very common questions that i want you to be prepared for now your questions item five so the item that's really critical here is i want you to set the stage meaning i recommend 32 questions it is a ton of questions so how do you not annoy your recruiter you just tell them hey jane i have a ton of questions that i want to ask you and i have them outlined
and organized and i want to be very respectful of your time so if it's cool with you i just love to dive in i really want to get through all these questions as much as it's not running into any other meetings for you so you've set a really good communication tone and so here's where we're going to start personal i think we do this in every single interview we ask a few personal questions people like talking about themselves they'll feel more comfortable with you so what do you love the most about your company what do
you love the most about your job is there something really cool or fun or unique that i should know about the culture that maybe i didn't read about or i should know about this will get them engaged show your engagement your excitement then foundational questions why is the position open we need to know if it's brand new if it's growth half the team quit there's a layoff etc how long has the position been open that will tell you how much difficulty they are having hiring the position can you tell me about the level of the
role so for the bigger companies they will have an idea they should be able to share that information with you can you tell me how many people are currently interviewing for the role now this is a question i would absolutely answer it's not confidential i would tell you if hey you're the only one we have five we have ten it's just a good data point and then lastly can you tell me if you're considering internal or external candidates it's a data point i saw this somewhere else i think it's an okay question but it might
just be good knowledge for the future to know like if internal candidates especially those or maybe who are contracting have the opportunity to be converted it's an okay question now we're gonna do some data gathering why do you think my position is a good fit so we're trying to uncover what is really what our strengths are and why there's alignment there that can be powerful as you go into the interview what are maybe some of the most critical skills needed to have success they might have that data from the hiring manager are there any gaps
any skills you see that are missing that i maybe don't have that i need to have success in this role those maybe can be some learned skills as you're preparing for the interviews if you move forward are there any themes coming up from others where things are falling short or just missing again this is a huge data point if there's one or two pieces that have just been missing from everybody else you're going to want to focus on those items in your prep can you tell me a little bit more about the team structure like
how many people are on the team is this hybrid roles all this one role who's the hiring manager just a little bit more data on the team if you can gather it it's not as important at this time but it's a good question and then a last great question would be what's the culture of this team anything i should be aware of from a cultural perspective teams can function very differently within organizations so it's a great question then the process this is a huge item can you tell me more about the specific steps specifically we're
trying to uncover the number of interviews the stages like how they're conducted phone video and hopefully in the near future in person what is the total number of interviews a great question what are the focus areas like do i have a coding interview do i have a system design interview do i have a leadership interview we really want to know the focus areas and then types of questions do these interviews are they open-ended are they behavioral are they both are there certain types of questions i should prepare for that is a question that very few
people ask and actually you can uncover a ton of data there do not skip that question it's a critical question sometimes you can uncover a lot of great information then there's a little bit more about the process so can you tell me more about the end of the process and who's the final decision maker sometimes it's just the hiring manager sometimes it's a collection of everybody getting together and deciding sometimes it's hiring committee executive committee etc and then length of the process how long does it typically take sometimes startups take a week google takes like
three months so just trying to determine that will be a helpful data point as well now communication you want to create this cadence with them how often will i hear back from you or should i proactively be reaching out to you if i'm reaching out to you what do you prefer call text email and then this last question is a great question do you have a backup is there another poc that i can get their information just in case you're out of the office or anything happens i would love a backup person's info i think
a lot of people would find this valuable at some points if you can get that that's great now let's talk about the important logistics questions like the whiteboard so in some of these video interviews now they're being told you can't use a whiteboard some you can so you want to find out that data you want to find out once it's in person if you're actually going to have a whiteboard in that room it just might help with your prep strategy what should you wear i get asked that question a lot that's a question for your
recruiter you always want to ask them and then anything else that you should be aware of like any like tricks or tips with the video platform if you're less familiar with it when we do go back on site anything about the location should i use the front door the side door is parking tricky is there somewhere where people continually get lost when they come to this office that's a great great question now let's focus on some optional logistics questions this depends on rapport and basically what you need to uncover so you might want to find
out about location like let's say it's the location in san francisco but you live in san diego and you want to see if you can work remote is that something that they're open to if the job doesn't call out travel but you think it might have some travel or it says 25 travel you might want to uncover a couple of details about how much travel if that declines over time grows over time what is the salary range you can actually ask that question and they have to answer it in california now for like a big
tech company it's not that great because they can give you the salary range but they don't have to give you bonus or stock information um can you share the benefits package with me i would share that with with prospective candidates at google there's no confidential information in there so you can share that the reason why all these are optional is sometimes they're going to be important sometimes they're not going to be important and when it comes to benefits and comp you just want to be careful in those initial conversations it might be too much the
last question is there anything that i didn't ask are there is there typically a question or questions that you hear from other candidates that you don't think i asked now if you ask all these questions chances are you've asked everything but it's just a great catch-all question we just don't know i really hope this video helps i know we went into the weeds we covered a ton in this video but if you're thinking about all these items you'll have massive success and i'm going to put it all in the youtube description so you don't have
to do as much thinking these are pretty simplistic conversations but you do want to be prepared for them i hope this helps thanks
