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My social anxiety makes interviewing very difficult. I freeze up to a single-track-mind. Every spare bit of processing available is used up on guessing social s

My social anxiety makes interviewing very difficult. I freeze up to a single-track-mind. Every spare bit of processing available is used up on guessing social situation around me. I recently had an old boss try to bring me on to a new job with him, but wasn't able to get me through the interview phase, despite knowing I'm capable, because my interviews with the rest of the team went so bad. I've been a software engineer over ten years. All of the positions that I have been offered have come from especially kind/empathetic teams, and the interviews usually focused more on conversation than quizzing. It requires an unfortunate amount of rejection before coming across my more selective criteria, but I guess that is what it is.

zip1234 9y ago
Our coding test is over Skype and a collaborative editor. Is that a scenario when you would freeze up? Genuinely curious as there were a few cases where it seemed that people were way nervous.
- socanxdev-thrwy 9y ago
  I personally would. Any situation where I'm being judged by strangers in real-time sets off social anxiety. Some things that help me in that situation are when there's some light/friendly conversation preceding the test, or when there's a limited the us-vs-them size, like only one or two interviewers at a time.
- taurath 9y ago
  Yes very much so. The problem is that it’s such a high pressure environment, something that is the exact opposite of ideal thinking position. The focus is rarely on past accomplishments and a “bad day” of white boarding basically makes you look like an imposter. I feel like someone could get everything they needed to know about how well I code by drilling into specifics about what I’ve done.
- zerkten 9y ago
  I think there is a greater chance that I would freeze up in this situation than I would on the job with a new problem, or an executive breathing down my neck. I don't think I'd react that way consistently, but I know it's further down the discomfort continuum. In the test: * I'm under pressure to impress, but also be my true self. I've had little contact with you so I'm not sure how to gauge all the feedback when I have increased sensitivity. * Sometimes don't have a real calibration for the level of the test. I've done the recommended prep, but it doesn't feel indicative of the test, or the interviewer inserts and additional level in before we've achieved the basics of the test. * What if I want to rough something out, but feel I'm exposing what I know would be a weakness from my pre-test assessment? I've just gone and made a hash of something I knew I needed to know. I'd say "how you collaborate" would be the biggest factor. If you start out with some code and fix up something, have me fix up something, and progressively raise the difficulty, then I'm much less likely to freeze up. I don't believe I'm particularly unique, but I don't find many tests delivered in this manner. It's more a case of "here you go for your practical test, show me what you can do kiddo" which just demonstrates how little programmers know about assessment, interviewing, and psychology. I'm going to state the following because I think the question was directed to one individual who identified as having a particular disorder. I don't believe I have any specific disorder that would cause me to freeze up. I'm an introvert, tested under Myers-Briggs as an INTP (if you consider that any value), and am OK in networking events. In jobs I've always tended to end up in regular conversations with skip-level managers etc.
Consultant32452 9y ago
I will put people on the white board, but never quiz them about random trivia, nor do I ask them to write pseudo-code. I have them draw the main components of some system they worked on and tell me a little about the role/technology on each component. Then I ask general, high level questions about some changes they claim to have made on some component. Whenever possible I have the recruiter inform the person that this will be the format of the discussion. This allows them to come prepared for the types of questions I'll ask and lets them guide the conversation towards something they feel comfortable talking about. How do you think that would have been with regards to your anxiety?
- socanxdev-thrwy 9y ago
  That sounds like relatively low-anxiety interview format. Knowing the specific format, and subject if possible, ahead of time would be incredibly helpful for preparing mentally. And speaking of projects that you've already done, vs speculating about something new, is a free confidence boost.
  - taurath 9y ago
    I definitely second this - coming in context free and having no real idea about how to prepare is a very difficult aspect when it comes to interview anxiety (the other is the social dynamic). Even a list of data structures and alg properties one would be expected to know to pass an interview would be helpful when the interview questions could be outside of previous domain scope (web developers implementing b trees from memory, for example). Proving that you can groc fundamental things should only be part of the interview and hopefully not even the most important part. On the other hand, I’ve had take home assignments that were total wastes of time because all they really cared about was whether you coded in their particular OOP fashion. I made a functional demo which performed well but they neglected to mention that they were looking for OOP design paradigms. Mention should be given of current methods they use so that you don’t spend a week going down a path that won’t tell them how you will fit into the team.
  - Consultant32452 9y ago
    I've never understood the point of asking people questions about any topic they haven't specifically said they know something about. If you say you wrote a class/method to query a db, I might ask you high level questions like what is the communications mechanism between your software and the database (looking for anything that means network: socket, tcp/ip, etc.). Then if the language is java I might try to get you to tell me about using the try/catch/finally structure and why you'd do that. Basically, I don't care if you can regurgitate facts, I just want to dig deep enough to be convinced that you actually accomplished what you said you'd accomplished.

zip1234 9y ago

Our coding test is over Skype and a collaborative editor. Is that a scenario when you would freeze up? Genuinely curious as there were a few cases where it seemed that people were way nervous.

socanxdev-thrwy 9y ago
I personally would. Any situation where I'm being judged by strangers in real-time sets off social anxiety. Some things that help me in that situation are when there's some light/friendly conversation preceding the test, or when there's a limited the us-vs-them size, like only one or two interviewers at a time.
taurath 9y ago
Yes very much so. The problem is that it’s such a high pressure environment, something that is the exact opposite of ideal thinking position. The focus is rarely on past accomplishments and a “bad day” of white boarding basically makes you look like an imposter. I feel like someone could get everything they needed to know about how well I code by drilling into specifics about what I’ve done.
zerkten 9y ago
I think there is a greater chance that I would freeze up in this situation than I would on the job with a new problem, or an executive breathing down my neck. I don't think I'd react that way consistently, but I know it's further down the discomfort continuum. In the test: * I'm under pressure to impress, but also be my true self. I've had little contact with you so I'm not sure how to gauge all the feedback when I have increased sensitivity. * Sometimes don't have a real calibration for the level of the test. I've done the recommended prep, but it doesn't feel indicative of the test, or the interviewer inserts and additional level in before we've achieved the basics of the test. * What if I want to rough something out, but feel I'm exposing what I know would be a weakness from my pre-test assessment? I've just gone and made a hash of something I knew I needed to know. I'd say "how you collaborate" would be the biggest factor. If you start out with some code and fix up something, have me fix up something, and progressively raise the difficulty, then I'm much less likely to freeze up. I don't believe I'm particularly unique, but I don't find many tests delivered in this manner. It's more a case of "here you go for your practical test, show me what you can do kiddo" which just demonstrates how little programmers know about assessment, interviewing, and psychology. I'm going to state the following because I think the question was directed to one individual who identified as having a particular disorder. I don't believe I have any specific disorder that would cause me to freeze up. I'm an introvert, tested under Myers-Briggs as an INTP (if you consider that any value), and am OK in networking events. In jobs I've always tended to end up in regular conversations with skip-level managers etc.

Consultant32452 9y ago

I will put people on the white board, but never quiz them about random trivia, nor do I ask them to write pseudo-code. I have them draw the main components of some system they worked on and tell me a little about the role/technology on each component. Then I ask general, high level questions about some changes they claim to have made on some component. Whenever possible I have the recruiter inform the person that this will be the format of the discussion. This allows them to come prepared for the types of questions I'll ask and lets them guide the conversation towards something they feel comfortable talking about. How do you think that would have been with regards to your anxiety?

socanxdev-thrwy 9y ago
That sounds like relatively low-anxiety interview format. Knowing the specific format, and subject if possible, ahead of time would be incredibly helpful for preparing mentally. And speaking of projects that you've already done, vs speculating about something new, is a free confidence boost.
- taurath 9y ago
  I definitely second this - coming in context free and having no real idea about how to prepare is a very difficult aspect when it comes to interview anxiety (the other is the social dynamic). Even a list of data structures and alg properties one would be expected to know to pass an interview would be helpful when the interview questions could be outside of previous domain scope (web developers implementing b trees from memory, for example). Proving that you can groc fundamental things should only be part of the interview and hopefully not even the most important part. On the other hand, I’ve had take home assignments that were total wastes of time because all they really cared about was whether you coded in their particular OOP fashion. I made a functional demo which performed well but they neglected to mention that they were looking for OOP design paradigms. Mention should be given of current methods they use so that you don’t spend a week going down a path that won’t tell them how you will fit into the team.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  I've never understood the point of asking people questions about any topic they haven't specifically said they know something about. If you say you wrote a class/method to query a db, I might ask you high level questions like what is the communications mechanism between your software and the database (looking for anything that means network: socket, tcp/ip, etc.). Then if the language is java I might try to get you to tell me about using the try/catch/finally structure and why you'd do that. Basically, I don't care if you can regurgitate facts, I just want to dig deep enough to be convinced that you actually accomplished what you said you'd accomplished.