The Coding Interview:

Most important is the ability to write clean and correct code. It is not enough just to be correct. A lot of people will be interacting with your code once you’re on the job, so it should be clear, maintainable, and extensible where appropriate. If your solution is clean and correct, and you produced it in a reasonable amount of time without a lot of help, you’re in good shape. Even if you stumble a bit, there are other ways to demonstrate your ability. As you work, interviewers watch for debugging ability, problem-solving and analytical skills, creativity, and an understanding of the system that surrounds production code.

The Algorithms Interview:

1. Make sure you understand the problem. Ask for clarifications. Once you understand the problem, come up with a solution, any solution, as long as it is valid. This forces you to engage with the structure of the problem and it gives you a sense of confidence.
2. Think about related problems you have seen before and how they were solved. Chances are, the problem you’ve been presented is very similar to one you have seen before.
3. Modify the problem by breaking it up into smaller problems.
4. Trying out a few different approaches rather than sticking with a single approach tends to work well in interviews. The problems chosen for an interview usually have many different solutions.

The Systems Design Interview:

This interview requires knowledge of systems and a talent for design. What makes it interesting, though, and sets it apart from a coding or an algorithms interview, is that whatever solution you come up with during the interview is just a side effect. What actually is cared about is the process.
Usually, the interview will start by asking you to design a system that performs a given task. For the most part, you’ll be steering the conversation. It is up to you to understand the problem. That might mean asking questions, sketching diagrams on the board, and bouncing ideas off your interviewer. Do you know the constraints? What kind of inputs does your system need to handle? You have to get a sense for the extent of the problem before you start exploring the space of possible solutions. And remember, there is no single right answer to a real-world problem. Everything is a tradeoff.

The best way to prepare for this interview is practice. This can mean doing mock designs, working on an actual system, digging into the performance characteristics of an open source system, or learning about how databases and operating systems work.

If you are able to follow the aforementioned advice, there is no reason why you should not be able to succeed in your technical interview.

TSI is also offering a $1,000 dollar referral fee to anyone who: a) refers TSI to a manager who hires a TSI candidate, or b) submits a candidate to TSI by name, profile and/or resume who gets placed with one of TSI’s clients, within six months of the referral.

#1: It’s not just about how smart you are

If you ever wondered how an employer chooses from three people with identical resumes: this is it. Many times you will be competing against candidates with very similar accomplishments, and there is only one way to stand out from the crowd. Show your employer why you want to be there. Do your research on the company and its particular culture and know ahead of time what you can bring to the table to help them grow. Anyone they interview will be qualified, intelligent, and driven – but employers want someone who will bring something more exciting to the table. What can you do for them? Be concrete, be creative, and show that you are more than just smart.

#2: NEVER open a sentence with an excuse or apology

Interviewers hear things like this constantly: “I know I don’t have a finance degree, I know I didn’t have an internship with your company”, etc. These are the kind of things you want to say at home around family and friends when you are secretly freaking out about your interview the next day – NOT to your employer! Work with what you have and highlight your redeeming qualities. Relate non job-specific experiences to your new employer in creative ways. So you worked for a summer as an ambulance driver and now you’re applying for a position in finance? Great! That experience shows that you can handle stress.

#3: Be succinct and do not ramble

Interviewers are people too, and like all people, they can get bored.

Don’t take 5 minutes to answer a question
Don’t give one word answers
Don’t drone; keep the interviewer interested

Remember, you are selling yourself to this individual. Think of other examples of sales. It’s often the personality – the excitement – the way the product is presented, that keeps us coming back for more. Sell yourself effectively, and your interviewer won’t be able to let you go.

#4: Explain Yourself

Interviewers love to give brainteasers.

How many passengers leave JFK airport on a given day?
If this table was full of pennies, do you think they could stack up to measure this building?

If you get stuck, explain how you would approach the problem if you don’t know the answer. Interviewing is less about getting answers right and more about showing the interviewer that you are an effective problem solver. Companies want to know that you are capable of taking complex problems and breaking them down to find an answer. They are more concerned with how you think than with what you know.

#5: Count. If you are asked for 3 examples, don’t give 2

This blunder is made more often than should be allowed. It’s a no-brainer kind of mistake that you can easily watch out for and avoid – (please do!) It will make your interviewer’s job a lot easier if you mess something like this up, and by that I mean that you will probably be overlooked on the spot. You’re smarter than that – don’t let happen to you!

#6: Be able to explain everything in your resume, down to the last apostrophe

Your resume has been your stand-in until this point, and your employer is very likely to refer to it for clarification and explanation, especially if something you have done stands out. Be prepared with answers to any question about your past internship or work experience. Have examples ready to show concretely your impact and what you personally accomplished during your time there.

More information can be found here.

Should You Hire For Skill Or Spirit?

Companies spend a huge amount of time and resources crafting business strategies. Even so, most of these strategies end in failure.

I saw one company spend half a million dollars and hundreds of employee hours implementing a new strategy, only to admit that it wasn’t working. They had to spend even more money and lay off employees trying to put things back to the way they were before. The next time the company tried to introduce a new strategy, it was met with considerable employee resistance.

If employees don’t buy into a strategy, it’s doomed to failure from the start. After all, strategy doesn’t execute itself. People execute it. This is why it’s vital to integrate strategy and people.

Because people represent the potential of the business, high-growth companies need high-growth employees. Employee development is the key ingredient in breaking through to the next level of growth. Employees have to develop new skills that allow them to perform at higher levels so that they can quickly deliver on the potential of the strategy and the company itself.

While it’s certainly possible to hire for new capabilities, there are tremendous benefits of promoting from within. Just a few benefits include: retaining technical knowledge; honoring the informal, social fabric of the organization; and fostering the culture of the company.

Employee development needs to be included in both strategy creation and execution. There are two main ways to assess people and their development: skills and spirit.

Skills are things that can be trained. A leader can be coached on how to become more influential and engage their team to achieve great results. An employee can be trained technical skills such as engineering, accounting, and marketing that they need to do their jobs really, really well.

Spirit refers to the “soft” skills that can’t be trained effectively. You have to hire for them. These are hard to find but are necessary for a company to function smoothly.

One of these skills is teamwork–the ability to put the needs of the group ahead of personal desires. Another is heart, as in “put your heart into it.” This describes true commitment and passionate engagement. Employees with heart take ownership of their jobs and go the extra mile.

One of my clients, a growing manufacturing company, got a huge order that had to be delivered on a rush basis. Everyone at the company had to pull out all the stops to get the job done on time.

Two women working on the manufacturing floor had the idea to make posters to keep track of progress. These were updated several times a day so that everyone could see how close they were to completion. The posters helped keep everyone motivated, and with a lot of extra effort the order was filed with zero errors.

The two women demonstrated both teamwork and heart. They were promoted to management positions shortly afterwards.

Too often, companies hire for skills without enough consideration for spirit. When that happens, you end up with a bunch of wonks who can’t work together. There needs to be a balance between skills and spirit across the entire company.

This same balance needs to exist within individual senior managers. A VP of global marketing at a IT company recently asked me about this. He told me that one of his senior managers had great skills and was a decent leader, but he wasn’t showing any heart–he just didn’t seem to care about the company. The VP said that the manager’s bad attitude was starting to wear off on his entire team.

My reply was clear and simple. I told him that if the manager’s heart wasn’t in it, there were two options: move him into a purely technical position or let him go. Senior managers are a microcosm of your company. They are the role models for other employees. As such, they need to have both skills and spirit.

Integrating strategy and people accelerates the potential growth of any organization and is critical for high-growth companies.

BY FC Expert Blogger Michelle Randall

Recruiters Circle Cisco Like Sharks Amid Job Cuts:

By Joseph Walker

Cisco Systems Inc.’s announcement last month that it would lay off 6,500 workers from its global work force was welcome news to technology recruiters, who say it’s an opportunity to poach top employees uncertain of the company’s future, Fins.com reported Wednesday.

“It’s simply blood in the water,” said Jeff Winter, founder of GravityPeople, a San Francisco-based technology recruiting firm. “There are recruiters that will immediately start calling Cisco, soliciting their engineers and inciting fear that Cisco’s on its way out.”

Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., a San Jose, Calif.-based networking company and Cisco competitor, has seen a larger influx of resumes from Cisco employees in the last two months, director of global talent acquisition Brian Pototo told Fins.com.

“They’re not necessarily cutting their top performers,” Pototo said. But “it does create that uncertainty among the people who are the top performers. You might be able to shake them loose.”

Mike Sienkowski, president of Sausalito, Calif.-based tech recruiting firm BirdDog, Inc., said that he’s also had more Cisco employees contact his firm or respond to job openings recently. While he expects that most of those laid off will be underperformers, he sees an opportunity to poach more highly coveted employees at the company.

“The people I’m after, Cisco keeps close and watches very closely, but they’re more susceptible to my calls now,” Sienkowski said.

Cisco said last month the layoffs would include about 15% of the company’s executive staff, from the vice president level and up. Sienkowski doesn’t think that most companies will be eager to hire former Cisco executives. “They’re probably very expensive dead weight,” he said.

Other companies that may look to recruit from Cisco include Juniper Networks Inc. and NVIDIA Corp., said Alan Shapiro, a principal at Technology Search International, a San Jose, Cailf.-based recruiting firm.

Of the 6,500 job reductions, about 2,100 will come from an employee buyout program. The company’s second quarter earnings announcement included $453 million in charges for a voluntary early retirement program and $214 million for employee severance, as well as other charges,

Two recruiters who interact with Cisco employees said the early retirement package was available to those whose age plus years of service at Cisco equaled 60 or more. That aligns with an internal memo circulating on the Internet. Cisco declined to comment for this article or on the specifics of its buyout program.

For one senior director-level Cisco employee who took a buyout after 15 years at the company, Cisco’s downsizing was a blessing in disguise, said Rob Reeves, president of Redfish Technology, Inc., a technology recruiting firm with an office in Silicon Valley that is helping the employee look for his next job.

“It was a golden handcuffs situation,” said Reeves. “Other companies wouldn’t pay him what Cisco would pay him, but at the same time he was being under-utilized in his role at Cisco…he was plateaued in his career.”

The former Cisco employee is currently in late-stage job talks with several companies, Reeves said.

Because of Cisco’s large size — it currently has 71,825 employees — it will be difficult to make sure that only dead weight is laid off, Shapiro said.

“I wonder if Cisco upper management has actually taken a look at the resumes of the people they’re laying off, because if you’re laying off that many people, you’re putting a lot of talent on the street that could compete directly or indirectly with Cisco,” Shapiro said.

-By Joseph Walker, FINS.COM; Joseph.Walker@dowjones.com

The original article can be found here.

TSI is also offering a $1,000 dollar referral fee to anyone who: a) refers TSI to a manager who hires a TSI candidate, or b) submits a candidate to TSI by name, profile and/or resume who gets placed with one of TSI’s clients, within six months of the referral.

With this celebration comes a gift. TSI is celebrating the launch of the new website by offering a one thousand dollar ($1,000) referral fee. This fee is guaranteed to anyone who: a) refers TSI to a manager who hires a TSI candidate, or b) submits a candidate to TSI who gets placed with one of TSI’s clients, in the next six months. That is quite an incentive to anyone looking to buy their loved ones a special gift for the holidays.

With this celebration comes a gift. Technology Search International is celebrating the launch of the new website by offering a $1,000 dollar referral fee! This fee is guaranteed to anyone who: a) refers TSI to a manager who hires a TSI candidate, or b) submits a candidate to TSI by name, profile and/or resume who gets placed with one of TSI’s clients, within six months of the referral. That is quite an incentive to anyone looking to buy their loved ones a special gift for the holidays.

New jobs will be posted often.

Questions, comments, or suggestions? Contact us at either our New York or California locations. Enjoy the new website!