this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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The interview starts ... the interviewer asks me "Tell me about yourself." ... I respond "Did you receive my CV? I put all important details about me ... right there. What questions do you have about my past jobs?" The interviewer encourages me again to tell him about myself, my past projects, etc. ... Me: Awkward silence. ... Me to myself: Dafuq? Should I read the CV from top to bottom OR WHAT?
I’d rather they ask me a question on something for which I’m an expert (myself) and that I can prepare for, than to fire off leetcode question.
Yeah, it’s a little bit redundant, but it can break the initial tension and get the conversation going. You can also use the time to emphasize some specific aspect of your work history that you think matches up with the job req, or shows why you actually want to work there.
If they don’t ask this question/prompt, what question would you want them to ask?
They're asking not for the info, they are asking to see how you communicate (ie "soft skills"). Your response immediately demonstrates that you do not like people, are probably a PITA to interact with, and will have a hard time collaborating with any other humans who do not think exactly like you do. The good news is that soft skills are skills, and as such they can be learned and improved on.
Yes, I know this. It took me long time to figure this out. My entire life I focused on technical skills / programming / math / logic. As I deemed them most important for the job. I was like: "Hey, if you cannot program, why do you work as programmer (you stupido)?" Only few years ago I realized that even as programmer (as opposed to sales man) you really need those "meh" soft skills. And that they are really important and I should not call them "meh". I'm very good at solving problems, improving product's performance, memory consumption, discovering and fixings bugs, security vulnerabilities. But I'm very very bad at communicating my skills and communicating with people in general. I'm not able to politely tell people that theirs idea is bad, I just say "that's stupid". And I'm mostly/sometimes right (if I'm not 100% sure, I don't say anything), but the damage caused by the way I say it is often inreversible. That post of mine about the job interview and CV was half joke and half reality. I just freeze/stutter when I'm asked something that is obvious because it is written I my CV. I'm immediately thinking "Did he not received the CV?" or "Did he not read it?" "Why the fuck is he not prepared for the call? Why are we wasting time asking me what should be obvious because I sent it in advance?" I'm more robot than human. Put me in front of problem and forget to tell me that it is impossible to solve ... and I will solve it. But easy small talk ... disaster. Communicating what the problem really was ... disaster. Communicating how I solved it ... disaster. "It was not working before and now it works fine, what the hell do you want from me now?" Yes, I'm very bad in team, in collective. I didn't know the reason why, but since few years ago I know the root of the problem. It's not that everybody around me is stupid and don't know basic stuff (what I consider basic), but me unable to communicate with other humans.
You sound like you have an inflated opinion of your programming skills and sense of not belonging / being unlike others. I may be wrong, I don't know you at all, but that's what your comments makes me think - and in that case you may want to check both that ego and self-flagellation before it bites you back.
In programming jobs, there's lot of people very good at programming but less so at social skills, it's very frequent, I see those profiles a lot at job interviews. In that situation, you have to understand that many people are like you - and even those who don't for the most part are not more or less able to do their job nor less smart. People thinking they're better at programming than the rest that way are generally rightly seen as assholes, and they most often than not are detrimental to projects, as well as despised by most.
Once you get that, you have to remember to not fall into the trap of thinking that you have the higher, more important, hard skills and that this plus your poor social skills excuses you from being nice and judging questions from other as stupid or unimportant - and at interviews they're generally prepared beforehand and have mostly deeper reasons than just the question being asked. Moreover, once you realize that many other people are actually knowing much more than you without being assholes, that might be a hard reality check.
Many people are not passionate about programming, but MANY also are, and are very competent. There's nothing special about anyone that makes him/her immune from being outed for not being nice at interviews.
One pro-tip: you can hack your own mind to work better in these situations by shifting from thinking "OMG why are he/she so stupid for doing X or Y, I would do it better" to "He/she are clearly stupid for doing X or Y, let me use my superior brainpower to guide them to achieving their goals even if they can barely understand/explain what they are trying to do".
Talk about your strengths, a brief summary of your skills, maybe very briefly talk about hobbies, that sort of stuff. By the end of my interviews I normally have an elevator pitch mostly memorized just by coincidence of saying the same thing over and over.