I interview regularly. If I wanted to give some tips to candidates:
1. Audio, audio, audio... It doesn't matter how good or good looking you are if I can't understand any of your eloquence. Using microphone on your phone or webcam may or may not be adequate, you should test this. There is test call functionality in almost every web conferencing software.
In general having microphone close to your mouth and distant from any noises is safest choice. Headsets are cheap and effective.
Also turn off any feature that changes volume dynamically, this can cause volume to change suddenly to painful levels. For example zoom can pick up distant voice and increase volume suddenly. As an interviewer I am already setting the volume as high as I can before it becomes uncomfortable because I don't want to miss anything you say, having the volume change suddenly makes my life this much more difficult.
2. Just because it is remote interview doesn't mean savoir vivre is out the window. Be on time. Don't interrupt. Don't insult the interviewer (yes, I had this happen to me recently).
3. Don't be obvious looking up answers to my technical questions on the internet. And if you need to google something, try to put it in your words rather than read word by word, because maybe I can do the search myself, too. Yes, this also happened to me recently.
4. Make sure you have peace and quiet for the duration of the interview, before the interview and also some margin after. Set the time aside and remove any distractions. Try not to create perception you have something more important to do. It doesn't look good if are jumping from one meeting to the interview to another meeting.
If you are the type of person who insults others at work, please...please insult me in the interview. It's so much better to find out this type of thing earlier rather than later.
I give this as advice because I don't really care if the candidate likes me or not. What I care about if he can control himself and behave befitting the occasion.
If you can't do that on an interview there is no way you can do that later during normal work.
And I have clear, strict no asshole policy. We come to work to solve problems which does not require insulting each other. There is going to be problems and there is not going to be any insults because we understand we all want the same thing even if we have different capabilities, approaches and value systems.
I understand this doesn't mean people don't want to insult each other. There are always going to be tensions and what not. But I want workplace to be safe space for everybody. There is already enough stress, no need for people to be additionally miserable by asshole coworkers who can't control themselves.
I would guess naive, because I have had the same issue in the past. Employees do not all feel the need to be our friends, and it is not realistic to believe they will become such. While it’s important to get along with your coworkers, it should never be necessary that they “like” you. Personally, I like everyone at work that is a competent and dedicated worker; a rising tide floats all boats. Want to make friends with me at work? Be part of a team that consistently exceeds my expectations.
Trying to get everybody to like you can override your ability to say what needs to be said and act when you need to act. Also, it is usually impossible to please everybody and by trying to do that you can easily turn everybody against you. Trying to get people to like you can easily impair your objectivity (as if there wasn't enough occasions for that), play favor game and get people to dislike you for playing the game.
Now, just because I don't like somebody or somebody doesn't like me does not we can't behave civil and discuss and try to resolve our differences. Or even agree to disagree but still keep cooperating on this and other matters.
It also doesn't mean I have to go out of my way to get people to dislike me. I am trying to be reasonable, fun, I smile and compliment and I try to find and expect good in everybody until I am proven wrong. It is just I try keep this separate from ability to think straight and cooperate with people.
I'd generally say this is good. Companies with a lot of experience with their process don't seem to realize that the process doesn't stop when they have alienated the candidate, they just start to get bad market information in exchange for good market information.
Interviews should consist almost entirely of this dynamic: a conversation, a dialogue, an exploration, of a number of topics, processes and attitudes. Oh, and both ways of course! If you're interviewing for senior position and you don't have anything to ask the interviewer, you're putting a huge red flag on your head (if you've already asked everything in previous interviews, just bring up something in the answers that you found interesting.
Well... I don't think it is on the interviewee to do this (ie start a discussion).
A lot of interviewing advice tells candidates to only speak when they are spoken to and to only answer the questions they are given. It is also a cultural thing, in some cultures candidates will absolutely not volunteer any information on the interview. I can't really fault a candidate for doing that.
On the other hand I can create opportunities for discussion, especially when my interests or expertise and the interests or expertise of the candidate intersect.
> I don't think it is on the interviewee to do this (ie start a discussion)
Sorry I probably didn't explain myself - I mentioned it goes both ways: the discussion should be encouraged by the interviewer (vs "here's a problem I'll check my phone while you whiteboard it"), but the candidate should also seek to do the same - especially if they are senior and good, I expect them to interview me/us. However it's true that it's on the interview to establish an atmosphere where the candidate can be comfortable doing that. I start all my interviews emphasizing this as well as I can, and lead the candidate into questions with stuff like "is there something you would like to know about how we do X here?"
Also, I never said this is my advice. In general I like to volunteer information during interview when I am the candidate. I think it lets me control the situation a little bit better and move to ground that I have much more expertise in.
I am just saying that I can't fault candidate for not doing this.
I mentioned it. If you red the post carefully enough you would notice I meant this as advice you can read on the Internet. Not something you would ever hear from me and especially on the interview.
I've seen this mentioned in past discussions, and this is definitely the way to do interviews.
Show the candidate a piece of code and let them review it, something they'll actually be doing frequently. You'll get an insight into their understanding of the code and how they communicate improvements.
For a follow-up/bonus round ask them to suggest changes and fix it. A candidate that does this unprompted and well is a positive signal in and of itself.
No stressful whiteboarding and trivia questions. Just a relaxed conversation with their peers that they'd regularly have during work.
It’s really annoying to have an annoyed rude interviewer insist your answer is wrong for 10 minutes until the second interviewer awkwardly explains to the first that you were right, and then act defensive the entire rest of the interview. Some candidates have just gotten tired of the disrespectful interview process. If you intend to test how well we put up with disrespect in the interview, just say so ahead of time so we can cancel and apply elsewhere
goodness, it wasn't disrespect. I actually thought the code was incorrect.
I'm also not questioning something I know is right.
Mostly, I just let them code. When they're done, I always say ... are you satisfied? some go back and check, others stand pat, but this lets them take a fresh look.
I then have the opportunity to question something I think in my heart is wrong. I the example, he was right and I was wrong.
For things that look ok, I sometimes start a discussion about embellishments they could add or other techniques.
I really try not to be that guy. I just want to get to know them.
I had an interview once where I felt like the interviewer really didn't even know the answer to the question they were asking. I was surprised because of how confidently they were giving me the wrong answer. Instead of insulting them I just took it as a red flag to not work there. Or maybe re-interview a few years later.
> confidently they were giving me the wrong answer
This cuts both ways. Interviewers are not by default right. So likewise an interviewer that doesn't know what he's talking and doubles down on it, I'd rather find that out at the interviewer because it points to a dysfunctional organization.
Seems like exactly the sort of "trick" an interviewer might try to use: 'can this person correct someone in authority who is blatantly wrong?'.
Most organisations, it seems, would be served well by people who constructively handle bullshit/misunderstanding from senior people; for some it's absolutely vital.
We will occasionally mix one of these in. We are really looking for folks that can actually say 'no'. In some cases, we will keep tossing out absurd requirement on a 'how would you' project. One that some use is asking for a method that does not exist -- we are hoping they know the language well enough to say 'you mean this or this?' or how they can actually say I don't know, but I know where I could look it up.
It's gone both ways for me. I had one interview where the interviewer got very mad at me, and another where the interviewer was very impressed and was pleased to learn something. I got an offer from the latter company, and accepted.
Correcting the interviewer and insulting him are two different things.
The difference is whether you aim at correcting the information or whether you are aiming at the interviewer. I want the first one, not the second one.
> Audio, audio, audio... It doesn't matter how good or good looking you are if I can't understand any of your eloquence. Using microphone on your phone or webcam may or may not be adequate, you should test this. There is test call functionality in almost every web conferencing software.
If you’re going to be permanently remote, consider buying a low end podcasting or streaming setup. The quality will be fantastic comparative to cheaper options, and it won’t be that expensive to buy.
I have a couple of decent microphones, a mixer and mic stands, which were bought second-hand primarily for karaoke at parties. I've got all the input gear, another friend has a big PA setup, good fun.
Most of the time, those mics and the mixer just live in a bag in my closet, so I thought "why not use them?"
The sound quality from an AKG D5 (a decent, but not fancy mic) through a small mixer with a bit of compression applied is just miles ahead of anything you could get from a headset or a webcam mic.
It is a little hard to avoid getting the mic in the picture, but with a bit of creativity, it works well enough when placed just above the top of the frame.
My mixer is a small Behringer QX1002USB. Two mic inputs, parametric EQ and one-knob compressors. You can crank them and get that radio host imposing bassy voice, if you want.
It's amazingly good and versatile for such an inexpensive piece of gear.
> It doesn't look good if are jumping from one meeting to the interview to another meeting.
My day is full of other responsibilities. If you don’t like that I don’t think we’ll be a match regardless.
That said, I’d like to add.
Nr 5: Do not use a custom zoom video background, seriously, I do not want to see you sitting in the middle of a city with people walking by, repeating the same pattern every 10s.
Eventually I end up paying more attention to that guy with the hat than you.
Zoom backgrounds were cute the first few times they were being used on calls a month or two into video conference land. But, especially unless the lighting and actual physical background are right--and the person keeps relatively still--they're very obviously fake and are very distracting.
> My day is full of other responsibilities. If you don’t like that I don’t think we’ll be a match regardless.
Why are you looking for another job then? Are you the type that is just all motion and can't ever stop and focus on something properly?
Why do you want to join our company? If you want to join us why is this interview that you have with us less important than the two meetings you have around the time?
Yes, you are right, we would probably not be a right match. We are looking for candidates that want to get the job.
Imagine you ask a girl for a date. You are 2 minutes late telling her you had to clean up your flat. Then at the end of the meeting you say you can't stay longer because you need to do some shopping.
Two perfectly valid reasons and 2 minutes late is not that much late in itself.
But if I was the girl I would think "this guy is probably not a good match, he just doesn't care about me".
People are probably taking time off out of their workday for the interview. They might very well have other meetings, especially is they are in a senior position.
Taking their current job responsibilities seriously is a good sign for when they'll later work for your company.
That isn't how I see it. I don't want you to work for me if you don't want to work for me.
If you do not want to work for me, that is fine. I don't mind.
But if you come to interview I want to see that you really want to work for me.
You, yourself, probably would want to see the company wants to hire you rather than being completely lukewarm about it.
People want to see they are taken seriously and they are wanted.
Would you come to a company that organized your interview in some dinky place in the basement with unkempt junior dev who got late to the meeting and at the prescribed time tells you he doesn't have more time for you and you are maybe going to hear from them?
Why do you think companies like Google pamper their candidates and later developers at every possible occasion?
Why the hell are you comparing having back to back meetings around an interview with "organizing your interview in some dinky place in the basement with unkempt junior dev who got late to the meeting"
If you asked for an hour of my time, you'll get an hour of my time. If you want an extra 15 minutes to chit chat after, that's fine, just ask for it ahead of time so I can plan for it.
Whatever expectations you hold a candidate to should be reciprocal. So if you're going to hold candidates responsible for blocking off extra time before and after their interview to sit and chat, then you should be doing the same. Which means you should decline any meetings that are scheduled to start within 15 minutes of your interview ending. If you do that, then great, that's wonderful for the candidates who have more time to spend. You should also then tell the candidate up front to allow for 15 minutes on either end of the interview.
This whole idea that a candidate must have a buffer around their interview with you or they don't want to work for you is nonsense. It makes no more sense than saying if I have a 10am, 10:30am, and 11am meeting then that means I don't want to meet with the person at 10:30am. People have other things going on in their life. Employers who realize this, and respect candidates during the interview process, are going to have an easier time hiring good candidates that will also treat them well in return.
Except I am not asking you for an hour of your time. This is not an audience.
I am asking if you want to work for me for next couple of years.
> Whatever expectations you hold a candidate to should be reciprocal. So if you're going to hold candidates responsible for blocking off extra time before and after their interview to sit and chat, then you should be doing the same
Of course, I do the same. I spend time researching what I can find about the person, looking through their CV, getting acquainted with the report from screening. I am looking through your CV to figure out what kind of questions might be good to ask and what are waste of time and generally how to best make use of the time that is available.
Then after the meeting I meet with the manager who would most likely be present on the interview and we discuss our observations and try to figure out if they are or are not a problem and whether we think you can fit our team. We also discuss what did go or did not go well during the interview so that we can improve our interviews in the future.
All of this happens immediately before and after the interview so 1,5h interview can easily take 2,5h of my time. I am never late to the meeting and I always set aside time after the meeting in case our discussion overruns.
And you know why? Because hiring is extremely important, important enough that it is worth to put everything else aside just so that I can do it right.
And if you are a candidate it should matter to you where you are going to spend couple of years.
When I interview as a candidate I put everything else aside for that day so that I can be rested, fresh, calm and focused.
You want to be treated specially and shown that I want nothing in life except the job you are offering. I want to be certain my children have food on the table when my savings run out next week. Do you see the difference?
I understand your point that someone acting like they need to bounce from the call can be irritating to deal with, but it is a reality that several candidates might have a whole lot of interviews lined up as closely as possible to maximize their chances of actually landing a job. Add to that the increased commitments of a household, and I don't think it is unrealistic to expect a little empathy from the person on the other side of the call.
It is fair advice to say the candidate should try to remain calm and "not create the perception that you have something better to do" as you initially suggested. It is not fair advice to ask them to free up their entire day and not have any commitments other than a single interview.
What about people who go for full day of interviews for Google, Amazon and so on? Do you want to tell them they must be "ridiculously privileged" to be able to do so?
> If you want to join us why is this interview that you have with us less important than the two meetings you have around the time?
The other meetings mean I get paid? They provide me with a roof over my head?
If you were guaranteed to hire me by virtue of me attending the meeting, I’d probably peg it a little higher in the order of importance, but as it is it’s very likely a waste of my time.
So yes, I guess you could say I’m not committed enough, but that’s because 99% of the dates that I showed up on time for were secretly courting another guy and just ghosted me.
I think I’m ok, when some life trickles through, while I’m interviewing others. With people not always having the comfort of a separate room to hide in. A remote setup with 2 toddlers running around is sometimes a necessity. And I wouldn’t want to reject someone solely on that basis.
Peace and quiet is so that you, candidate, can focus on the answers. I personally don't care if your kids organize the party in the same room, but I care if it causes you, candidate, to not be able to fully focus on the interview and then me, the interviewer, to have trouble understanding whether your behavior was due to disturbance.
Interviewing is an expensive investment. I spend a lot of time doing the interview and I want to use what little time we have to the fullest extent.
Yes. Even in television broadcasting, they consider audio the most important element. You can got a few seconds without the picture as long as there's audio.
For an interview... we're over a year into the pandemic, if you don't have your audio quality figured out by now then you are not getting the job. I tell the person right away at the start of the interview if their audio is not good, giving them the benefit of the doubt to fix it.
> Even in television broadcasting, they consider audio the most important element. You can got a few seconds without the picture as long as there's audio.
I don't know who 'they' are because that's unfortunately opposite to what I have been witnessing for 1 year. Utterly useless but always present pictures, and a terrible, janky sound has become the standard of remote interview/consulting on TVs. Also don't forget that the new generation of field reporters is the generation who grew up used to favour convenience over quality, so they don't see a problem delivering lives which are barely understandable and, even worse, recorded reports which absolutely should be subtitled (the combo facial mask + bad sound take + bad Internet sound transmission) but which aren't.
Even worse, even on the national radio (the French equivalent of the BBC) which is supposed to have top sound standards; they obviously started using Internet-based public solutions streaming and they didn't give a damn about the sound: very bad and unstable quality, a LOT of lag causing a catastrophic mess of interactions, unreliable (connections very frequently dropping). It's a blessing when they have to drop to phone as they had been doing for decades, at least you know what to expect and there is no lag. Apparently they didn't consider the pro solutions which have been in use for 10-15 years (even my local associative radio had one!), which gave good sound with no lag, and which are a perfect fit at least for regulars; no, they all went using the crappy public app of the month...
> I don't know who 'they' are because that's unfortunately opposite to what I have been witnessing for 1 year.
Agreed. I was speaking from an academic perspective, and you're right -- this past year has been terrible. It seems that all best practices have gone out the window as everyone tries to figure out how to do remotes with consumer grade tools.
My point was, even in a medium that we mostly consider visual, audio is still more important to communicating the message than the picture. We can take this (pre-pandemic) best practice from television broadcasting and apply it to zoom conferences/interviews.
Good audio is really important. It's hard to be taken seriously when they can't understand you. And good audio quality definitely gives you more presence and relatability. I feel like it's the modern equivalent of being well spoken.
I got an XLR microphone with a boom arm during the pandemic, and I've also gone full OBS for zoom meetings. It's nice to be able to draw on the screen, share my screen or a picture during a meeting, without having to share screen.
I also bought a microphone with a boom arm and shock mount (something like [1]). The sound quality seems good, and less typing noise is caught by the microphone than with a mic on the desk or monitor.
> I've also gone full OBS for zoom meetings. It's nice to be able to draw on the screen, share my screen or a picture during a meeting, without having to share screen.
It sounds awesome. Could you describe it in more details?
OBS Studio (runs on linux, mac, windows) has the virtual webcam. This allows you to make your video output into a webcam device to hook up to any video software. Then you can do all the normal stuff like in OBS, like putting images on, overlays, animations, screen sharing, movies, etc.
A great thing to set up for yourself is audio feedback. Hearing yourself back with the levels as they are in the outgoing mix basically eliminates half of the talking-over-each-other problems. It's quite amazing how much it improves communications.
Couple of months ago I got a candidate that, if you just looked at his CV, was well overqualified for the position.
We were looking for a senior Java dev, we got a guy who had two degrees, 25 years of experience, and started no less than 3 companies. He also never sticked to anything for more than 2 years.
The insults started with his first sentence, before he or we even got a chance to greet each other.
We had some conferencing issues, the company just changed conferencing technology. In the previous any person could start the meeting but in the new one only the person who set up the meeting could start it. So there was some commotion to change the room.
When we joined (about 4-5 minutes after planned start) he said something to the effect that we must be new to this interviewing thing.
Nevermind, I continue the interview.
I ask him why he wants to work as a developer, given so much experience. He said he hasn't been programming a lot recently and wants to "dirty his hands" again. Hmm...
So we go to the technical part where he started manufacturing some false answers and after I pointed out what he says is factually incorrect he decided to critique the difficulty of questions he was getting.
I explained that we give same questions to all candidates for the position. I reminded I said at the start that candidates are not expected to know answers to all questions and that it is perfectly fine to tell us and to skip to the next question.
I sometimes tell the candidates (jokingly) that I give 5 points for telling me he doesn't know the answer. Though I did not say this in this case.
It only got downhill from there after couple more questions. After he gave another nonsense answer I did not say anything but he looked at me and said "WHAT NOW!" And then started tirade that I am not qualified to interview him and can we maybe set up an interview directly with my manager.
It sounds like you were asking a 25 year senior who has proven themselves able to start multiple companies leetcode style questions to decide if they are competent. The sort of questions that candidates have to waste months drilling for. That is insane and disrespectful towards the candidates time. Younger people put up with this but seniors know it’s nonsense and he was probably just tired of it all. You didn’t want to hire a software developer, you want a leetcoder
> Younger people put up with this but seniors know it’s nonsense and he was probably just tired of it all. You didn’t want to hire a software developer, you want a leetcoder
Senior here! I'm doing the leetcode grind and in preparation of interview rounds at companies that ask those sort of coding questions: I don' think it's a waste of time, it so happens that those companies pay very well, if you're willing to run the gauntlet. Preparing for the interviews is a signal in itself, as someone who sat on the other side of the interview table, I know the hiring companies needs every last signal it can get.
I hope other seniors keep snootily refusing to do such interviews, for at least the next few months, that way, I'll face less competition :-)
At my employer, we deliberately have a junior person interview senior candidates. It helps us understand how stuck the candidate is about their seniority, whether they can explain something to an interviewer who clearly doesn't have the same exposure as the candidate.
This could be fun but there are just too many reasons not to do it.
One is that you need to understand the technical questions perfectly so that you can ask deep probing questions, spot when candidate tries to wing it, etc. All the while evaluating various aspects of the answers and trying to figure out if you are getting all different aspects you need.
After all, the best way too interview is to have a discussion with the candidate. If you just have a list of closed questions you could give him a test to fill out.
You also need to be quite self aware of your own limitations and be able to distinguish between objective and your own preconceptions. As an example, I may like strongly typed languages and the candidate may have other preference. You need to be able to recognize that this is only your preference and try to objectively evaluate regardless of this. Otherwise you run the risk of hiring people that are exactly like you which is interviewing mistake #1.
Often the “leetcode” interview gets tedious. Im not a demon coder, I just seek local minima and reuse things. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
Then I imagine what Aphyr would do and start giggling. It’s often downhill from there. "You have, in fact, heard this one before. In your browser, search for “fizzbuzz solution”, and pick the first link that looks promising. Copy and paste. You are a real engineer.” [1]
First, you would be surprised how many candidates can't do something like fizzbuzz correctly.
Second, if I ask you coding question I am not going after your existing knowledge but rather about how you deal with problems to which you don't know the solution for.
After all that is what development is -- building something without necessarily knowing the solution when you start.
Third, I don't care how good coder you are (well, I do a little). What I do care when I ask you coding question is that you can think logically, ask right questions, work with me to find a solution to the problem and also that you can use the tools that are at your disposal.
Development is a lot of abilities and if the only thing you know is how to write more code then that is how you are going to approach every problem. As they say, if the only thing you have is a hammer...
Most corporate software is extremely simple (or at least it should be). Writing REST API to run couple of agreed rules on objects in a database, call an external service or send a message over network is not a pinnacle of technical achievement.
Arriving at the right solution in a large and complex organization, with many forces around you, people trying to overcomplicate your solution, stakeholders trying to drive your design or speed up development because refactoring is for pussies, on the other hand, is.
Now, I interview only senior engineers and up. I expect senior engineers to be able to arrive at a workable solution in a real organization. Coding should not be something that is any kind of problem for you, it is just one of the tools you use to achieve the result.
>> What I do care when I ask you coding question is that you can think logically, ask right questions, work with me to find a solution to the problem and also that you can use the tools that are at your disposal.
Well, I can’t fault your perspective. As an interviewee I’d like to complain about interviewing fads and about silly questions with dubious rationale. But I have to agree with your premise, as an interviewer I’ve also tried to make the best of it understanding that my reasoning about such things is imperfect.
I bought an expensive microphone just for work, and then people complained that it was taking up all their bandwidth, they asked me to go back to using the phone.
That doesn’t make any sense at all. Wouldn’t that entirely be up to the codec used to encode? Why would shitty audio encoded with the same codec use substantially more bandwidth than cleaner audio? If anything I’d expect noise to be harder to encode.
Your video takes way, way more bandwidth than audio ever could.
You should not believe everything people complain about.
Also, you don't need expensive microphone. You need decent one set up correctly.
Most microphones are actually pretty decent in that they can record your voice pretty well provided they are set up properly and that is where usually problems are. You need to have correct geometry so that they can do their job of picking your voice and rejecting noise and you need to ensure correct software audio settings because mismanaging these can cause voice to be distorted or sprinkled with clicks and cracks.
Yeah, in fact, when I'm recording a podcast and we're having any sort of bandwidth issues, I'll usually have us turn off our video. But I want people to use good mics. (Though the difference once you get to decent is very diminishing.)
I would add mics have nothing to do with bandwidth. It is the client / OS settings that decide how much bandwidth is going to be used.
Actually a microphone with good noise rejection may help depending on how exactly the audio is being compressed. Less noise will usually cause either less bandwidth used for the same quality or better quality for the same bandwidth.
I have a fancy microphone, but when I’m away from home in a low bandwidth situation I often phone in audio to zoom because it lags less. Lagging video and non-lagging audio seems to bother people less than both lagging.
I think it's the classic case of "when customers tell you something is broken, they are usually right. When customers tell you WHAT is broken, they are usually wrong".
I have an expensive microphone and picked "use original audio" in Zoom, which says that it takes more bandwidth and compute resources for the receivers. Of course, you could just not click that if people complained.
I haven't heard anyone complain. Rather, everyone else also bought expensive microphones and enabled original audio, and the results are excellent.
(Unsolicited tip: some sort of noise gate is really nice so that when you unmute, it doesn't raise the noise floor for the call. I ended up using Krisp, which seems to work quite well. Yeah, it's a subscription service for something your audio interface could theoretically do, and they market it as AI but it's not really AI and that's kind of scummy, but it doesn't take up any space on my desk, and it's not that expensive, so whatever. Sometimes it works too well -- people will apologize for their dog barking, or a fire truck driving by, and it's just met with confusion because that all got filtered out.)
I didn't tell them, "I'm about to switch to the microphone", I switched to the microphone and they told me to stop and they claimed it was using all their bandwidth and to go back to using the phone instead of the microphone.
I'll take the downvotes, that's fine, but how did the people complaining know I had switched to the microphone and what were they complaining about?
1. Audio, audio, audio... It doesn't matter how good or good looking you are if I can't understand any of your eloquence. Using microphone on your phone or webcam may or may not be adequate, you should test this. There is test call functionality in almost every web conferencing software.
In general having microphone close to your mouth and distant from any noises is safest choice. Headsets are cheap and effective.
Also turn off any feature that changes volume dynamically, this can cause volume to change suddenly to painful levels. For example zoom can pick up distant voice and increase volume suddenly. As an interviewer I am already setting the volume as high as I can before it becomes uncomfortable because I don't want to miss anything you say, having the volume change suddenly makes my life this much more difficult.
2. Just because it is remote interview doesn't mean savoir vivre is out the window. Be on time. Don't interrupt. Don't insult the interviewer (yes, I had this happen to me recently).
3. Don't be obvious looking up answers to my technical questions on the internet. And if you need to google something, try to put it in your words rather than read word by word, because maybe I can do the search myself, too. Yes, this also happened to me recently.
4. Make sure you have peace and quiet for the duration of the interview, before the interview and also some margin after. Set the time aside and remove any distractions. Try not to create perception you have something more important to do. It doesn't look good if are jumping from one meeting to the interview to another meeting.