changing up the way of interviewing w/christopher swift, senior software engineer at live oak bank in raleigh

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Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals. We don't really have anybody to turn to, to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vaco, VACO.com is how to get in touch with me old-fashioned email social media at T D S N T D E S S E Y N. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. Let's go ahead and get started Chris because we got to talk about it. So quick intro about yourself man, who are you? What do you do? We'll go from there. Sure. So I am a senior software engineer at Live at Bank.

I've been doing this nine years, 10 years, something like that. I do a lot of React, full stack, Node.js, AWS, that kind of space. Where do you live? I am just outside Raleigh. Raleigh is a awesome tech hub. We're growing every day. It seems like the big companies just want to keep moving here. It is crazy. I missed my time. I did not know Chris when I lived in Raleigh. I wish I did. Probably would have had a lot more fun in Raleigh if I knew Chris, but I can't confirm Raleigh's. Raleigh's hot. It's hot as they say. All right. So let's go and dive in again.

Last episode before Thanksgiving, this is a stuffing episode. I'm just going to say that. This is a stuffing episode. Um, uh, just interviewing. Right? So you had some fascinating thoughts before we went on air and I want you to share that. So, so, so, first off, you told me, how many people have you interviewed this last week? And last week, six, seven, something like that. That's a lot. It is a lot. And it's not just 30 minute interviews. It's an hour or so each. And, you know, it's lightning. We, you know, topic, topic, topic. keeps us busy. So let me ask you this, and this was not prepped, but this just came to my mind.

So I want to kind of go down this trail a little bit. What advice do you have for hiring managers who are interviewing, who have problems blocking and tackling? Because that's a fair amount of an interview. That's a good one. Yeah. So like, what are some tips and tricks for hiring managers who may watch this now in the future on just some advice on how to navigate interviews? Well, and navigating interviews now is so much different than it was pre-pandemic. You know, you get on a video chat with somebody and you don't know who you're gonna get on with and you don't know what they've got on their screen, what they might be reading off to you point by point to sound like they know what they're doing, et cetera, et cetera.

Ask real questions, ask a very subjective, put people in their detail oriented space so you can really feel out how they're thinking. So talk about that, right? Cause I thought you had a great analogy and I totally agreed with you on because your mindset is to not go super technical, bits and bytes type questions. It's more high level subjective and talk about why you choose to go down that path. Sure, sure. So, I am all about asking detail in experience. And so, if you're a software engineer and you're say you're writing React, well, I don't need to ask you what is a component that's such a basic question.

it's such a objective right, wrong, et cetera. I want to ask you, well, hey, how did you build this website? And listen to how you answer the question. Dive into, hey, I put this button on the page and it does this thing. Well, when you were styling that, what did you run into? Asking the subjective, asking the experience base, you're going to tell if somebody really knows they're talking about. Yeah. Talk. And you use your analogy though. Sure. Sure. I thought that was so good. Yeah. So you know, all of us know somebody who's been in the military at some point. You know, we've we've been exposed to it, right?

Well, you get folks who have been in the military who, you know, talk it up and say, Oh yeah, war war is hard, you know, war sucks, etc, etc. But then you get your people who have actually been deployed. They've actually been shot at. They've actually been in a foxhole. They've actually, you know, gone through all of everything. Right. Well, it's, it's hellacious. And they can tell you the depth of everything they went through. They can tell you what it went through to reload your gun while you're getting shot at. Yeah. Going around a corner, not knowing what you're going to run into, etc, etc.

Well, if you're in that situation, the amount of detail that you can provide through your experience, it's huge. Where, me, I've never been through that. I can tell you, oh yeah, it's really tough. But I can't tell you about me being afraid and my heart beating hard and having around a corner, right? And so you apply that same mentality to interviewing and you ask people about their tech career and their tech experience and you're going to see that detail come out. Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that. What are some other interview hacks or maybe some of the secret sauce if you're willing to share?

Sure. Real quick, Hamad is great to see you, Danita, Wazie, Danny. It's great to see you all this morning. Can you talk about maybe some other secret sauce you have for interviewing and what's helped you throughout your career when you interviewed folks? Sure. Um, so, so twofold, right? You know, when I interview, I'm looking for somebody who's eager, excited, you know, willing to learn, uh, you know, one of the biggest hacks. Wait, talk about why that's so important because I can really drive that home, Because my interview yesterday was about intentionality, intentionality, right? Talk about why it's so important to bring that noise like say it in an interview.

Oh man, that's a great segue from intentionality into this. Thinking about when I have somebody come on to an interview and they're disengaged and they just don't care and it's a nine to five. You know, you can pick up on that really, really fast. And for me, that's probably in my top three turnoffs in an interview. If you just don't care. What are the other two? I'm curious. Do you have another one? I'll go ahead. I would say honesty. And I would say willing, and it ties in with honesty, but willingness to admit when you don't know something. I have had so many people who will come into an interview and be so sure they're right on something or trying to fake it.

Chances are the person interviewing you, if they're asking you the question, they know the answer. So don't fake it. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. And so, so let's go back. I know I interrupted you back to why it's so important to bring energy into an interview. Well, so you bring that energy and it not only catches the attention of the interviewer, right? You know, you want to be around high-energy people just in general. It's just human psychology. But when you bring that on to a team, right? If I interview five people and I've got somebody who's super excited, well, guess what? They're going to make the rest of the team excited.

I don't care what they know about tech, but they're going to make the rest of the team excited. They're going to get everybody energized, everybody excited to learn, et cetera, et cetera. But you go through an interview process and somebody's eager and excited asking good questions, you know, wanting to see the business succeed. Yada, yada, yada. Oh, man, it just, it brings everybody up. What? And again, this is, this is the age old question chicken for the egg type situation. What would you rather have somebody? And I know the answer. So it's kind of stupid, but I'm just trying to phrase it like, I want to, I want to encourage people, like I want to use this moment for us to encourage people to be open and honest.

Why do you think people have such a hard time being open and honest in interviews? Um, you know, I touched on human psychology a minute ago. People want to be liked, right? People want to be accepted. They want to be invited in. And with that, you know, there is the desire to quote unquote fake it till you make it. And you know, people are going to try to do that. Yeah. I totally agree with that and I would say too I Think there's been a lot of times in other interviews as well is where they are themselves and they get shot down Right, you know I talk about this I interviewed Tejas he was dev dev rel director dev rel at zada or data I want to call it and And he was talking about how he got rejected from interview ones because he cursed and how that turned out to be the best that turned out to be the best for him.

And I'm, it's a catch 22, we're gonna get to junior devs in a second. But I feel like junior devs, it's like they're so worried about not making a mistake that they can like lock up in an interview, because I think that's what happens a ton. And then you get to the senior side of things where like, like they kind of let things loose and let shit fly per se. And so it's kind of, it's an interesting dynamic. And so I will tell you this, I think it's incredibly important to be yourself in an interview. I just think it is. And I think Junior Devs, like if you are trying to be this like rigid form of yourself, one, you're gonna come across inauthentic and two, you're not gonna get the job.

Absolutely. It's probably gonna be better if you're just yourself. And then if you don't get it because of that, at least you're not gonna be as tight going to the interview. I didn't know if you had any thoughts on that. I absolutely do. I have thoughts on a lot of things. But you know, when you bring up two key categories there, categories there. You're senior and you're junior. You're senior. I definitely like to see seniors open up a little bit more. I don't mind the cursing in an interview or anything like that. I don't want somebody to be a sailor quote unquote. But I definitely don't mind people being authentic.

Where I think it, so the psychology, I always come back to the psychology. I like to push people's buttons a little bit in your interview and see where they break, right? Intentionally cut them off a couple times. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, because then you're going to see what happens when they get upset. You're going to see what happens in a real world situation. Because if you never cut somebody off and then they're in a meeting three weeks later, say you've hired them, and they get really, really pissed off and leave a call, well, you don't want that guy. So look for small hot buttons in an interview.

That's something I do for sure. And so the other side of the coin here was juniors that authenticity, be yourself, be quirky, right? Quarky is okay. Quarky is really okay. I want to know when somebody's quirky. Right? I mean, listen, like we're all devs. I mean, I'm not, but like we're all in tech. We all got some weird shit. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We're in tech because the screws loose. All of us have a screw loose somewhere. Absolutely. It's okay. Well, and you know, it's funny too. You know, we're talking about segueing the junior engineers here in a little bit. You know, it comes to my mind.

I've got a junior engineer on my team who he has been absolutely stellar. He came out of a boot cap. He's probably, I think he's listening to, but he's probably 10 weeks in, 12 weeks in, something like that to his actual professional career. And he was so afraid to be quirky. He was so afraid of how to ask questions, et cetera, because he didn't want any of us to think ill about, right? Well, what I'll say is ask questions, be open, show yourself, because that's how we all grow together. So I'm going to challenge you a little bit here. How do you as a leader create that type of environment, though?

Because I think that's one of, we always talk about vulnerable honestly, but it really stems from the top. So I'm curious like what's your secret sauce on how to facilitate? That type of art? Sure. Well, you know, one of my hot buttons a minute ago was admitting when you're wrong or admitting when you don't know something. And that's something I've really adopted over the last probably two, three years. I like any engineer, you know, we all struggle with admitting when we don't know something. I've tried to do a lot more of that. We got an interesting comment in there. Yeah, James. My buddy James. Because I'm gonna say if you cut me off in one interview, not gonna be in my interested pile, companies will never treat you better than when they're trying to get you to join any bad behavior.

Yeah, I mean, listen, like I get it for sure. I think Chris, I know Chris, I think he'll read the room too. Absolutely. You know, I don't think Chris is going to stand here and just be an absolute dick during the entire interview. But I see both sides. I see Chris side and that, listen, if you hire an engineer who's got a hot button and you don't find that out and then you're in front of a client and the client does something and that person pops off like that's not good. But then also too, if you're absolutely just hounding something to interview, that's not good either.

So yes, again, I understand both sides for sure. And yes, James, I saw your DM, I am suspended on Twitter, I have no idea what I did. So if there's a way where I can get friends to help write a letter to Elon, that'll be great, because I have no idea what I did. No, no, I watch all of Taylor's falling gets suspended. If there's a way to like send us an email to you, we definitely need to do it. So so going back to create an environment real quick on you know obviously admitting that you're wrong I mean is that something that you really try to preach to your to your absolutely absolutely I don't think there's a day that goes by where I don't say oh yeah you know I could have done this better or I will admit oh this this design was poor or I just don't know the answer let's go research it right and that that works twofold right as as a leader it admits a vulnerability it admits a shortcoming and it makes it quote-unquote okay for everybody else to admit their shortcomings.

Sure. Yeah, I love that. So yeah, seriously, bail, bail Tae out of Twitter. Yeah, if we need to create like a GoFundMe, let me know. Listen, Elon's got to pay back a lot of like $12 billion in loans. So he'll, he'll, he'll, he'll take a few hundred bucks from a GoFundMe to get me back on Twitter. So junior devs, anything else you want to say junior devs, oh yeah, learning. So you want to kind of dive into learning with junior devs. How would you recommend devs come out of bootcamp college or just obviously on their own to learn in this fully remote environment right now?

Well, and I would say that it is the most difficult environment to grow as a junior that it ever has been. You know, when I joined the industry, it was 2012 or so. And you went and you applied for jobs and you sat down in front of a panel of interviewers and when you got a job you had whiteboard time and you could walk to a seniors cube and say hey do you have a minute for me etc. Well in today's industry you know you go through a boot camp you self teach etc. Well what do you do right how do you get the attention of people you know I I've had a number of folks write me on LinkedIn for mentoring love to mentor, please reach out.

I would tell you there's probably no senior in the world who doesn't like to be reached out to and say, hey, help me learn. Yeah. That's my shameless plug there. But now we're on Teams. I spend multiple hours on a Teams call or a Zoom call screen sharing and walking through with other devs, whether it's true pair programming or whether it's mentoring. It's a very different environment. Question driven environment and you have to be intentional. There's that word again, but you have to be intentional about growing Yeah, and that that yeah the intentional word is is a lot of my energies lately I've been and I haven't I haven't guided them that way.

It's just been How it's gone and and I just think with this where I think there's pros and cons for remote first virtual right? I think Work-life balance having your day back from traffic, you know yada yada every time I drive into town I'm like, holy cow, I could be doing work right now, right? But I do think, I think for the people who are inherently lazy, this is a tough time for you, especially if you're trying to, because here's the deal, here's, let's just face it, let's just call it this, junior devs, lazy devs, you could show up into an office and you could learn by just osmosis.

Like just being in the room in person, you can learn, and also if you're lazy, you can go through the motions. I will tell you this, it's so funny. I'm getting so many people text me right now about me being suspended on Twitter, by the way. I just had another developer text me. But like, you can't do that at home. No, no, well, you can, you can. So some of the same approaches apply, right? If you're in a bigger company, and I do see that question there, and I do wanna answer that from Stephen here in a moment, but if you're in a bigger company, you can copy and paste code and change little bits and submit pull requests.

And I've had multiple people who, in multiple companies during the pandemic, who would literally just write 10 lines of code a day, submit a pull request and, you know, not work. And that's just not okay. You know, when you're in the office setting, it's a little harder to do that. But I've certainly seen people sit on their phone all day in the office. Yeah. There you go. Jumping into Steven's question, it is hard to answer the size of the company. What I'll say is in a larger company, you're more likely to have senior devs who can take the time to mentor. When you're in a smaller company, things are always go, go, go.

And I was saying to the associate junior dev that I've got just the other day. I wish we were 20% bigger because I wish I had the time to really give you the learning environment. You know, because he's learning fire quick looking at my poll requests. We jump on, I explain something. But I would say a larger company is better for a junior to get their foot in the door, but you also run the risk of getting lost. in a true startup or a small to mid-size, you're not a number. And I think that's key as well. Yeah, I like that. Also, Dene comes in, I'm not lazy, but I do believe I would learn better if I went in so that I can see it done live.

And listen, yeah, I totally get this. And I think this is one of the only few, so funny, I'm still getting notifications about maybe being suspended. How does it look like on Twitter? Like do you see on my account? So no, you don't. You don't even see your name or your picture or anything. It's simply it's at T. Decin and its account is suspended for breaking the rules. That's crazy. Yeah, did not break rules. Did not break rules. That's crazy. So if anybody knows how to get back on Twitter, let me know. If anybody's got like a connection with Elon, let me know. So going back to Denise's question, I think this is the only downfall of remote work, is that I think most people like it, and I think but also too, Janine, I'll tell you this, I really hope you can land with a manager who can do this, because I still think, but it takes a special manager to think on how to train remotely.

Well, so I do want to avoid the remote versus in office. I think that that tends to be controversial. I do also want to avoid the word lazy, right? You know, everybody has their different styles. Some folks do well in office, some folks do well at home, some folks do well in both. But, you know, I would be really careful putting the tag of lazy on anybody. Okay, I like that, I like that. All right, so the last few minutes here, I wanna dive into networking referrals, the importance of that. And then James. But Elon doesn't need to worry about Taylor. His tabs are leaving on their own.

Seriously. So talk about, you know, again, people probably roll their eyes. After listening to my shit for two and a half years, like great. Another networking talk, but can you just talk briefly on. Oh man. Now, networking is so key. Let's see. Like I said, nine, 10 years of development. I, and anybody looking at my LinkedIn profile, I would be able to answer it quicker than I, but I think I've had seven jobs, and I've been a little bit of everywhere, but only two of those I was placed by a recruiter. And the reality is the connections you make with your peers, and this flirts with that hybrid remote in office conversation as well, but the connections you make with your peers are truly the ones that will take you forward.

I have taken so many more roles with people that I knew who had taken jobs with people they knew. And you make a difference by sure, you need to be a strong technologist. But be friendly, make those connections. Gosh, I think about this one. I'm on this call with Taylor. Taylor and I met eight years ago, because he was recruiting me. And, you know, we're now here on this amazing show, getting to talk to you folks, but those connections are so key. Mm-hmm. Yeah, 100% agree. 100% agree. All right, so last three questions. Oh, well, first off, I always give last little bit. Do you have anything else you wanna rant on for a quick minute?

Anything we didn't cover at all? I think I'm good. Just, you know, I would encourage anybody listening, anybody who's eager to learn and grow, Reach out to people, ask for mentorship. I'm more than glad to mentor folks. I love helping people grow. And I would encourage everybody to go pick something new to learn, ask somebody who's an expert, try to grow. I love that. All right, so first, last three questions. So I've started to ask this question with tech folks. Any new tech you're experimenting with right now, any new trends you're seeing that people need to be aware of or just anything you're doing on either in prod or just on your own spare time that you find fun right now.

Just making it like that. You know, what I would say is I'm doing a lot of functional development in the Lambda space right now, trying to lean things out, trying to make sure code is, is, you know, I hate to overuse the word lean, but very efficient, very small, very supportable, et cetera, et cetera. And I know that's almost a dodge, right? But in today's technological age, I keep seeing folks go to frameworks like Gatsby and Next and there's several others. But I find myself saying, why do I want this level of scaffolding? For some things, it's perfect. But there's something to be said for old school simple development.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. All right, so the second question I ask is what's your favorite holiday movie? So obviously gotta go holiday movie. Oh, die hard, die hard. That's the most constant person. I have more and more people. You know I've never watched die hard. I need to watch die hard. What are you doing? I've never watched it. I'm gonna watch it. I'm gonna watch it. You should, you should. And then the last question that I end with every guest, you know, the show is called Guidance Council 2.0 because we had guidance counselors in middle school, high school, sometimes college, but now as adults, we really don't have guidance counselors.

We have therapists, I'm a big fan of, but not quite guidance counselors. What would be your biggest advice to your younger self regarding your career? Like biggest- Oh gosh. Patient career advice. Patients, you know, when I was getting started, I had a really hard time being patient with folks. Interesting. And it, in my opinion, cost me more opportunities than anything else. where I would want people to be working more because we wanted to get a product out. And I was so narrow focused on work. There is more to life than work. I would encourage everybody to not become a workaholic, right? Yeah, I love that.

I love that. Well, that is it for today. Time flies when you're having fun with friends. So I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving. Hopefully this episode was a little bit Thanksgiving with all the plethora of different topics. And oh, final question, Chris, what's your favorite that I should have been asking this? What's your favorite Thanksgiving side? Oh, oh. Does pumpkin pie count as a side? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that pumpkin pie. I dig it, I dig it. But no, for real. Which is your favorite die-hard part? Yippee-ki-yay. I love that, I love that. Cool, y'all. go connect with Chris. He's fantastic on LinkedIn.

He did give an open invitation to connect with him. I'd also recommend again to connect with everybody who commented on the chat. It's incredibly important to network. I want this show to be a networking platform for you also go connect. Also again, if you have any way to get me out of Twitter jail, please let me know. I'd love that. You should find find Elon on Facebook. He can't ban you there. Yeah, seriously, seriously. But y'all have a great rest of the week. We're off for the rest of the week. We'll be back next week with a bunch of guests. Y'all have a great one.

Chris, stay on. Appreciate y'all time. Bye. Thanks everyone. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode. And I am very grateful. Because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes. And I myself rarely finished an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the App Store. I want this to be discoverable to others. And the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it, please, like right now, unless you're driving, then don't do it. So thank you again.

If you need to reach out to me, Taylor at Vaco.com or at T. Destin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.