Preparing for interviews when you don’t have too much experience with them can be difficult, especially when it’s your first foray into a new career in an industry you’ve starting off in. That’s why we’ve prepared five useful tips and tricks that will make you seem like a total natural.
In the modern era of Zoom calls and fewer face-to-face interviews, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t dress a bit more relaxed for your interview. We’re not saying ditch the lounging trousers (after all, unless you have to stand up, who’s gonna see them anyway) or that you need to dress in a dinner suit but dressing too casually (or even dressing too formally) might not give off the best impression.
In our industry, we’re a bit more relaxed, so rocking up to your interview in a full suit and waistcoat isn’t necessary if you’re looking to join the development team as a Junior Level Designer. However, certain jobs in the industry do require a certain level of looking smart: those in our legal team, for example.
Tip #2: Be better than on time. Be early!
Tech issues: The modern version of hitting every traffic jam in the city when you’re worried that you’re going to be late for your interview. You’re prepared, you feel confident, then you test your microphone and it’s not working. That unrelenting second-hand clock keeps ticking. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. And you think: “Why is this happening to me of all days. It was working perfectly yesterday?!” Then maybe some words come out which aren’t suitable for broadcast.
If you’re able to give yourself a bit of a buffer between sitting down for the interview and actually having it, you won’t hopefully be in as much of a panic if something does go wrong. Additionally, if something isn’t working, giving a heads-up about it a few minutes before is always better than a few minutes late. And if you’re there 5 minutes early, you can take that time to just calm yourself down and go into the interview with a clear head.
Tip #3: Do your research
No one expects you to know the exact inner workings of the company you’re going to be interviewing for, but you can always leave a great first impression by reading up about the company and its products or services. For us, having a surface-level knowledge of World of Tanks or World of Warships (pun intended here) or better will wow your interviewers.
As we said before, you don’t need to tell us the top speed of the Maus when going down a slight incline with X, Y and Z equipment installed, but having a knowledge of game mechanics, big updates, gameplay loops, etc. will allow you to show off a bit in your interview. Just don’t overdo it: you don’t want your interviewer to think you swallowed the gameplay guide, lore books and anything else related to the game(s) and didn’t allow them to get to the key questions they had.
Tip #4: Anticipate curveball questions
If you were a video game character, which one would you be? If you were an animal, what would you be? How many brownies could you eat in 10 minutes?
These questions may sound strange, but they could (and have been) asked in interviews. Of course, you can’t prepare an answer, and that’s the point: to put you on the spot and then ask you to explain why you chose them. To take the second question as an example, you could say an animal that’s known to work well with others or one that makes sure as the leader it takes care of its underlings. However, choosing something like the red panda, which is a solitary creature and doesn’t play well with others, might not be a good choice.
Remember: When someone says there’s no right or wrong answer, that’s generally true. But that doesn’t mean there’s no bad answers. 🙂
Tip #5: Ask questions, too
The interview is as useful for you as it is for your prospective employer. It’s your chance to get a feeling for the place you may end up working for and the team you might be a part of. You can ask what the company expects from you, what opportunities there are to progress in the future beyond your interviewing position or whether there’s outside-of-work activities, such as a company football team or game jam events. Just don’t ask what the salary is as an opening gambit.
We hope you find these tips and tricks helpful. We’ll be posting more guides like this one over the year like our choosing the right course for you article, so keep an eye out!
And don’t forget, you can follow us on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn or you can chat with us on Discord. Additionally, you can find a list of available courses at wgforge.wargaming.com.
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