Ask HN: What matters for getting back-end positions?

Most companies aren't looking for personalized interview processes in order to assess a candidate's fit. They're looking for standard, comparable interview processes where they can justify their decision and hold interviewers accountable. It's easy to compare two Hackerrank scores, harder to (objectively) compare personal projects.

Hackerrank-style interviews suck and they aren't representative (not even remotely) of real working conditions. But they are good at something: evaluating the tenacity and the drive of a candidate. You need to work hard to ace these interviews, and companies are looking for candidates who are persistent and able to work hard—even on things they don't choose to work on.

Once you get invited, you need to perform vis a vis; if you don't get invited, you didn't meet the criteria.

The criteria vary by employer and position, but are mostly:

* is your code good enough?

* are you someone the team can work with?

When you get declined, ask for specific feedback. What went wrong? What can you improve on? Etc.

Tech skills are obviously important, but whenever I've interviewed people the "candidate is not a psycho" checks are equally, if not more, important. You can be the most technically skilled person in the world but you're probably in a list of candidates who can all do the job, so that's rarely a major differentiator once you're actually at the interview stage. Conversely, if you don't seem to be a nice person who I'd be happy to have in my team you're not getting hired.

Consequently a personal website or a portfolio that shows off the fact you're actually a decent person is really useful. Mentioning things like hobbies or volunteering gives the interviewer a great starting point to find out more about your personality - that's what makes a lot of people shine in my opinion.