In this post, I’ll show you the exact interview tips and tricks that increased my total compensation by 40%.

In another post of mine, I talked about how the best way to get a raise is to get an offer from another job. In order to get an offer, you’ll actually need to pass some interviews.

Below, I’ll show a few interview tips and tricks that I used to win the interview game. Keep in mind that I’m in the technical field so a lot of questions have concrete right or wrong answers.

These tricks you’ll learn below will work for “normal” industries where you can BS your way through an interview, and it’ll also work for technical interviews where you have to actually solve problems on the spot and get it right.

The reason why these tricks will work even though there’s a “right” and “wrong” answer in tech interviews – the person interviewing you isn’t a machine. Your interview is a human being with feelings and thus are irrational. We’ll seek to exploit human irrationalism to maximize your chances of getting more money.

All the tricks below won’t work if you’re incompetent. It’s assumed that if you have a tech interview coming up, you’ll be able to get the questions mostly correct. If you fail the technical portion completely, no amount of hacks will help you. It’s a lot easier to study technical questions than working your next 40 years at a job where your annual raise is at-par or below inflation.

Dress Up Professionally

Look professional. I think as far as interview tips and tricks goes, this goes without saying for most industries.

But for the engineering field, this can’t be emphasized enough. In the Bay Area, where I’m from, it’s customary to interview and work without being professionally dressed. The culture is “dress casual” – which makes sense because you’re not seeing any clients. You’re in front of a computer all day, coding, so why do you need to look good?

The interview game is different though. You’re not required to dress nice for an interview, but you should. This is so you can differentiate yourself from all the other technical candidates that didn’t dress nicely or put a suit on. Conversely, you don’t wanna “differentiate yourself” by looking egregious compared to other interviewees—you won’t look edgy, you’ll just not get an offer.

Dressing up nicely also subconsciously communicates to your interview that you’re taking this interview seriously, even if the culture in the tech industry is more casual.

Don’t get me wrong, I hate dressing up and/or wearing a suit. And in a perfect world, the only thing you should need to do to pass a tech interview is to answer the tech questions accurately. But then again, humans are irrational so you need to exploit it in any way possible so you can get an edge on your competitors (other interviewees).

Note that this is relevant for both in-person and virtual (on-camera) interviews.

It only takes a few minutes to dress up and it can be the difference between your getting a 40% raise, or not.

Know Your Resume Front And Back

The bullet items you put on your resume is the only information that your interview has before they meet you.

As such, those are their only talking points when asking you questions.

By that reason, you should know your resume front and back and you should be able to attach stories and anecdotes to each bullet point of your resume. If you can’t tell a very clear story of what you did, then just remove the bullet point. Omitting stuff from your resume might do you more good than harm if you’re omitting redundant or uninteresting information.

The whole point of an interview isn’t only telling them about everything you did. This isn’t a book report.

All of the interview tips and tricks here is based around the idea that an interview is a marketing presentation, and the product you’re marketing is yourself.

So, for every single bullet point in your resume, you should:

• Say exactly what you did, and why it was so significant.
• What results you got and delivered for the company. Attach a specific number for these results-oriented bullet points if you can. If you can’t attach a number, make one up that’s within reason. If you have no idea how to attach a number to your results, then just omit the number.
• Know the story behind this bullet point so you can concisely and clearly explain why it’s beneficial to the company you’re interviewing for.
• Rehearse a brief anecdote/story behind this bullet point. You’ll want the stories to display a different strength of yours so you can cherry-pick which bullet point you want to talk about. Example: a resume bullet point might demonstrate your hard work. Another one might demonstrate creativity. Etc. Bring up the bullet point(s) most relevant to the interview question / discussion. Don’t be a one-trick pony and have all your stories showcase only one of your attributes!

You should bring up your resume points and anecdotes to showcase your strengths as much as you can. This maximizes the amount of time you’re marketing and building a strong bull case for yourself. As a result, this minimizes the amount of time they can actually ask you hard / technical questions, which you’ll have less control over – you can be well-prepared but you never know what they’ll ask. The more captivating stories you tell means the more control you’ll have over the interview, which is a good thing.

Pro interview tip: If you’re interviewing in person and not on Zoom, make sure you have copies of your resume printed out to hand to the interviewer. They generally will have a resume already, but the gesture shows you’re very prepared.

Most Crazy Of All Interview Tips And Tricks: Know Their Resume

In Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends And Influence People, being genuinely interested in other people is one of the most effective ways to influence them.

Since I can only speak for the tech industry: for tech interviews that are on-site, they’ll generally tell you who is interviewing you exactly.

As such, study their resume on LinkedIn if you can find it. However, please note that when you do stalk them, please make sure to turn LinkedIn Private Mode on. In the Q&A session at the tail-end of the interview, instead of only asking about the company, also ask about their work history. Something like:

“I did some research on your resume, and I was wondering about what your experience was like in Amazon and what their culture was like?”

It won’t seem like that much from your point of view ask the person asking, but for the interviewer it feels very personalized and flattering that you’re looking into their work history. It also shows that you have an intense interest that most interview candidates will not express. This helps you further differentiate yourself from the competition.

Be genuinely interested in the interviewer and they’ll be putty on your hands. Exploit the irrational human need to feel important and they’ll irrationally skew towards “strong hire” when deciding whether to recommend you for the position.

To really understand why this is the most nefarious of all interview tips and tricks, consider the following passage from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s autobiography, Total Recall:

“Robert F. Kennedy’s firstborn son…wanted to know what I was doing, what my training was about, and the world I came from, Austria. It helped that he was closest to me in age—five years younger—he related to me more than some of the others did. When a person shows me that kind of consideration, I will do anything for him for the rest of my life.”

Pro Interview Hack: To sweeten the deal for this trick even further, bring a notebook to ask these questions if it’s an onsite interview. It makes you look very well-prepared. If it’s a virtual interview, you can screenshare and have an “interview notes” document open so you can show off how well-prepared you were when researching your interviewer’s backgrounds.

This subconsciously communicates your due diligence and how seriously you’ll take the job when they hire you.

At the end of the day, saying how “good” or “hardworking” you are one thing. Demonstrating it during an interview is another. And it only takes a few minutes to look at their LinkedIn profile.

Which Candidate Would You Hire?

Say you had 2 candidates that were equally competent in the hard-hitting, technical / barebones qualification questions.

Candiate 1	Candiate 2
Wears a suit and looks professional.	Casually-dressed.
Communicates very well about everything in their work history and is clear about how they’ll deliver value to you and your company.	They talk about what they “did” at the company, but seem to drone on and you’re not 100% sure how it translates to your benefit if they worked at your company.
Brought a notebook to the interview so they don’t forget what questions they’d like to ask.	Average candidate that doesn’t bring a notebook to the interview.
Demonstrates they’ve done their research on your background and asks you for career advice based on your professional history.	Asks you: “what’s the day-to-day like here?”

In the perfect world, you’d hire both competent candidates to maximize the company’s ROI. But this is a no brainer – I’d hire candidate 1.

And I’d go so far to say I’d hire candidate 1 even if their technical portion of the interview was not as smooth as candidate 2’s (though it still needs to meet a threshold of competence).

So while nothing can substitute being technically competent, you can use the interview tips and tricks in this post to swing the odds in your favor and buy yourself a tiny bit of room to mess upon the harder questions.