8 ms·

What I Learned From Blowing An Interview

131 points by braythwayt 11y ago

lazyant 11y ago
There's a good chance that the same interview (same questions and answers) with another company would pass and be a 'great fit', since they were looking for different things etc, there's always the lottery aspect.
d23 11y ago
> The specific problem was that I was speaking of broad patterns and forces, when my interlocutors were asking about specific, tangible incidents and tools. Interviewing is a two-way street. If you actually do feel that you were the ideal candidate based on what they said they were looking for, didn't they blow it as well? When you went high level, did they give any immediate feedback that indicated you were speaking at a level of abstraction above what they were looking for? If not, the failure is just as much on them.
- sfilipov 11y ago
  True, if real life conversations were like interview conversations, we would judge people/friends whether they gave us the answer we expected when we asked them a question or not. That's ridiculous. People misunderstand questions. If what you get is not what you expect, you can always ask clarifying questions.
  - Double_Cast 11y ago
    I was poking around his blog. Fwiw, it appears he's well aware of this. He calls interviewers who ask vague questions and expect particular answers "Carnac the Magnificent" [0]. [0] http://raganwald.com/2015/05/08/carnac-the-magnificent.html http://raganwald.com/2015/05/08/carnac-the-magnificent.html
- rubidium 11y ago
  The article makes it seem like they were asking those questions, he was just missing it. To your blaming the interviewers, part of being VP level is being able to pick up on stuff like that. He admits he missed it. They may be concerned, as a result, that he'll "miss it" in other ways too. Very humble article, and great lesson learned by the author.
  - braythwayt 11y ago
    I interview candidates a lot, and I see this pattern many times. I can't remember how aggressively those particular people followed up with me, but I can tell you that I have had conversations like this: --- Tell me about something specific you did to improve the productivity/velocity of your colleagues. "I'm a big believer in unit tests. When you have a lot of code coverage, other people can make changes without worrying they'll break things." Ok, I get that, we write tests too. But what, specifically, did you do with respect to testing? And what, specifically was the result? "Well, I write tests for all my code first. TDD leads to better designs, and that's better for everyone." I know what TDD is, and I admire people with the discipline to practice it consistently. Now tell mw what, specifically, you did with TDD to improve the productivity of the team. Did you introduce the idea? Did you introduce some process around TDD? Did you introduce some TDD tooling? "I use Mock Objects."
    - xigency 11y ago
      That's a great point. I think a mistake a number of interviewers make, and maybe they aren't used to the idea of interviewing for a position, is that they aren't interactive enough in their questions. In this case, it sounds like the founders made a bit of a mistake. Even if they were able to find someone who could explain things to them more directly, like they wanted, during the interview, it doesn't mean that the candidate is more qualified for the job. In general, communicating with management or founders won't necessarily be the same as communicating with engineers. For me, I had an interview about a year ago with Google and they were basically so uninterested in asking questions that they didn't learn anything useful about me, so it wasn't surprising that I was rejected. Sometimes interviewers don't realize that it's a two-way street, and that they need to be just as interested in hiring a candidate as an interviewee is excited about working for them. And I think if you're serious about hiring someone that you should be excited no matter what, especially if you know they're qualified.
jmount 11y ago
'I contacted my friend. What went wrong? He sighed. “The founders thought you were too theoretical. They got the sense you would be a great coach or evangelist, but lacked the hands-on attitude they were looking for to actually build a team up.”' They may have been looking for one specific response (and yes, if so they should have directly asked) such as "do you have experience hiring?"
Afton 11y ago
Everything you do in an interview will be judged. Some people will give you an incomplete problem spec and mark you down if you don't ask questions. Some will give you the same problem spec, but feel that you were too hesitant to "just get started" if you ask questions. There is a guessing game going on in an interview, and while it's not 'just chance' to do well vs poorly, there is an element of chance involved. Since there is this element of chance, a 'blown interview' is certainly worth evaluating, but also not necessarily worth completely changing your process. You may have just had a bad matchup of expectations.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Right, most folks give you problems just to get you talking. The problem isn't the interview, and fixating on technical answers is missing the point. Its all a process for feeling you out, understanding where you are at in your career, and testing you as a 'fit' in their organization.
  - gohrt 11y ago
    You are giving interviewers a little more credit than they deserve. It's certainly a process for "feeling you out", but not so much "understanding".
    - pc86 11y ago
      You need to interview at better places, I think :)
- jghn 11y ago
  Exactly. There's no game you can play that'll win every scenario because you can't possibly know how the person on the other side of the table will be judging you. I made this realization a while back and decided to make two changes to how I approached interviews: - Be myself. This sounds simple but it's harder than one would think. Most people are trained to put on faces and airs in these situations, most guides will tell you how to act, dress, etc. Ignore all that. If they don't like the real you they're not going to like you long term. There are some people who will ding you for not acting all prim and proper in an interview situation, but do you want to work with them? - Flip my mentality around. They're the ones that need the selling, not me. This ties together with the first point but it is a key mentality change. It's easier to just be yourself and stay calm if you can think about the interview in terms of you interviewing them.
acconrad 11y ago
Honestly, this article is a bit hyperbolic. He didn't blow the interview - I was expecting an article on being totally unprepared, not able to answer a single question. What happened was he aced the technical portion, and went too theoretical / abstract when they wanted things that were concrete / applicable. That's not blowing it - that's a lack of recent interview experience, and is something he will easily fix and correct in the next interviews. But it was refreshing to see that he received actionable feedback from the interviewers, rather than the straight "sorry we can't move forward" boilerplate that usually has to happen.
- ohitsdom 11y ago
  Totally agreed. > Failing so spectacularly in an interview shook me to my core. He didn't fail spectacularly, he just didn't get the job. He's lucky he got actionable feedback from a friend to improve. Most bigger companies won't give a reason for a rejection nowadays for legal reasons. I, however, have truly failed spectacularly in an interview. While it temporarily killed my confidence, it did make me a better interviewee in the long run. I learned the concepts that stumped me in the interview, and I had a little less fear in the next interview since it couldn't get worse.
  - braythwayt 11y ago
    Perhaps instead of "failed spectacularly," I "snatched defeat from the jaws of victory."
    - ohitsdom 11y ago
      That seems like an incredibly accurate description about what happened to you.
- braythwayt 11y ago
  This was much more fundamental than just not answering questions properly. I realized that I was not thinking clearly about the difference between specifics and generalities, and not communicating properly, in all sorts of conversations, not just when I was being interviewed. For example, I was also interviewing people, having one-on-ones with reports, and so forth. I think this particular interview was a catalyst for rethinking the way I approached communication in general.
modarts 11y ago
That company appears to be pretty bad at hiring executive technical management.
mizchief2 11y ago
Anyone else first read that as "interviewer"?
didgeoridoo 11y ago
Reg doesn't go into exactly when this interview occurred, but I have to imagine it was quite a few years ago. The conversation today should go something more like: Interviewer 1: "So, Reginald, how many years of Angular Bootstrap Scrum experience do you have?" Interviewer 2: "Fuck off, this is raganwald. You're hired."
- braythwayt 11y ago
  This is from when I knew both programming languages: C++ and Java.
bayer_rggb 11y ago
I saw this video where Bryan Cranston gives advice to young actors. He basically says, don't go into an audition 'looking' for a job, or 'wanting' a job. Go in, do your thing, portray the best you and get out. If they want you, you'll get the job, If they don't ... why would you want to work at a place where they don't want you ? This was eye opening for me. Totally changed the way I went to interviews. (Can't find the video now :( )
- braythwayt 11y ago
  > portray the best you and get out Very true. But I contend that I did not portray the best me. And that is a valuable lesson. This essay is not about the job I didn't get, it's about the lesson I learned about myself.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    Can you be sure you would have been given the job if you had portrayed your best you? It's possible you simply dodged a bullet. Maybe this company misclassified a valuable resource, and (for all anyone knows) hired someone less able instead. Given your practical background, why did no one ask for practical examples? I agree with the general point - interviews are really about proving you can save time and make money, and everything else is a warm-up. But still - the hiring process is notoriously unreliable, and it's going to be interesting to see where this start-up is a few years from now.
    - braythwayt 11y ago
      This was more than ten years ago. I'd like to point out that they did ask specific questions, I was just enamored of generalizing at that point in my life, and treated every specific question as an invitation to generalize.
- js2 11y ago
  "Bryan Cranston's Advice to Aspiring Actors" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1WiCGq-PcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1WiCGq-PcY Thanks for the tip. I hadn't seen this video before.
weiclout 11y ago
I've just blown a technical interview. Not like this though. I've got lots of experience, know my languages inside out and have several launched products to millions of people. I did every problem in the recommended book (CtCI) and know data structures and algorithms well. I wasn’t prepared for the nerves though. I interviewed at a large social network recently. 3 out of the 5 onsites went amazingly well. 1 was okay and the last one totally tanked. It wasn’t a particularly hard question, but I didn’t crack it immediately so started to panic. What made it 10x worse was that the interviewer sat in complete silence, not responding to any of my ideas. I followed all the recommended strategies: Throwing out a brute force solution, discussing what you are thinking (incidentally, I said the correct solution very early on!), trying different data structures - but he said nothing and checked his phone. When I got the call, I was absolutely devastated. I had put 3 months of preparation into this and it was all gone in 30 minutes. The recruiter couldn’t believe it as he thought I was a shoe-in. I told him about the interviewer and he was furious. He said he would pass that on as feedback, but there was nothing he could do - they have to respect the process. I appreciate the humility in this article. As much as I want to blame the interviewer, the process, how technical interviews are broken, how that company isn’t all that, etc etc - the most fruitful thing I can do is learn what went wrong and how I can overcome it next time. In repairing my shattered self confidence, I’ve found this very helpful: “Doing poorly on your Google interview could mean a couple things, if you're a good engineer….Which of the two evaluations is more meaningful? A) A few hours with busy people who don't know you trying to guess how good you are, with only a few minutes of a problem they're familiar with as a probe. B) Years of successful performance in your career. https://www.quora.com/I-felt-I-was-a-pretty-good-software-engineer-with-a-successful-career-but-I-did-quite-poorly-in-my-Google-interview-does-this-mean-Im-not-as-good-an-engineer-as-I-thought?srid=z06&share=f787395d https://www.quora.com/I-felt-I-was-a-pretty-good-software-en...
- HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
  but he said nothing and checked his phone I realize that it's easy for me to say this, and I sympathize with your nervousness at the time. But this is an opportunity for you to ask both the immediate interviewer and his superior (assuming he will also interview you) just how serious they are about finding a candidate if they can't even extend basic courtesy to the people they invite in. Hell, if his manager was going to interview me, I'd have use that opportunity to ask if that was the kind of environment I would be in working for them and exactly what drove the last person in the open position to leave. There is no excuse for that kind of rudeness. Use it to your advantage.
Beltiras 11y ago
I had the weirdest let-down after an interview this summer. Like the author I thought it had gone fine but something entirely else was going on. The interviewer let me know the reason I was not chosen was that I used agressive micro-expressions and lacked diplomacy. I don't know if my love for technical excellence (a topic broached quite fully during the interview) or my anecdote of an anti-pattern at a previous employer was really presented with toxicity but my takeaway is that sometimes you have just been set up for failure and nothing can be done to salvage your chances.
- giaour 11y ago
  You dodged a bullet. Any interviewer who judges you based on "micro-expressions" would have been insufferable as a manager.
- mixmastamyk 11y ago
  What are "agressive micro-expressions" ?
  - mchu4545 11y ago
    Keeping your arms crossed, moving your head back from the conversation, tensing of the body, etc.
    - seanccox 11y ago
      They could also be signs of a defensive response on the part of the interviewee, who may be nervous. It is also a typical response of any person trying to maintain their sense of personal space.
    - chucksmash 11y ago
      If that's what I were worried about then I think I'd just leave it at, "we didn't feel like our personalities meshed well" or "we don't think you are a culture fit" and leave it at that. "Aggressive micro-expressions" sounds aggressively silly.
    - 11y ago
Alex3917 11y ago
> When talking with others, be aware of when they want to understand the specifics, and when they want to understand the general ideas. I think this might be the wrong takeaway. In reality when people say they want specific examples then they want specific examples, and when they say they want general principles they also want specific examples. If they ask for a general principle then maybe throw that in as the last sentence, but most people people simply aren't able to process abstract ideas, even if they think they're able to.
BurningFrog 11y ago
One weird thing I notice is how people say "countries such as Spain and Greece" when they actually mean "Spain and Greece". Do they feel like speaking in generalities is more prestigious? Is it as a hedge in case there are more examples they don't know about?
- tedunangst 11y ago
  "Countries such as Spain and Greece" sounds like it may include Italy. Now I'm curious what properties Spain and Greece have that Italy doesn't.
- gaius 11y ago
  Journalists call them PIIGS now, which some find objectionable. Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain.
- mod 11y ago
  I notice that a lot in political debates. "Socialism is working very well in countries such as Sweden, for example." I think it's usually an attempt to infer that there are many more similar situations.
Jemaclus 11y ago
I interviews around a bit this summer. I found one position that, on paper, I was the perfect candidate. I ticked every checkbox the hiring manager mentioned. I met with the hiring manager first, and she loved me and by the end of the meeting was insisting that I come into the office for an onsite with her team. A few days later, I went into the onsite and nailed it. I mean, there were zero indications that I had flopped. By the end of the day, the hiring manager came in, smiling and asked me the good stuff about salary expectations, when i could start, etc. All good responses. Then she said that since this is a senior position, we'd have to run it by the CTO, who was based across the country. They decided to do a Skype interview. As soon as the screen came up, I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. The CTO was relatively hostile and didn't smile throughout the whole session, even when I cracked a joke that never fails to get a response. By the end, she gave a terse "Thanks for your time" and that was it. I didn't get the job. But this is one of those things where I really believe I put my best foot forward, and I really believe that I was a great fit for that job, and I really believe that there was some other factor completely, 100% beyond my control that caused me not to get the job. Maybe she already had someone in mind. Maybe she was having a bad day. Maybe I had something stuck in my teeth, or maybe someone close to her died. Who knows? I'm still really bummed I didn't get that job, but at the end of the day, it is what it is, and I have to move forward. Good luck with your next interview, OP. It'll work out eventually. :)
- pnathan 11y ago
  Having sat in on a fair number of interviews, there's a lot churning under the surface, particularly at smaller shops, and I'd strongly agree that factors beyond your control are a big deal. One thing I like to do is look at trajectories of companies I had interesting interviews at. It's always enjoyable seeing what I didn't land in (sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always an interesting perspective, since I had a fleeting glimpse into the "inside").
- DarthMader 11y ago
  What's the joke?
  - Jemaclus 11y ago
ryandrake 11y ago
You should consider yourself lucky that you had a way to get actual feedback through a side channel. At most tech companies in the Bay Area, you only know it's a "NO" when you don't hear a word back from them after a few weeks. Rarely, you'll get a generic "Sorry, but your skills are not a match for our position at this time" form E-mail, which although nice, is not really helpful. Good, actionable feedback is very valuable, especially in today's lukewarm job market.
msutherl 11y ago
Did no one else catch the irony that the entire post is itself a generalization based on a specific experience?
- braythwayt 11y ago
  I wrote an essay describing a general principle, using a specific example from my experience, and closing with specific strategies to employ.
  - msutherl 11y ago
    Not a criticism – I enjoyed the piece! Indeed, since you were not asked for a specific example, and after all it is your own blog, you are free to share a generalization without violating anyone's expectations.
- sitkack 11y ago
  s/irony/genius
d0m 11y ago
Like raising money, you should trust the "No", but not the "Why". There are so many factors that comes into hiring, most of them totally unrelated to you or your performance during the interview.
seanwilson 11y ago
I don't think you should read into it so much to be honest. Everyone looks for different things when giving interviews. You can't please everyone. Also, you say things like "When being interviewed, we must make sure that when asked to speak in specifics, we answer in specifics"...the interviewer should be nudging you in the right direction if you're veering off track. If they don't and judge you for it, they're not doing their part in my opinion.
badloginagain 11y ago
Sounds like a bad interview process to me. Crushed the technical interview, had a glowing recommendation, and "blew" the interview on the whim of a founder- for talking about root principles no less. And instead of pulling you back to specifics (ie. leading you to answer the things they're interested in), the founder dismisses you for failing their totally hidden criteria. From my perspective, the founders blew the interview, not the interviewee. Then again, no one ever complains about the interview process on HN...
- brianpgordon 11y ago
  This definitely resonates with me as someone occasionally involved in the interview process from the other side. In my experience the scariest bits of "hidden criteria" are brought up under the umbrella of culture fit. Candidates are posed a minefield of completely non-technical-related open-ended questions, with the consequence that the interviewer is free to draw practically any conclusions they want about the candidate's personality and compatibility with the company. These lines of questioning are impressive to recount, as if the interviewer is a clairvoyant with exceptional powers of insight into the candidate's soul. However, I'm skeptical that this process is any better than random at selecting people who would turn out to be valued, effective engineers. It seems to me that, unless there are glaring issues with arrogance/stubbornness/misanthropy, technical chops and engineering skill are what you should optimize for, not personality. I've heard of "objective" interviews based on a rubric with a set number of points for each question and little room for interpretation. I wonder how that works out. I feel like even if it's pretty bad, the interview is so completely terrible and broken right now that it might be an improvement.
mixmastamyk 11y ago
So lucky to get some feedback. I've been on several interviews this year for positions I was well qualified but didn't get. I've gotten zero feedback. Sounds like the writer was qualified. How many good hires are lost because they have only a single interview and there is a misunderstanding?
steven2012 11y ago
I don't know, it sounds more like the interviewers didn't know how to actually interview someone properly. If they have questions they want specifically answered, they should ask them, not just sit around like a meek wallflower. It could be that the OP just prattled on and on, and bored each of his interviewers and went off topic. If that's the case, then it makes sense, because we've all worked with people like that. But if the OP is actually a great candidate, and the interviewers passed on them because the interviewers didn't lead the discussion in the way they wanted, that's their fault, not his.
vinceguidry 11y ago
I thought this was a very insightful article. I had always thought that for those upper-level positions, you would necessarily be talking more about philosophy and mindset than about specific instances. The idea being that you wouldn't be there if your fundamentals didn't stack up. A lot of advice gets bandied about regarding interviews, and worse, a lot of people seem to think it's just a random walk, but really an interview is nothing more than a specific instance of exercising persuasion. Maybe you're successful, maybe you're not, but there's reasons why in either case. Coming to an understanding of all the angles is precisely the benefit of experience. Articles like this help me to understand what the game looks like.
mrdrozdov 11y ago
@braythwayt, if you don't mind answering, when was the interview? and did your current employer know you were interviewing?
- braythwayt 11y ago
  It was around the turn of the century. I'd prefer not to talk too much about what was going on at my employer-of-the-time. Let's just say that I've maintained a good relationship with my colleagues and managers from that company over the intervening years.
  - mrdrozdov 11y ago
    Thank you for the candid response.
justinhj 11y ago
You can't win them all. In another interview the same behaviour the author exhibited in the article could be seen in a positive light "he always sees the big picture not the specific tools, which implies deeper knowledge" If the interview answer is going off track, it's the interviewers prerogative to ask for more specifics and clarification, if that's what they want to learn about the candidate I think you have to be very aware as both an interviewer and interviewee of assumptions you're making about a person and dig deeper to ensure you are right
im_down_w_otp 11y ago
One of my favorite things about how companies interview is how they assume their own competence in actually assessing people at a level that is woefully out of line with reality. For example. "We ask puzzle questions because it helps us figure out how a candidate problem solves." No it doesn't, and not because puzzles are a bad way to assess problem solving, but because you as the interviewer have basically no idea what you're doing when performing the assessment. Typically the interviewer has no clear idea what profile of person they actually need to hire for a given type of job function. Even in the rare case they do have that necessary understanding, they almost certainly have zero training in how to create or identify puzzles that actually align with the kinds of problem solving that match the profile they're looking for. The interviewer will have zero training on what to observe about how the person solves problems and what the signals actually mean. They'll instead almost certainly pick up all the wrong signals and miss all the important ones and interpret the ones they picked up in the wrong way. Usually people tell me they ask certain kinds of puzzle or programming questions because they want to see how the person solves problems, collaborates, communicates, etc. As a quick litmus test I always respond, "When you ask these puzzle questions to your candidates do you already know the answers?" 100% of the time, "Yes, of course." To which I say, "If you already know the answer, you're unable to remove your bias from the way of coming to the solution, and you're learning absolutely nothing about how they communicate or collaborate. Next time ask them a puzzle you don't know the answer to and work on the solution together. Then you'll have half a chance at learning something valuable about the candidate."
gaius 11y ago
There is plenty of evidence that people make up their minds in 10 seconds and the rest is post-hoc justification. You didn't blow it, they just didn't like you, or already had someone else in mind.
kafkaesq 11y ago
I went through all five stages of grief in one conversation: Anger, Denial, Bargaining, Depression, and finally, Acceptance. I blew it. Okay, I had lost this chance. But what could I learn for the next time? Why have we (as candidates) allowed ourself to become so brow-beaten over the years as to nearly always conclude that if an employer fails to read us, that it's automatically because of something we did to "blow it"? That we're the ones who need to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves of, and wallow through a necessary period of mourning and self-reflection before promising ourselves to do better next time? Long, painful lesson learned: it's a two-way street. The interviewers', and the company's overall performance in the process is just as much open to evaluation -- and question -- as that of the candidate. And guess what -- they're just as likely to make mistakes as the candidate; perhaps even more so -- because they've internalized the idea that as the one on the hiring side, they're the ones with X-ray vision to what determines a "perfect fit"; so that if turns out the candidate doesn't hit all the markers they're looking for, then by definition, it's because something the candidate did to screw everything up. In this case, it looks like it may have been the company which "blew it" in passing on this guy. Or maybe not -- we have no way of telling from this distance, and it would be moot to speculate. But I would like to hope that we can get past this tendency to automatically beat ourselves As an aside -- aren't logic problems "over" now, for any but junior positions? Even for senior developers I'd consider them something of a red flag -- a sign that the company doesn't really know why it's doing what it's doing in the hiring process, and is cut-and-pasting from what it thinks other companies are doing. And at the VP level? Reason enough to look the interviewer in the eye, explain (nicely) that you don't think these questions are a good use of their time or yours -- then to thank them for the opportunity, and walk out the door.
- braythwayt 11y ago
  This was approximately fifteen years ago. And it wasn't just any old interview, it was for a company where a friend worked. I wanted to work with my friend, I wanted to work on the problem they were solving. I was so excited about the opportunity that I was actually considering moving from Toronto to California just to work there. But yeah, we should not normally be this invested in the outcome of a job interview.
treve 11y ago
It's funny that the behavior that caused the author to blow the interview is also perfectly demonstrated in the article. The author moves from a specific issue (not correctly anticipating what the the interviewer wants to hear) to generalizing in a much broader context ;)
- braythwayt 11y ago
  ...But then returned to specifics at the end. :-)
hobaak 11y ago
I am more impressed with your project management experience with agile. Did you follow agile process strictly in that company? I love to hear your experience and can be new blog post.
lzecon 11y ago
Great post. I've seen feedback from hundreds and hundreds of interviews, both technical and non, and by far the most common reason for rejecting someone is they did not answer the interviewer's question directly. Speaking in specifics is important, but more broadly, you didn't do well because you didn't actually answer the question asked. People often get tripped up in their explaination of the answer, or their theory or thinking behind it and just forget to say what they actually did.
mixmastamyk 11y ago
That's another failing of tech interviews, you normally get only one chance to perform. It is a bit like having one chance to write a correct program, without possibility of iteration/debugging. How often will this produce a correct result? Rarely.
wrs 11y ago
Speaking as one person who has been interviewing developers (and others) for 20 years, getting to specifics is something I try to do in every interview. It's just not that difficult to B.S. your way through an interview with great-sounding generalities even when you don't know how to actually do anything (think FizzBuzz). It's also an actual problem in real life that some people would rather live in the abstract and never want get into the details of actually getting work done. The only way I know to clarify that in an interview is to drill way deep into the specifics of something you've done. If you actually did the work, and knew what you were doing, then that'll be pretty obvious -- and you can certainly motivate the specifics with principles as you go. However, quite often I have to really push to get the specifics even if they are there. People don't expect that I want to be bored with details, or something. So I've learned to be very explicit that I want boring details, lots of them. It sounds like the interviewers in this case didn't do that, whether deliberately or not.
coderKen 11y ago
really learnt a lot from reading this. Thanks for sharing.

131 points by braythwayt 11y ago

There's a good chance that the same interview (same questions and answers) with another company would pass and be a 'great fit', since they were looking for different things etc, there's always the lottery aspect.

d23 11y ago

> The specific problem was that I was speaking of broad patterns and forces, when my interlocutors were asking about specific, tangible incidents and tools. Interviewing is a two-way street. If you actually do feel that you were the ideal candidate based on what they said they were looking for, didn't they blow it as well? When you went high level, did they give any immediate feedback that indicated you were speaking at a level of abstraction above what they were looking for? If not, the failure is just as much on them.

sfilipov 11y ago
True, if real life conversations were like interview conversations, we would judge people/friends whether they gave us the answer we expected when we asked them a question or not. That's ridiculous. People misunderstand questions. If what you get is not what you expect, you can always ask clarifying questions.
- Double_Cast 11y ago
  I was poking around his blog. Fwiw, it appears he's well aware of this. He calls interviewers who ask vague questions and expect particular answers "Carnac the Magnificent" [0]. [0] http://raganwald.com/2015/05/08/carnac-the-magnificent.html http://raganwald.com/2015/05/08/carnac-the-magnificent.html
rubidium 11y ago
The article makes it seem like they were asking those questions, he was just missing it. To your blaming the interviewers, part of being VP level is being able to pick up on stuff like that. He admits he missed it. They may be concerned, as a result, that he'll "miss it" in other ways too. Very humble article, and great lesson learned by the author.
- braythwayt 11y ago
  I interview candidates a lot, and I see this pattern many times. I can't remember how aggressively those particular people followed up with me, but I can tell you that I have had conversations like this: --- Tell me about something specific you did to improve the productivity/velocity of your colleagues. "I'm a big believer in unit tests. When you have a lot of code coverage, other people can make changes without worrying they'll break things." Ok, I get that, we write tests too. But what, specifically, did you do with respect to testing? And what, specifically was the result? "Well, I write tests for all my code first. TDD leads to better designs, and that's better for everyone." I know what TDD is, and I admire people with the discipline to practice it consistently. Now tell mw what, specifically, you did with TDD to improve the productivity of the team. Did you introduce the idea? Did you introduce some process around TDD? Did you introduce some TDD tooling? "I use Mock Objects."
  - xigency 11y ago
    That's a great point. I think a mistake a number of interviewers make, and maybe they aren't used to the idea of interviewing for a position, is that they aren't interactive enough in their questions. In this case, it sounds like the founders made a bit of a mistake. Even if they were able to find someone who could explain things to them more directly, like they wanted, during the interview, it doesn't mean that the candidate is more qualified for the job. In general, communicating with management or founders won't necessarily be the same as communicating with engineers. For me, I had an interview about a year ago with Google and they were basically so uninterested in asking questions that they didn't learn anything useful about me, so it wasn't surprising that I was rejected. Sometimes interviewers don't realize that it's a two-way street, and that they need to be just as interested in hiring a candidate as an interviewee is excited about working for them. And I think if you're serious about hiring someone that you should be excited no matter what, especially if you know they're qualified.

jmount 11y ago

'I contacted my friend. What went wrong? He sighed. “The founders thought you were too theoretical. They got the sense you would be a great coach or evangelist, but lacked the hands-on attitude they were looking for to actually build a team up.”' They may have been looking for one specific response (and yes, if so they should have directly asked) such as "do you have experience hiring?"

Afton 11y ago

Everything you do in an interview will be judged. Some people will give you an incomplete problem spec and mark you down if you don't ask questions. Some will give you the same problem spec, but feel that you were too hesitant to "just get started" if you ask questions. There is a guessing game going on in an interview, and while it's not 'just chance' to do well vs poorly, there is an element of chance involved. Since there is this element of chance, a 'blown interview' is certainly worth evaluating, but also not necessarily worth completely changing your process. You may have just had a bad matchup of expectations.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Right, most folks give you problems just to get you talking. The problem isn't the interview, and fixating on technical answers is missing the point. Its all a process for feeling you out, understanding where you are at in your career, and testing you as a 'fit' in their organization.
- gohrt 11y ago
  You are giving interviewers a little more credit than they deserve. It's certainly a process for "feeling you out", but not so much "understanding".
  - pc86 11y ago
    You need to interview at better places, I think :)
jghn 11y ago
Exactly. There's no game you can play that'll win every scenario because you can't possibly know how the person on the other side of the table will be judging you. I made this realization a while back and decided to make two changes to how I approached interviews: - Be myself. This sounds simple but it's harder than one would think. Most people are trained to put on faces and airs in these situations, most guides will tell you how to act, dress, etc. Ignore all that. If they don't like the real you they're not going to like you long term. There are some people who will ding you for not acting all prim and proper in an interview situation, but do you want to work with them? - Flip my mentality around. They're the ones that need the selling, not me. This ties together with the first point but it is a key mentality change. It's easier to just be yourself and stay calm if you can think about the interview in terms of you interviewing them.

acconrad 11y ago

Honestly, this article is a bit hyperbolic. He didn't blow the interview - I was expecting an article on being totally unprepared, not able to answer a single question. What happened was he aced the technical portion, and went too theoretical / abstract when they wanted things that were concrete / applicable. That's not blowing it - that's a lack of recent interview experience, and is something he will easily fix and correct in the next interviews. But it was refreshing to see that he received actionable feedback from the interviewers, rather than the straight "sorry we can't move forward" boilerplate that usually has to happen.

ohitsdom 11y ago
Totally agreed. > Failing so spectacularly in an interview shook me to my core. He didn't fail spectacularly, he just didn't get the job. He's lucky he got actionable feedback from a friend to improve. Most bigger companies won't give a reason for a rejection nowadays for legal reasons. I, however, have truly failed spectacularly in an interview. While it temporarily killed my confidence, it did make me a better interviewee in the long run. I learned the concepts that stumped me in the interview, and I had a little less fear in the next interview since it couldn't get worse.
- braythwayt 11y ago
  Perhaps instead of "failed spectacularly," I "snatched defeat from the jaws of victory."
  - ohitsdom 11y ago
    That seems like an incredibly accurate description about what happened to you.
braythwayt 11y ago
This was much more fundamental than just not answering questions properly. I realized that I was not thinking clearly about the difference between specifics and generalities, and not communicating properly, in all sorts of conversations, not just when I was being interviewed. For example, I was also interviewing people, having one-on-ones with reports, and so forth. I think this particular interview was a catalyst for rethinking the way I approached communication in general.

modarts 11y ago

That company appears to be pretty bad at hiring executive technical management.

mizchief2 11y ago

Anyone else first read that as "interviewer"?

didgeoridoo 11y ago

Reg doesn't go into exactly when this interview occurred, but I have to imagine it was quite a few years ago. The conversation today should go something more like: Interviewer 1: "So, Reginald, how many years of Angular Bootstrap Scrum experience do you have?" Interviewer 2: "Fuck off, this is raganwald. You're hired."

braythwayt 11y ago
This is from when I knew both programming languages: C++ and Java.

bayer_rggb 11y ago

I saw this video where Bryan Cranston gives advice to young actors. He basically says, don't go into an audition 'looking' for a job, or 'wanting' a job. Go in, do your thing, portray the best you and get out. If they want you, you'll get the job, If they don't ... why would you want to work at a place where they don't want you ? This was eye opening for me. Totally changed the way I went to interviews. (Can't find the video now :( )

braythwayt 11y ago
> portray the best you and get out Very true. But I contend that I did not portray the best me. And that is a valuable lesson. This essay is not about the job I didn't get, it's about the lesson I learned about myself.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  Can you be sure you would have been given the job if you had portrayed your best you? It's possible you simply dodged a bullet. Maybe this company misclassified a valuable resource, and (for all anyone knows) hired someone less able instead. Given your practical background, why did no one ask for practical examples? I agree with the general point - interviews are really about proving you can save time and make money, and everything else is a warm-up. But still - the hiring process is notoriously unreliable, and it's going to be interesting to see where this start-up is a few years from now.
  - braythwayt 11y ago
    This was more than ten years ago. I'd like to point out that they did ask specific questions, I was just enamored of generalizing at that point in my life, and treated every specific question as an invitation to generalize.
js2 11y ago
"Bryan Cranston's Advice to Aspiring Actors" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1WiCGq-PcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1WiCGq-PcY Thanks for the tip. I hadn't seen this video before.

weiclout 11y ago

I've just blown a technical interview. Not like this though. I've got lots of experience, know my languages inside out and have several launched products to millions of people. I did every problem in the recommended book (CtCI) and know data structures and algorithms well. I wasn’t prepared for the nerves though. I interviewed at a large social network recently. 3 out of the 5 onsites went amazingly well. 1 was okay and the last one totally tanked. It wasn’t a particularly hard question, but I didn’t crack it immediately so started to panic. What made it 10x worse was that the interviewer sat in complete silence, not responding to any of my ideas. I followed all the recommended strategies: Throwing out a brute force solution, discussing what you are thinking (incidentally, I said the correct solution very early on!), trying different data structures - but he said nothing and checked his phone. When I got the call, I was absolutely devastated. I had put 3 months of preparation into this and it was all gone in 30 minutes. The recruiter couldn’t believe it as he thought I was a shoe-in. I told him about the interviewer and he was furious. He said he would pass that on as feedback, but there was nothing he could do - they have to respect the process. I appreciate the humility in this article. As much as I want to blame the interviewer, the process, how technical interviews are broken, how that company isn’t all that, etc etc - the most fruitful thing I can do is learn what went wrong and how I can overcome it next time. In repairing my shattered self confidence, I’ve found this very helpful: “Doing poorly on your Google interview could mean a couple things, if you're a good engineer….Which of the two evaluations is more meaningful? A) A few hours with busy people who don't know you trying to guess how good you are, with only a few minutes of a problem they're familiar with as a probe. B) Years of successful performance in your career. https://www.quora.com/I-felt-I-was-a-pretty-good-software-engineer-with-a-successful-career-but-I-did-quite-poorly-in-my-Google-interview-does-this-mean-Im-not-as-good-an-engineer-as-I-thought?srid=z06&share=f787395d https://www.quora.com/I-felt-I-was-a-pretty-good-software-en...

HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
but he said nothing and checked his phone I realize that it's easy for me to say this, and I sympathize with your nervousness at the time. But this is an opportunity for you to ask both the immediate interviewer and his superior (assuming he will also interview you) just how serious they are about finding a candidate if they can't even extend basic courtesy to the people they invite in. Hell, if his manager was going to interview me, I'd have use that opportunity to ask if that was the kind of environment I would be in working for them and exactly what drove the last person in the open position to leave. There is no excuse for that kind of rudeness. Use it to your advantage.

Beltiras 11y ago

I had the weirdest let-down after an interview this summer. Like the author I thought it had gone fine but something entirely else was going on. The interviewer let me know the reason I was not chosen was that I used agressive micro-expressions and lacked diplomacy. I don't know if my love for technical excellence (a topic broached quite fully during the interview) or my anecdote of an anti-pattern at a previous employer was really presented with toxicity but my takeaway is that sometimes you have just been set up for failure and nothing can be done to salvage your chances.

giaour 11y ago
You dodged a bullet. Any interviewer who judges you based on "micro-expressions" would have been insufferable as a manager.
mixmastamyk 11y ago
What are "agressive micro-expressions" ?
- mchu4545 11y ago
  Keeping your arms crossed, moving your head back from the conversation, tensing of the body, etc.
  - seanccox 11y ago
    They could also be signs of a defensive response on the part of the interviewee, who may be nervous. It is also a typical response of any person trying to maintain their sense of personal space.
  - chucksmash 11y ago
    If that's what I were worried about then I think I'd just leave it at, "we didn't feel like our personalities meshed well" or "we don't think you are a culture fit" and leave it at that. "Aggressive micro-expressions" sounds aggressively silly.
  - 11y ago

Alex3917 11y ago

> When talking with others, be aware of when they want to understand the specifics, and when they want to understand the general ideas. I think this might be the wrong takeaway. In reality when people say they want specific examples then they want specific examples, and when they say they want general principles they also want specific examples. If they ask for a general principle then maybe throw that in as the last sentence, but most people people simply aren't able to process abstract ideas, even if they think they're able to.

BurningFrog 11y ago

One weird thing I notice is how people say "countries such as Spain and Greece" when they actually mean "Spain and Greece". Do they feel like speaking in generalities is more prestigious? Is it as a hedge in case there are more examples they don't know about?

tedunangst 11y ago
"Countries such as Spain and Greece" sounds like it may include Italy. Now I'm curious what properties Spain and Greece have that Italy doesn't.
gaius 11y ago
Journalists call them PIIGS now, which some find objectionable. Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain.
mod 11y ago
I notice that a lot in political debates. "Socialism is working very well in countries such as Sweden, for example." I think it's usually an attempt to infer that there are many more similar situations.

Jemaclus 11y ago

I interviews around a bit this summer. I found one position that, on paper, I was the perfect candidate. I ticked every checkbox the hiring manager mentioned. I met with the hiring manager first, and she loved me and by the end of the meeting was insisting that I come into the office for an onsite with her team. A few days later, I went into the onsite and nailed it. I mean, there were zero indications that I had flopped. By the end of the day, the hiring manager came in, smiling and asked me the good stuff about salary expectations, when i could start, etc. All good responses. Then she said that since this is a senior position, we'd have to run it by the CTO, who was based across the country. They decided to do a Skype interview. As soon as the screen came up, I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. The CTO was relatively hostile and didn't smile throughout the whole session, even when I cracked a joke that never fails to get a response. By the end, she gave a terse "Thanks for your time" and that was it. I didn't get the job. But this is one of those things where I really believe I put my best foot forward, and I really believe that I was a great fit for that job, and I really believe that there was some other factor completely, 100% beyond my control that caused me not to get the job. Maybe she already had someone in mind. Maybe she was having a bad day. Maybe I had something stuck in my teeth, or maybe someone close to her died. Who knows? I'm still really bummed I didn't get that job, but at the end of the day, it is what it is, and I have to move forward. Good luck with your next interview, OP. It'll work out eventually. :)

pnathan 11y ago
Having sat in on a fair number of interviews, there's a lot churning under the surface, particularly at smaller shops, and I'd strongly agree that factors beyond your control are a big deal. One thing I like to do is look at trajectories of companies I had interesting interviews at. It's always enjoyable seeing what I didn't land in (sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always an interesting perspective, since I had a fleeting glimpse into the "inside").
DarthMader 11y ago
What's the joke?
- Jemaclus 11y ago

ryandrake 11y ago

You should consider yourself lucky that you had a way to get actual feedback through a side channel. At most tech companies in the Bay Area, you only know it's a "NO" when you don't hear a word back from them after a few weeks. Rarely, you'll get a generic "Sorry, but your skills are not a match for our position at this time" form E-mail, which although nice, is not really helpful. Good, actionable feedback is very valuable, especially in today's lukewarm job market.

msutherl 11y ago

Did no one else catch the irony that the entire post is itself a generalization based on a specific experience?

braythwayt 11y ago
I wrote an essay describing a general principle, using a specific example from my experience, and closing with specific strategies to employ.
- msutherl 11y ago
  Not a criticism – I enjoyed the piece! Indeed, since you were not asked for a specific example, and after all it is your own blog, you are free to share a generalization without violating anyone's expectations.
sitkack 11y ago
s/irony/genius

d0m 11y ago

Like raising money, you should trust the "No", but not the "Why". There are so many factors that comes into hiring, most of them totally unrelated to you or your performance during the interview.

seanwilson 11y ago

I don't think you should read into it so much to be honest. Everyone looks for different things when giving interviews. You can't please everyone. Also, you say things like "When being interviewed, we must make sure that when asked to speak in specifics, we answer in specifics"...the interviewer should be nudging you in the right direction if you're veering off track. If they don't and judge you for it, they're not doing their part in my opinion.

badloginagain 11y ago

Sounds like a bad interview process to me. Crushed the technical interview, had a glowing recommendation, and "blew" the interview on the whim of a founder- for talking about root principles no less. And instead of pulling you back to specifics (ie. leading you to answer the things they're interested in), the founder dismisses you for failing their totally hidden criteria. From my perspective, the founders blew the interview, not the interviewee. Then again, no one ever complains about the interview process on HN...

brianpgordon 11y ago
This definitely resonates with me as someone occasionally involved in the interview process from the other side. In my experience the scariest bits of "hidden criteria" are brought up under the umbrella of culture fit. Candidates are posed a minefield of completely non-technical-related open-ended questions, with the consequence that the interviewer is free to draw practically any conclusions they want about the candidate's personality and compatibility with the company. These lines of questioning are impressive to recount, as if the interviewer is a clairvoyant with exceptional powers of insight into the candidate's soul. However, I'm skeptical that this process is any better than random at selecting people who would turn out to be valued, effective engineers. It seems to me that, unless there are glaring issues with arrogance/stubbornness/misanthropy, technical chops and engineering skill are what you should optimize for, not personality. I've heard of "objective" interviews based on a rubric with a set number of points for each question and little room for interpretation. I wonder how that works out. I feel like even if it's pretty bad, the interview is so completely terrible and broken right now that it might be an improvement.

mixmastamyk 11y ago

So lucky to get some feedback. I've been on several interviews this year for positions I was well qualified but didn't get. I've gotten zero feedback. Sounds like the writer was qualified. How many good hires are lost because they have only a single interview and there is a misunderstanding?

steven2012 11y ago

I don't know, it sounds more like the interviewers didn't know how to actually interview someone properly. If they have questions they want specifically answered, they should ask them, not just sit around like a meek wallflower. It could be that the OP just prattled on and on, and bored each of his interviewers and went off topic. If that's the case, then it makes sense, because we've all worked with people like that. But if the OP is actually a great candidate, and the interviewers passed on them because the interviewers didn't lead the discussion in the way they wanted, that's their fault, not his.

vinceguidry 11y ago

I thought this was a very insightful article. I had always thought that for those upper-level positions, you would necessarily be talking more about philosophy and mindset than about specific instances. The idea being that you wouldn't be there if your fundamentals didn't stack up. A lot of advice gets bandied about regarding interviews, and worse, a lot of people seem to think it's just a random walk, but really an interview is nothing more than a specific instance of exercising persuasion. Maybe you're successful, maybe you're not, but there's reasons why in either case. Coming to an understanding of all the angles is precisely the benefit of experience. Articles like this help me to understand what the game looks like.

mrdrozdov 11y ago

@braythwayt, if you don't mind answering, when was the interview? and did your current employer know you were interviewing?

braythwayt 11y ago
It was around the turn of the century. I'd prefer not to talk too much about what was going on at my employer-of-the-time. Let's just say that I've maintained a good relationship with my colleagues and managers from that company over the intervening years.
- mrdrozdov 11y ago
  Thank you for the candid response.

justinhj 11y ago

You can't win them all. In another interview the same behaviour the author exhibited in the article could be seen in a positive light "he always sees the big picture not the specific tools, which implies deeper knowledge" If the interview answer is going off track, it's the interviewers prerogative to ask for more specifics and clarification, if that's what they want to learn about the candidate I think you have to be very aware as both an interviewer and interviewee of assumptions you're making about a person and dig deeper to ensure you are right

im_down_w_otp 11y ago

One of my favorite things about how companies interview is how they assume their own competence in actually assessing people at a level that is woefully out of line with reality. For example. "We ask puzzle questions because it helps us figure out how a candidate problem solves." No it doesn't, and not because puzzles are a bad way to assess problem solving, but because you as the interviewer have basically no idea what you're doing when performing the assessment. Typically the interviewer has no clear idea what profile of person they actually need to hire for a given type of job function. Even in the rare case they do have that necessary understanding, they almost certainly have zero training in how to create or identify puzzles that actually align with the kinds of problem solving that match the profile they're looking for. The interviewer will have zero training on what to observe about how the person solves problems and what the signals actually mean. They'll instead almost certainly pick up all the wrong signals and miss all the important ones and interpret the ones they picked up in the wrong way. Usually people tell me they ask certain kinds of puzzle or programming questions because they want to see how the person solves problems, collaborates, communicates, etc. As a quick litmus test I always respond, "When you ask these puzzle questions to your candidates do you already know the answers?" 100% of the time, "Yes, of course." To which I say, "If you already know the answer, you're unable to remove your bias from the way of coming to the solution, and you're learning absolutely nothing about how they communicate or collaborate. Next time ask them a puzzle you don't know the answer to and work on the solution together. Then you'll have half a chance at learning something valuable about the candidate."

gaius 11y ago

There is plenty of evidence that people make up their minds in 10 seconds and the rest is post-hoc justification. You didn't blow it, they just didn't like you, or already had someone else in mind.

kafkaesq 11y ago

I went through all five stages of grief in one conversation: Anger, Denial, Bargaining, Depression, and finally, Acceptance. I blew it. Okay, I had lost this chance. But what could I learn for the next time? Why have we (as candidates) allowed ourself to become so brow-beaten over the years as to nearly always conclude that if an employer fails to read us, that it's automatically because of something we did to "blow it"? That we're the ones who need to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves of, and wallow through a necessary period of mourning and self-reflection before promising ourselves to do better next time? Long, painful lesson learned: it's a two-way street. The interviewers', and the company's overall performance in the process is just as much open to evaluation -- and question -- as that of the candidate. And guess what -- they're just as likely to make mistakes as the candidate; perhaps even more so -- because they've internalized the idea that as the one on the hiring side, they're the ones with X-ray vision to what determines a "perfect fit"; so that if turns out the candidate doesn't hit all the markers they're looking for, then by definition, it's because something the candidate did to screw everything up. In this case, it looks like it may have been the company which "blew it" in passing on this guy. Or maybe not -- we have no way of telling from this distance, and it would be moot to speculate. But I would like to hope that we can get past this tendency to automatically beat ourselves As an aside -- aren't logic problems "over" now, for any but junior positions? Even for senior developers I'd consider them something of a red flag -- a sign that the company doesn't really know why it's doing what it's doing in the hiring process, and is cut-and-pasting from what it thinks other companies are doing. And at the VP level? Reason enough to look the interviewer in the eye, explain (nicely) that you don't think these questions are a good use of their time or yours -- then to thank them for the opportunity, and walk out the door.

braythwayt 11y ago
This was approximately fifteen years ago. And it wasn't just any old interview, it was for a company where a friend worked. I wanted to work with my friend, I wanted to work on the problem they were solving. I was so excited about the opportunity that I was actually considering moving from Toronto to California just to work there. But yeah, we should not normally be this invested in the outcome of a job interview.

treve 11y ago

It's funny that the behavior that caused the author to blow the interview is also perfectly demonstrated in the article. The author moves from a specific issue (not correctly anticipating what the the interviewer wants to hear) to generalizing in a much broader context ;)

braythwayt 11y ago
...But then returned to specifics at the end. :-)

hobaak 11y ago

I am more impressed with your project management experience with agile. Did you follow agile process strictly in that company? I love to hear your experience and can be new blog post.

lzecon 11y ago

Great post. I've seen feedback from hundreds and hundreds of interviews, both technical and non, and by far the most common reason for rejecting someone is they did not answer the interviewer's question directly. Speaking in specifics is important, but more broadly, you didn't do well because you didn't actually answer the question asked. People often get tripped up in their explaination of the answer, or their theory or thinking behind it and just forget to say what they actually did.

mixmastamyk 11y ago

That's another failing of tech interviews, you normally get only one chance to perform. It is a bit like having one chance to write a correct program, without possibility of iteration/debugging. How often will this produce a correct result? Rarely.

wrs 11y ago

Speaking as one person who has been interviewing developers (and others) for 20 years, getting to specifics is something I try to do in every interview. It's just not that difficult to B.S. your way through an interview with great-sounding generalities even when you don't know how to actually do anything (think FizzBuzz). It's also an actual problem in real life that some people would rather live in the abstract and never want get into the details of actually getting work done. The only way I know to clarify that in an interview is to drill way deep into the specifics of something you've done. If you actually did the work, and knew what you were doing, then that'll be pretty obvious -- and you can certainly motivate the specifics with principles as you go. However, quite often I have to really push to get the specifics even if they are there. People don't expect that I want to be bored with details, or something. So I've learned to be very explicit that I want boring details, lots of them. It sounds like the interviewers in this case didn't do that, whether deliberately or not.

coderKen 11y ago

really learnt a lot from reading this. Thanks for sharing.