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A Principle-based Interview Process Fetches Good Talent to any Organization

16 Mar, 2022
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A recent newspaper article noted that a lot of resumes are hollow and hardly speak of the candidates’ actual achievements or positives. Some of the hollow words are team players, always enthusiastic, etc. These qualities are literally positive, but they have been overused so much that they seem to have lost their meaning or the ability to make an impact. Did these qualities lose their relevance?

How to measure them and assess a candidate’s qualities without any certificates to endorse them? What does this mean for aspirants and interviewees engaged in the interview? This blog gives a list of essential qualities that aspirants should cultivate and the talents (actually attitude) they should acquire before attending an interview.

During an interview, what do employers look for?

Good behaviour : The interviewer reflects the company’s principles and hence his/her behaviour reflects the same. In the same way, the aspirants reflect the corporate principles that all of us working in the sector should believe in. Some of these principles are taking responsibility or accountability, participating in brainstorming discussions proactively, planning objectives, and basing your decisions and plans on unbiased research and data.

All the candidates selected for an interview already have literacy and numerical skills. However, what employers usually assess is their discipline and character. At coMakeIT, the interviews are friendly and reflect our commitment to open discussions and non-hierarchical work culture. And we look for similar and complementary qualities in the candidates we interview.


Logical Abilities : This is the topmost ability that employers seek. Logic is what guides us all in making rational decisions based on facts and not on impulses or emotions. A person with good logical abilities can process facts better and is more dependable to make good decisions.

 


Sound Technical knowledge: Commonly many assume that byhearting FAQs is a sure way to clear an interview. FAQ handouts indeed help aspirants in brushing up their skills. But what most companies look for is not the candidate’s ability to reproduce technical information, but the technical knowledge and growth relevant to his/her education or work experience. When information is all at a click away, it is the ability to make sense of it that matters.


Agile Learning : The Software ecosystem is continuously evolving, and hence software engineers are required to continuously learn and keep themselves abreast of the latest advancements in the domain. Though work opportunities are not always in the candidate’s hands, he/she can still develop his/her interests by pursuing various courses online. With several eLearning options available to us, employers also assess an applicant’s learnability and interests through the courses completed.  However, more than the certifications what matters the most is the keenness to learn and the agility to adapt to situations even if they’re unanticipated. 


Commitment to Team building : As in team sports, in software engineering teams too, a team’s cumulative effort contributes more to the overall quality of work than an isolated individual’s effort, however knowledgeable and ambitious the individual might be. Good communication skills and a friendly attitude are essential for anyone aspiring to grow in a software career.  People skills matter a lot, especially when you need to communicate clearly with team members, management, clients, product owners, etc.


Problem-solving Abilities (Simple to complex) : Who doesn’t face tough times and problems in life, personal and professional? These experiences though might be unpleasant provide us an opportunity to grow. We need to self-evaluate our responses to such situations to handle tough times in the future as well. The problems need not be always interpersonal, they can be technical, and domain-related too.  Unlike personal ones, professional issues are easier to resolve. The first and foremost trick is clear communication.

At coMakeIT, we try to make the working experience as pleasant as possible. To ensure that we create such an environment we recruit people with good problem-solving abilities.


Moral Values : For anyone, a job or a business is a means to attain financial success. However, we don’t consider our employees just as a means to grow and flourish, we value them as people in themselves.

Similarly, we wish our employees too to value us not because the company provides their salary, but more because of what we are as an organisation. It is only when they identify themselves with our core values that we can grow together and build a long-term professional relationship.

These are even more important in today’s times when attrition is at an all-time high, several employers are accused of lack of understanding of employee conditions, and employees are accused of a lack of commitment. Both should understand that they need each other, however, they must respect not because they need each other but because respect for anyone is a necessary moral value that is not contingent.

None of the qualities mentioned should be understood separately, they all culminate in building a person, a team, a product/software, or even an organisation, and deeply guide us all in both our professional and personal lives.

In a Nutshell

An interview preparation might include brushing up technical skills and preparing answers for anticipated questions. Whether to clear an interview or grow in a career or even succeed in life, the right attitude and soft skills are quite important. A shallow way is to learn these qualities to crack interviews, but a more beneficial way is to understand why these skills are important, cultivate them, and adhere to them even if testing situations arise. We’ve listed some that we think are pertinent. However, the list is not comprehensive. The list only reflects the spirit of our organisation and our interview process.

Do you have any more to add to the list?

Are you ready to take an interview that opens your career opportunities?

Please write to us at careers@comakeit.com

Divya Prathima
The author was a java Developer at coMakeIT before turning into a stay-at-home-mom. She slowed down to make art, tell stories, read books on fiction, philosophy, science, art-history, write about science, parenting, and observe technology trends. She loves to write and aspires to write simple and understandable articles someday like Yuval Noah Harari. We are very happy to have her back at coMakeIT and contribute to our relevant and thought provoking content.
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