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Prepare for the interviews

Getting to the interview stage means your application worked. Congrats, great prep work. Now the real work begins. :)

A different kind of challenge. Most hiring processes have multiple rounds, and each one is designed to evaluate something specific. Some are incredibly elaborate and long and will test not only your patience, but your memory of having applied in the first place.

Preparing for interviews in a general sense is not enough—you should prepare for each round.

Culture fit​

This is usually the first conversation, often 30 minutes with a recruiter or HR generalist. It is not a technical evaluation. It is a filter to check whether you are who your resume says you are and whether you would function in their environment. And vibing. Vibing is important. ;)

What they are assessing​

  • Communication skills and general professionalism
  • Whether your career story makes sense and hangs together
  • Your reasons for leaving your current or previous role
  • What you are looking for and whether this role fits that

How to prepare​

  • Know your own story cold. Be able to walk through your career history clearly and confidently, connecting the dots between roles.
  • Have a clear, honest answer for why you are looking and why this company specifically.
  • Research the company's values, culture, and how they describe themselves. Know enough to have a real conversation.
  • Avoid being negative about previous employers.

Red flags​

  • The recruiter cannot explain what the team does, your future responsabilities, or what success measures in the first few months.
  • Questions about why the role is available or how long it has been open are deflected or answered vaguely.
  • The compensation range from the ad is significantly lower, the questions deflected, or they are making you agree to a number before proceeding with the process.
  • The conversation feels entirely scripted and one-directional—they are reading from a checklist and there is no room for real dialogue.

Team fit​

This is usually an interview with future colleagues and can be one or more rounds. Sometimes the technical assessment will preceed it. It gives the team you would join the chance to assess whether working with you day to day would be productive and comfortable. It is often more conversational than formal.

What they are assessing​

  • How you think and collaborate
  • Whether your working style is compatible with theirs
  • How you handle disagreement, ambiguity, and feedback
  • Whether they would actually want to sit next to you

How to prepare​

  • Research who you are speaking with. Look at their LinkedIn. Understand what they work on.
  • Prepare examples of how you have worked with different types of colleagues—engineers, product managers, designers, leadership.
  • Think about times you disagreed with someone and how you handled it. This question comes up often.
  • Have genuine questions ready about how the team operates, how decisions get made, and what the onboarding experience looks like.

Red flags​

  • Team members give vague or contradictory answers about decision-making or get into a discussion during the interview.
  • Everybody's new and full of praise—make sure you ask about this high turnover the future plans.
  • The team cannot describe a good day at work or what they are most proud of building together.
  • No time for your questions. It seems that they just follewed the interview script and are not invested at all in hiring you.

Technical assessment​

This round tests whether you can actually do the work. The format varies. Some companies send a written task to complete at home, followed by a review discussion. Others run a live session where you work through something together.

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Here are general tips about this stage. However, I will soon create a series on what these assessments test for, how to approach them, and what to look out for.

What they are assessing​

  • The quality and clarity of your output
  • Your process—how you think through a problem
  • Your readiness to challenge and bring in a fresh perspective
  • Your ability to receive and respond to feedback

How to prepare​

Many assessments, especially live ones, are deliberately confusing, contradictory, or seemingly impossible. This is intentional. Companies are testing how you think when the situation is unclear.

This approch is not new. Early into my career, these two lovely books gave my interviewing assumptions a much needed reality check:

Both are worth reading before any live technical round. But to prepare:

For a written task:

  • Read the task carefully and write down anything suspicious. Decide whether to ask upfront or call out the inconsistencies and logical flaws in the task.
  • Document your decisions. If you spotted a logical gap, write it down for a later discussion with the team. That transparency is part of the evaluation.
  • Be ready to defend every choice in the follow-up conversation.
  • Treat the task as real work. Submit on time and apply the same standards you would on the job.

For a live session:

  • Think out loud. Interviewers want to see your process, not just your output.
  • Ask clarifying questions before diving in—these signal critical thinking more than a quick answer does.
  • If something does not add up, say so directly: "This constraint seems to contradict the earlier requirement—can you help me understand the intent?"
  • It is fine to get stuck. What matters is that you demonstrate how you would unblock yourself: research, consulting SMEs, flagging a dependency, proposing a workaround.

Red flags​

  • Unreasonably large take-home tasks—An assessment that resembles an actual work task might be just that—unpaid work. Unfortunally, as a translator I have experienced this many times. 5-10 pages, then the job ad disappears.
  • A completely silent evaluator in a live session—An interviewer who gives zero reactions, asks no follow-up questions, and offers no engagement may not be evaluating you at all—or does not know the domain well enough to respond to what you are doing.
  • The "sample" is clearly a real internal document—If the content you are asked to improve reads like it was pulled from an actual product in progress, it probably was. That is not a test. That is, again, unpaid work.
  • Testing tool knowledge instead of thinking—Assessments that focus on whether you have used a specific framework, CMS, or toolchain—rather than on your reasoning, communication, or design decisions—often signal that the team does not have a clear picture of what the role actually requires.

Leadership approval​

Late in the process, you will often meet someone in a leadership position who was not involved in the earlier rounds. Their job is to make the final call or to validate the team's recommendation. In my experience, if you get to this point there is a very low chance that you don't get approved. But I have seen it happen.

What they are assessing​

  • Strategic or cultural fit—whether your ambitions align with where they are leading the company
  • Maturity and judgment under pressure
  • Whether you can engage at their level of abstraction
  • Leadership potential

How to prepare​

  • Think bigger that your day-to-day tasks. Focus on impact, direction, and growth.
  • Be ready to talk about your ambitions and how this role fits that trajectory.
  • Feel free to present how you see the company's challenges and direction. You have done the research—use it.
  • Prepare questions about how they see the company's market fit, future initiatives, and how you might fit into it.

Red flags​

  • The leader is unfamiliar with the role, your candidacy, or what the team has been working on—suggesting that hiring decisions happen in isolation from leadership.
  • They do not really answer questions about the company's direction, priorities, headcount, budget, or team growth.
  • The conversation feels like a formality rather than a genuine evaluation—the decision has already been made.

Negotiating the offer​

An offer is not the end of the process. It is the start of a negotiation. To give yourself the best possible chance make sure to do your reseach as thoroughly as possible.

Research first​

Before any salary conversation, know what the market looks like for your profession, your region, and your specific industry. Rates vary considerably between a startup and an enterprise, between Amsterdam and Bucharest, between fintech and public sector. Gather the data.

Good places to research:

  • TechPays—crowdsourced tech compensation data by role, company, and country
  • Glassdoor—salary ranges and employee reviews
  • Blind—candid salary discussions from verified employees
  • PayScale—role and location-based salary data
  • Salary Expert—regional and global compensation benchmarks
  • Salary.com—US-focused with detailed breakdowns
  • Indeed—job posting salary data aggregated by role
  • Professional forums and communities in your field
  • LLMs—useful for getting a quick ballpark, especially when you phrase the question with specific context (role, seniority, city, company size)

Know your number before the call.

What they are assessing​

  • Whether you know your market value and can articulate it without hesitation
  • Eligibility factors, including visa sponsorship or relocation requirements, which employers sometimes use to justify a lower offer
  • Whether your expectations are realistic relative to the role, the market, and potentially other candidates in the process

How to approach it​

Avoid giving a number first. Once you anchor, the negotiation moves around your number, usually downward. You can say:

"I need a bit more detail about the full scope of responsibilities before I can give you a number. Could you share the range you have budgeted for this role?"

"I am open. I am really looking for the best mutual fit, and that includes the overall package, the projects, the team, the growth opportunities. What range are you targeting so I can tell you whether we are aligned?"

If pressed and you have to say something:

"I do not have a specific number in mind. I'm more interested in whether this is a good mutual fit. If it is, I'm open to any offer that is competitive for this role in this market."

"I completely hear you—it is important we are on the same page. It really depends on the full composition of the offer. Once we decide we want to work together, I think that is the best time to figure out a package that makes sense for both sides."

If you have done the research and are pressed to give a number:

"Based on what I know about the market for this role in Amsterdam, the range tends to be somewhere in the 60 to 80K range. That feels like a reasonable starting point for this conversation."

Beyond base salary, negotiate the total package. Consider equity, bonus structure, pension contributions, remote flexibility, professional development budget, and start date. Know your walk-away number before you get on the call, and be prepared to use it.

How to ask for more​

When the offer is below your expectations or you are weighing a competing option, be direct without being aggressive. Lead with genuine interest, then explain the gap. Here is an example:

"I am really excited about what you are working on. The offer is strong, and right now my decision is essentially between joining your team or staying where I am for another year to finish something I started. It is a genuinely difficult choice. There are a couple of dimensions where if the offer improved, it would be much easier to say yes. I would feel more comfortable if we could revisit the base, because the move comes with a real change in cost of living and a significant adjustment for my family, and I feel obligated to factor that in."

The structure: express genuine enthusiasm, acknowledge the offer, explain your situation honestly, ask for what you need without an ultimatum.

Counter in writing when you can. It creates a record and gives both sides time to think without the pressure of a live conversation.

Red flags​

  • The offer comes in significantly below the range discussed in the HR screen, with no explanation for the discrepancy.
  • Equity, bonus, or variable compensation terms are presented vaguely, described as discretionary, or cannot be backed up with documentation.
  • Any attempt to negotiate is met with immediate resistance or framed as ingratitude—companies that treat negotiation as a problem are telling you something about how they operate.
  • There is artificial pressure to sign within 24 to 48 hours with no flexibility, particularly when the process itself took weeks or months.