The Tech Interview Behind the Scenes: Vasil Petrov

The Tech Interview Behind the Scenes is an HRLabs series.
Let’s take a look behind the scenes of the technical interview process from the interviewers' perspective.
Our goal is to provide candidates with valuable tips and recommendations directly from professionals who conduct interviews for various technical roles.

“I am looking for a genuine desire and ability to learn quickly.", shares Vasil Petrov, Technical Lead.

Tell us more about your career path.

Since I graduated university in 2013 double majoring in Computer Science and Business Administration, I knew I would want one day to be in a leading position.

My career path started in 2013 as a Junior Developer in a small software house developing software products using .NET Framework back then and SharPoint.

My next career place introduced me to Scrum and Scrum Mastering while still being a developer. For a while I thought this is something I would want to do being both a Scrum Master and Developer.

The next stop in my carrer path gave me this opportunity for a while. It was a project right from scratch, so I was being given the task to introduce my newly formed team to Scrum and facilitate the meetings. The company had the idea to have a dedicated scrum master which meant I would back to being only a software developer.

My next job was in a big outsource company and I spent a significant amount of time there, going through multiple projects in different domains. Some of the later projects I worked on gave me the opportunity to experience what is to be on a lead position.

Unfortunate turn of events made me leave that company and look for other opportunities. In the next job place I was Tech Lead in a company working in the hospitality business. In this place I had to step up my collaboration skills in a cross team environment.

As a candidate, have you had any strange interviews? What about interviews that impressed you?

I would not call it a strange one  but it was definitely an interesting one.

One of the first interview processes I had to go through, made the candidate travel to their HQ in Rijswijk, Iceland. There you would have to undergo a 5 step interview process being interviewed by multiple managers from the company. 

Being a rookie in the IT industry, this definitely impressed me.

What skills and qualities do you look for in a candidate?

I would say the two top qualities I am looking for are confidence and curiosity. 

What questions do you typically ask in technical interviews?

I don’t have any specific favorite questions.

I generally ask about the candidate’s experience and whether that experience would be transferable to the position I am interviewing for. If it is not an exact match I am looking for a genuine desire and ability to learn quickly.

How important are good communication skills for a candidate?

It depends on the position the interview is for, but generally communication skills can be considered important for a candidate. 

A candidate can have tremendous tech skills but if he/she needs to convey the right message during that 1 hour.

How important is cultural fit when making a hiring decision?

By asking questions like whether the candidates had any conflicts in his previous job places or how would he resolve a potential conflict situation, has the candidate had any stressful situations. Based on the answers I can make a conclusion whether the candidate would be a good fit.

What are the most common mistakes candidates make during an interview?

For junior candidates I would say not showing enough curiosity and lack of questions.

For more senior candidates I would say making simple mistakes on technical things they are supposed to know.

What advice would you give to candidates who want to improve their technical skills?

In my humble opinion there is no better improvement than just practical tasks.

Register on HackerRank or Leetcode to improve their problem solving capabilities. Experiment with the technologies they would want to work with.

How do you evaluate a candidate during an interview - based solely on their theoretical knowledge, or is their approach to solving a problem/task more important to you? 

I would say a little bit of both.

You would have to have a fundamental layer of technical knowledge, so you can use it to customize your problem solving approach. But if I have to pick I would pick the problem solving approach, after all that’s what we do we solve problems. 

Share a funny story from your experience as an interviewer :)

I interviewed a candidate remotely who when I asked a technical question, he just plainly said:

“Hm that’s an interesting one, let me quickly check that on google”.  

I gave him points for honesty.