I rarely tell stories about myself nor my expressing thoughts since I feel that they not “interesting” enough. I have a few ones that are not truly “interesting”, but they seem “fun” to me. Some of them are interviewing-related. I am afraid that those seemingly fun stories would be forgotten in the future, however, so… here we are.

I am not going to public the companies’ name for good reasons. They might have changed (for better or worse), and the interviewers are not the same, either. My memory and my judgement, either might not work well. I would try to create abbreviations that make as much sense as possible, but so be it!

G.L.

The company is a game company based in Ha Dong. It was my first time doing an interview, and I did it… strangely well. A few questions back and forth, here and there. I almost aced the writing test on C/C++ (90/100). The internship (at the time I have no idea it was that) required me to spend 20 hours per week there. I could not, and got rejected.

At the time I got out, I saw a white man walks ahead of me. Let us presume that he was the boss or an important person there, I really wonder if I tried talking with him, would it had changed anything?

V.

The company is another game company, but based in Lang Ha. At the time, somehow I wanted to try the Quality Assurance position.

I aced the writing test on Algorithms and Data Structures, and got to the final interview. There were six people with different roles (Project Manager, Vice President of Engineering, Quality Assurance Lead, etc.; I could not recall them at all, or even the people’s names). My technical part did not went well, and my behavior part is a damn catastrophe.

“Do you have any question for us?”, the vice president asked me.

“Ughh… How about your gym membership?”, I answered.

C.

“C…” is not the company’s name. I tried my best to remember the name, but I could not. Please forgive me on that. The company is an edtech company based in Ba Dinh (a floor of a mansion there).

It was a raining afternoon, and I got to the place 10 minutes early. I waited for a while, and was greeted by the CEO, and a technical leader. We traded a few questions here and there, back and forth. I was given a few interesting problems and did not ace them.

Finally, the CEO gave me some “fortune telling” which… scared me at the time, but thinking of it right now, it becomes really funny. He said something on I am an “more than average” dude, who is thriving in life, but would not be able to achieve his full potential, which is, following statistics, accurate for 99 percents of people. Later, I got offered to be paid well below the current rate to “learn more”, which I luckily declined.

E.T.

I interviewed at E.T. around one year and a half later than C. The steps are different, but the compensation dealing “pattern” is kinda similar. E.T. is a fintech company based in Hoan Kiem.

My technical interviewing with the leader went well, but the final round with the company’s C-something-O did not. My answers for the “behavior questions” of her were not too well thought out. I got offered bellow the current rate a bit to “learn more”, and “be different” in a few years I work there, but I simply said no.

Thoughts on Interviewing

After failing a lot of interviews, I finally found the right “attitude” for that: think of them as information games which need a lot of preparations. If you fail at any of them, just think that you did not prepare well enough, and stop judging yourself as incompetence or anything like that.

My tips then only revolves around preparing:

  • Research the company (if you do not know what does the company do, nor have a strong “drive” to work for them, expect rejection; I will elaborate on this “drive” shortly after).
  • Research the compensation/salary range.
  • Have a strong “drive” on why do you want to work for them: it can be your career path, or favorite product, or favorite technology. Look at it from the employers’ point of view: they need someone to do the work for them, and stay with them as long as possible; a weak “drive” signals the opposite.

For some “pretigious” companies like Google, Amazon, etc., I can suggest nothing but LeetCode, as it signals that you have a strong “drive” for the company, and you are willing to jump through hoops just to be with them.

Conclusion

I wrote some of my “fun” interviewing stories, and my thoughts on interviews in general. I hope that it entertained and, in some small way, was useful to you.