The Interview Tips That Landed Us Offers at Snapchat, Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Accenture, Udemy and more

At Wonsulting, we've helped thousands of underdogs turn into winners especially during COVID-19. Whether it's sharing strategies without applying online through social media like on Forbes or helping International students land jobs, we love to help job-seekers land jobs.

Some of the best videos we've had on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have been regarding Resume Tips and LinkedIn Tips; however, Interview tips are vitally important to landing offers. In this article, I interviewed people in our Wonsulting Community to talk about what their best interview tips are that helped them land offers at Snapchat, Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Accenture, Udemy and more. These are the best interview tips they had to share:

‍

Research Potential Questions

One of the most important interview tips that I’ve personally used when interviewing at Snapchat is to do your own research on potential questions for your interviews. Whether it’s asking your recruiter for the potential questions or looking at Glassdoor, it’s important to do the following to prepare for your interviews:

• Checking websites such as Glassdoor or asking current employees in the position for interview tips
• Writing your answers to your questions in STAR format on a document

When you do  your research on potential questions, you’ll notice that many of them are similar to each other. Thus, you can have correlating answers directly pertaining to the topic of the question. For example, some of the most common interview questions have to do with collaboration, conflict, data-driven decisions, and the “why”. At Wonsulting, we’ve identified 3 questions that are asked the most during interviews which are as follows:

• Tell me about yourself
• Why this company?
• Why this role?

By preparing for these 3 questions, you’ll be able to crush your first part of your interviews which will translate to you answering your other questions in an efficient manner. I’d also recommend checking out our Wonsulting Interview Prep Template which you can utilize to crush your interviews and more!

‍

Be sure to smile

One interview tip that most job-seekers forget to do is simply “Smile”. Throughout your interview, you’re more inclined to slouch, frown, and have a bad body posture; however, by smiling, you express happiness and being excited for your interview which then gives energy to your answers and to the interviewer too.

When Jerry Lee, Co-Founder and COO of Wonsulting, was interviewing at Google and Lucid, he utilized this technique to crush his interviews. By smiling, the interviewer opened up more and made the interview more conversational rather than scripted. He’s shared this knowledge on TikTok regarding career tips which has helped tens of thousands of his followers learn more about how to crush your interviews.

The same goes with one of the Wonsulting mentees and mentors of The20, a Wonsulting Company, Ami. When Ami Patel was interviewing for her Product Manager role at Microsoft, she utilized this tip to be more welcoming to the interviewer which allowed her to break the ice, feel more confident, and create a refreshing atmosphere. It eventually led her to the true definition of “rejection is redirection”  with her story and willingness to help underdogs turn into winners.

All in all, remember this: Smiling is contagious, so smile. This goes with everything in life, not just the job search.

‍

Be Clear and Concise

One of the mistakes many have during their interview process is providing “too long of” answers to interview questions. Your answers to questions shouldn’t be longer than 2 minutes with the “sweet spot” being around 1 minute 30 seconds.

When I was interviewing at Goldman Sachs, I remember I didn’t know much about structuring my interview answers. During the interview, one of the associates asked me a question; I babbled for 3+ minutes, and the interviewer cut me off to go to the next question. The reason I did terribly in answering the question was because I rushed my answer and didn’t give a structure of how to answer the question. At Wonsulting, we recommend using STAR Method: Situation, Task, Action, Result. Here’s an example of how you can structure a question in STAR below.

Question: Tell me about a time when you failed.

Situation: A time when I failed was during my college career. During the beginning of my college career, I was not focused in school; I would be distracted by other things and did not have my priorities straight. This ultimately affected me by having low grades as well as no idea what I was going to do in my career.

Task: My task was to figure out how I was going to bounce back from failing some classes and not being focused in my career.

Action: The action steps I took were to focus more on my career by hanging with friends and influential figures that would help motivate and inspire me to do well in whatever I did. I made an action plan regarding what goals I had for the year, specifically bringing my GPA back up as well as interning every summer. I made sure to connect with people who could be my mentors and ultimately able to pick me up from the failures I previously had.

Result: What resulted from this was that I was able to pick up my grades significantly, bouncing back from having a 3.0 GPA beginning Junior Year to a 3.5 GPA at the end of Senior year, ultimately receiving Cum Laude honors. I was also able to focus more on my career, networking to land 4 internships in my last two years and being in 3 leadership positions including the ASUCR Elected CHASS Senator, Director of Finance for UCR’s School of Business, and ALPFA’s Director of Professional Development.

Alvin Meledath, who works in CX at Softchoice and is the Founder of Customer Buds, echoes this advice but also brings a twist to it. He says that if he didn’t know the answer to an interview question, he asked the interviewer for a minute to collect his thoughts so he wouldn’t rush his answer and feel more composed to deliver a quality one. What we suggest at Wonsulting is doing something similar but not for all questions; for example, an easy structure when you don’t know the answer to an interview question can be like this (referencing the last question):

• Interview Question: Tell me about a time you failed.
• You: Thank you so much for that question; may I have a minute to write my answer in STAR format to give you a structured answer?

By doing this strategy, you’ll be able to be more clear and concise to share your story.

Practice Your Story and Pitch

This is a given, but practicing your story and pitch is very important so you can be able to convey your experiences in your interviews. Yifan Gong, who currently works as a Manager of Recruiting Coordination & Operations at Udemy and was selected as their Rookie of the Year award, says that it’s important to make your interview answers personal and to go one or two levels deeper than you think. He also says to have answers that no one else has; rather than saying “I’m passionate about mentoring”, he says to include the following:

• Why are you passionate about mentoring?
• What connection does it have to you?

An example of a great answer according to Yifan, who also worked in LinkedIn’s Business Leadership Program (BLP) when he graduated, is saying “I’m passionate about mentoring because I wouldn’t be here today without mentors in my life. I want to extend that hand behind me and be able to help others as well, that’s why I mentor.”

Jason Tsao, a Technology Consulting Analyst at Accenture”, also agrees with this interview tip. One of his best interview tips is to know your story but also to not simply “memorize answer answers to specific questions”; rather, it's much more effective to know how your experiences could apply to a wide range of questions. He says not to just memorize the "Top 100 Interview Questions"; always be prepared for curveball questions, and that’s why it’s important to know your story so you can adapt your answers based on the questions asked.

Conclusion

In conclusion, remember that interviews are two-way streets; be yourself and showcase your skills/experiences that you bring to the table. Never just “wing” interviews; it’s important to prepare for these, whether it’s practicing your pitch, conducting research for potential questions, and most of all being confident.

Always remember this: If you weren’t good enough, you wouldn’t be interviewing. Receiving an interview means you are good enough, it’s up to you to prove them right.

As we always say at Wonsulting, you got this!

‍

--

Jonathan Javier is the CEO/Founder of Wonsulting, which mission is to “turn underdogs into winners”. He’s also worked in Operations at Snap, Google, and Cisco coming from a non-target school/non-traditional background. He works on many initiatives, providing advice and words of wisdom on LinkedIn and through speaking engagements. In total, he has led 210+ workshops in 9 different countries including the Mena ICT Forum in Jordan, Resume/Personal Branding at Cisco, LinkedIn Strategy & Operations Offsite, Great Place To Work, Talks at Google, TEDx, and more. He’s also been featured as a Top Job Search Expert in articles from Forbes, Business Insider, DailyMail, Yahoo News, LinkedIn News, Jobscan, Brainz Magazine, and more. He’s amassed 700K+ followers on LinkedIn, Instagram,& TikTok as well as 30+ million impressions monthly on his content.

‍

Check out his Social Media links here:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-wonsulting/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jonathanwordsofwisdom/
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wonsulting
• Wonsulting Website: wonsulting.com
• Wonsulting Blog: wonsulting.com/blog

Interested in working together? Check out wonsulting.com or email us at hello@wonsulting.com (reference this article too)!

‍

–

Need more help? Our 1:1 services could be a good fit for you! With 90% of our clients land interviews within 3 months and 70% land offers in 6 months, it’s only a matter of time until you land that job you’ve always dreamed of.

‍

If you need help in making that decision, sign-up to speak to our team. We’ll help you turn from an underdog into a winner.

‍

You can also try WonsultingAI, our growing suite of AI powered job search tools for resumes, cover letters, networking, job applying and more!