Initial Call Overview

[00:00:00]
>> So you put in your application, you got a call back, or maybe a recruiter reached out to you via LinkedIn or email or something, or you met someone at a meetup, it doesn't matter. The application is done. It's good. You have the initial phone call with the hiring manager or the recruiter.

[00:00:18]
So what do you do now? Again, something you will do, but we never think about and this part is actually kind of important. Questions that you should be prepared to answer right off the bat. I guarantee it doesn't matter who the company is, they're gonna ask these things, if it's a hiring manager or recruiter.

[00:00:36]
What do you do currently? You should know that like, top your head you should have a one or two sentence answer. Me, I'm Jem. I'm senior engineer at Netflix. I work on one of the UI core teams and I build stuff. That's fine, they'll say what sort of stuff?

[00:00:54]
I'll be like, I do a lot of Node these days, but in previous roles in Netflix, I built a lot of AB tests using React with the Node back end. That's they I wanna know. They talk to a lot of people and have it down, have you spiel down.

[00:01:07]
If you've ever done a recruiting circuit where you've talked to seven or eight companies at once, when you look for a new job, you know this will come up over and over and over again, so just hone it now. Another question you are gonna get asked is what are some of the projects you've worked on?

[00:01:21]
So what they're looking for here is are you kind of leaning more towards the backend or frontend? So Node, that sort of thing. Are you more full stack-y? Are you heavy on accessibility? Are you heavy on performance? You should have the project you worked on, what the challenges were, and how you overcame them.

[00:01:40]
These questions will come up, I promise you. Another one is, what are you looking for in your next role? I want more money. That's probably true, you wanna get paid a little bit more, but everybody wants to get paid a little bit more. What are you looking for in your next role?

[00:01:59]
So say something about, I don't know, maybe you want to learn something. You want to work with people that are smarter than you, which we should all aspire to. You wanna work with people who are smarter than you, so I can learn from them. Or I wanna solve challenging projects.

[00:02:12]
Or I wanna have a big impact in my company. I don't wanna be another cog in the wheel, things like that. But have an idea of what you're looking for in your next role, cuz they're gonna wanna know. And you'd be surprised the number people that get vetted out from the first call.

[00:02:25]
I say, how did so and so do I mean we don't actually do this, but hypothetically, I'd be like how did my friend do? They kind of mumbled a lot didn't really seem like they had a direction. They didn't really know what they want to do and it's really hard to hire someone who doesn't know if they even want to work for you.

[00:02:39]
Give them a reason to want to hire you. So I'm really passionate, really enthusiastic, but I don't think I can learn anymore in my current role, and so I wanna move onto a different project. Or I'm tired of, I don't know, the finance space, and I wanna move into healthcare, something like that.

[00:02:57]
The question really is, why do you wanna work for x? Why do you wanna work for Frontend Masters? Have a reason, do some research. Take two minutes, go to their website, look at what they do and understand the kind of projects they have, understand the challenges they're working on.

[00:03:13]
And the last one is, what is your availability for next steps? Because that means they liked you. That means that they wanna move you on to the next round in the interview. So what's your availability? You should have your calendar open. You say like, hey, every Friday at four o'clock I'm free.

[00:03:26]
So we can do a phone screening, code test, or whatever. But be prepared. I've never not had a phone call with a recruiter or hiring manager that didn't have these questions on them. I just wanna get you ready. It's not the end of the world if you're asked to think a little bit but it's a lot easier if you're just smooth, got it down like a science.