Switching it up back into the career advice category, we went through networking in esports, writing a resume for your esports job and negotiating a salary in esports. What’s left is the what I completely forgot about. The job interview. The interview is one of the most important aspects of the job interview. Generally, there’s a few steps depending on your career level but i’ll try to speak about it as much as I can and generally.
Here’s 7 tips on your acing your esports interview.
Do some research on the company
- Do a bit of research on the company you’re interviewing with. You spammed resumes and got a call back. The worst think you can do is act surprised and know nothing about the company. You spent 20 minutes making a resume, why not spend 30 minutes researching the company a bit more.
Practice makes perfect. Be yourself
- I was not a good interviewer. Even after not interviewing a long time you’ll be rusty. I bombed a ton of interviews but the most important thing that I learned from each is to be yourself and continue practicing. Each rejection is a lesson learned (hopefully). Sometimes, the interviewer just isn’t going to like you and that’s OK. Other times, you just didn’t do well. Continue being yourself and continue practicing. You’ll get it eventually.
You can’t prep for everything
- Some interviews are just hard. They want to see what your abilities are in esports and may challenge you. For example, if I was interviewing for an esports project manager role, I’d ask the prospective PM some tough questions around adversity, concrete examples of events they’ve done and how they handle pressure. My style during the interview is to ask scenario based questions so it’s a bit harder to prep for. That’s OK. Answer honestly and try to give the best answer you can give.
Sometimes, interview just go sideways
- Sometimes, no matter how much you practice. It’s just a bad interview for both sides. Don’t beat yourself up. Just move on and keep going. It’ll get better.
Don’t give 10 second responses
- Try to be conversational and give good responses. The worst thing you can do is possibly be too brief and end a 1 hour interview in 15 minutes.
- Example, give me a scenario where you achieved something great in esports and what was the result?
- Held an event, was cool.
- Example 2, if you’re planning an event, what are some things you do to ensure you have proper communication across multiple channels?
- Send an email, slack
- Example, give me a scenario where you achieved something great in esports and what was the result?
- The examples above are some questions I may ask during an interview and the answers are too brief. What I’d be looking for would be something like this:
- Example 2, if you’re planning an event, what are some things you do to ensure you have proper communication across multiple channels?
- To ensure proper communication across multiple channels I’d over communicate. I would do this by multiple forms of communication as I know not all people communicate the same. For example, I’d formally send out an email, a slack message and discuss casually with my peers to ensure a common understanding
- Example 2, if you’re planning an event, what are some things you do to ensure you have proper communication across multiple channels?
Be positive, read the room / body language
- This one is pretty hard now with covid and zoom but you can get a gist by having facial expressions if the call is on zoom.
- Sometimes you can get positive re-enforcement of your answer by checking the person’s body language and if they’re nodding. Don’t worry if they’re stone, that’s just how some people are during interviews. I once did an interview that I thought I bombed because the interviewer had one of the best poker faces ever.
Practice with a friend if you’re nervous
- Practice makes perfect, if you’re worried about limited opportunities interviewing for real, make sure you practice with a friend or colleague.
- Do some mock interviews and even answer questions out loud (not only in your head) when doing so. It helps hearing yourself.
- If you want to take it to the next level record yourself (I know my voice is awful too), and listen to what you have to say.
Ask questions about the interviewers
- So you’re near the end of the end of the interview and you’re wrapping up. They may or may not ask if you have any questions. Always ask questions though!
- It shows your interest in the role and more importantly a chance to learn about them.
- Some questions to ask could be the following:
- What do you like about the role you’re currently in?
- What are your expectations for the first month? 3 months? 6 months?
- What do you do for fun?
- Where do you see the company headed in the next year? (If it’s a small company)
- Is the role net new? Or is it a backfill?
- Who will I be working with consistently? (sometimes it’s not clear, you’ll need to make a judgement call on this)
- Some questions to ask could be the following:
So there it is. 7 tips for your interview in esports. This isn’t exhaustive but a way to get ahead potentially of your next job interview. What do you think? Am I way off or do you want some more tips and tricks? If so, leave a comment below or feel free to contact me.