Over the past 12 years, I’ve had the opportunity to interview more than 900 candidates for various technical roles in IT. This experience has allowed me to detect patterns, identify challenges, and build a unique perspective on the selection process. It has been, and continues to be, a transformative journey for me as well.
With this series of essays, I want to share the lessons I’ve learned, my understanding of the process, and my take on the often-dreaded interview.
Although I’ll share advice that I consider valuable, my goal isn’t to create a list of tips. I aim to approach the topic from a deeper and more personal perspective, shaped by my beliefs and values.
Who I Am
It seems logical that if my goal is to share a deeply personal perspective, I should begin by telling you who I am.
I am the son of Spanish immigrants who arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Thanks to their efforts and the opportunities this country gave them, they managed to make progress and provide my siblings and me with a solid starting point: middle-class life, equally distant from both luxury and hardship.
At the age of five, I got my first computer, a Commodore 64, and I haven’t been able to tear myself away from a keyboard since. My family helped me, sometimes more than I deserved, to prepare and develop my passion.
I got married at 24 and became a father at 26. I am the breadwinner for my family, which consists of my wife and two children. My wife and I are fortunate to have a family network that has supported us through life’s challenges. If I had a work trip abroad, Emma was there to help Cin with the kids. If I was suddenly added to a war room and couldn’t pick Sofi up from daycare, my mom was there to get her. Countless times. Too many, perhaps.
Five years ago, after 10 years of immense effort, I managed to buy the house we live in. However, I couldn’t have done it without my parents’ help.
My perspective is clearly influenced by the group I belong to: as a member of an aspirational middle class, I share the dream, much like my parents did, of giving my children a higher starting point. That the ceiling be as far as possible. The dream of being surpassed by our children is too tempting not to pursue.
The story of my parents, the home where I grew up, my privileges, my social group, and, above all, my personal decisions and experiences have shaped a worldview that manifests in my actions. My subjective construction of the world, where work plays a central role as a factor that gives meaning to every part of it, deeply influences how I approach human relationships. This is reflected in all aspects of my life, including the professional sphere, and takes on particular significance during interviews, where this perspective becomes even more evident.
Juli
2020-present First-Level Support - Mega Corporation
Customer Service: Provide first-level technical support to global users, resolving queries and issues related to Mega Corporation’s products and services.
Incident Resolution: Diagnose and solve technical problems involving hardware, software, and configurations, ensuring minimal downtime.
Case Management: Document and track support tickets using management tools, ensuring timely resolution.
2016-2020 Administrator - Mercado “Los Alerces”
Operational Management: Supervise daily market operations, ensuring compliance with quality and service standards.
Financial Control: Manage income and expenses, prepare monthly financial reports, and ensure business profitability.
Vendor Relations: Act as the main point of contact for merchants, resolving concerns and fostering positive relationships.
Juli was about 19 years old. Born in Córdoba, she started working at her parents’ small-town store, which—thanks to Google Maps—could be identified as a tiny village grocery shop.
After finishing high school, she was eager to experience city life. So, she set her sights on Córdoba’s capital and sent out a flood of resumes until she landed a job at a call center, which allowed her to rent a studio apartment in the city.
Over the next year and a half, she cooked up her next big move: noticing the strong demand for data skills in the external job market, she took advantage of every language course offered by her current job, downloaded Duolingo, and even started binge-watching series on Netflix without subtitles. At the same time, after her workday, she dedicated herself to completing course after course recommended on Udemy.
Initially, she wasn’t sure where to start, but as she progressed, she found something she truly loved: maximizing the value of data. She began by downloading a test database, creating tables, and learning SQL seriously. She even mastered PL/SQL and realized that programming wasn’t as complicated as she’d thought. To practice, she developed a small inventory management system for her parents’ store. She even created fairly impressive dashboards using Power BI.
For a data-related position at a multinational company, Juli was initially rejected. Her profile appeared in a LinkedIn recruiter search solely because of the term “Power BI,” one of the key technologies for the role. However, this was due to a Udemy course listed in her certifications, which at first glance seemed insufficient for serious consideration.
Weeks into a stalled search, I decided to revisit previously dismissed profiles out of curiosity. That’s how I found hers.
Something in her resume caught my attention: she had a GitHub account. It showed chronological growth over the past year and a half. She started by uploading exercises from a Python course on freeCodeCamp. Later, she developed an integration with Google APIs that combined data from multiple spreadsheets into one using a script. There were numerous SQL files scattered throughout and several experiments I didn’t fully understand. There was also a static website, an attempt to learn the basics of React, and several repositories with Markdown notes documenting her practice findings.
If it was all a ruse, it was so elaborate it deserved recognition.
Ultimately, we decided to move forward and give her the chance to start the process.
An Interview is a Door
Every time I interview someone, I feel it’s a wonderful opportunity to meet someone else on their unique life journey. Sometimes, I see reflections of my younger self. However, in most cases, each candidate has a story, a “who I am” that is entirely different from mine. They’ve been dealt a different hand of cards than I have. Like Juli.
During the interview, Juli did something remarkable: boldly and intelligently, she took the reins to tell her story and give it meaning. She built a narrative.
Bold, because she took the initiative to share her story, understanding that her concise resume wouldn’t encapsulate the ethos that defines her personal journey.
Intelligent, because she condensed it into the 2 or 3 minutes available for her introduction.
Though I have no scientific backing for this, I’m convinced the first five minutes of an interview are almost as important as the rest. During that brief period, my mind tries to figure out the person in front of me, based solely on a document listing achievements whose credibility can sometimes be questionable. In those 300 seconds, a candidate must build a compelling narrative that sparks my interest to learn the rest of their story.
Achieving this is a true art. Many factors come into play, but in my experience, the most important thing is for the candidate to present, credibly, the incentives that make me believe they can perform well in the role. That is the key to success or failure in an interview. To do this, the best predictor I’ve found is understanding who that person is and how this job can help them achieve their goals.
Instead of asking, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” I prefer a different approach. I want to know who the person in front of me is and what they’ve done in the last two years. That information often gives me enough clues about where they want to go.
Although anecdotal, I like to share the end of Juli’s story. She was hired and performed extraordinarily. Two years later, she landed a new job at an overseas company. Recently, I saw an update on her LinkedIn: it seems she’s leading a data team cell in a budding Californian startup. What will her next master plan be?
Reimagining an Interview
There’s no being more beautiful and interesting than a human being. During an interview, we have the opportunity, for a few minutes, to connect with someone and hear their story.
The power of telling a story well is unimaginable. It’s a supreme technique, perfected by our ancestors. It’s in our DNA. It’s the most powerful tool we possess to achieve our goals.
The final outcome of an interview is usually a report detailing soft and technical skills, English proficiency, salary expectations, and other aspects. These data points are necessary and undoubtedly useful.
However, my work as an interviewer goes beyond gathering that information. My goal is to discover who that person is while asking those questions. It’s a fascinating and challenging process. Over time and with experience