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Just like being late to a physical interview is a bad signal (sure there was traffic but what does it say about your planning skills?) I feel totally justified

Just like being late to a physical interview is a bad signal (sure there was traffic but what does it say about your planning skills?) I feel totally justified "reading" into how people are on their zoom interviews. Recently I interviewed someone and kept hearing another conversation at the same time. I finally asked him about it and he said "oh yeah that's my wife doing a meeting, let me go to another room." It's hard for me to imagine someone's throught process that led them to think it's fine to have the conversation with another meeting in the room when there was another option easily available, but it was a quick "tell" that this person has bad judgement, low empathy or simply doesn't care - none of which made me want to hire him. To a smaller degree I judge people's technology. I am interviewing for technical roles and if you are a year+ into WFH and you are still having silly wifi issues or haven't figured out how to sound clear on your mike, it's a bad sign about your ability to troubleshoot and solve problems (or again, low empathy - if you care that your video constantly stutters and your colleagues can't make you out, you'd figure out a wired solution or upgrade your router or whatever) An interview is an assessment of your capabilities and there's such a thing as basic competence. If you can't nail Zooming after so much time, the whole thing is a little suspect. I'd take a very different attitude if I was hiring for a non technical roles where solving tech problems is far remote from the job.

rokobobo 5y ago
I would encourage you to be a bit more open-minded when judging people with technical issues. Debugging WiFi or microphone might seem intuitive to you, but there’s a good amount of people out there that are experts at coding or data science, who haven’t had to deal with any of the scrappiness. Of course, if you’re hiring for a startup and that level of scrappiness is part of the job, by all means, continue to extract signal.
- dathinab 5y ago
  > Debugging WiFi Honestly, debugging WiFi issues is a nightmare I don't expect anyone to be guaranteed in doing a good job (except someone specialized in Wireless Access Points with specialized equipment). I have seen more then a view cases where ISP provided Routers sometimes arbitrary caused havoc and in some countries you can't just switch out the Router and the issues might not be limited to WiFi but look like WiFi issues and if you are unlucky they are a temp. problem with your ISP and... The best choice is to not use WiFi if you need to do Video Conferences, but sadly this is not always the case. (E.g. in my case I only have WiFi due to reasons I can't really change and while it works completely fine I would be very worried if I ever had to do a Conference around 1-3AM in the night, because my ISP tend to has issues (short for max. 10min) around that time from time to time, and all other ISPs I can buy go through that same ISP and have the same issue... Well it's in the middle of the night so luckily not a problem for me.)
- xyzelement 5y ago
  >> there’s a good amount of people out there that are experts at coding or data science, who haven’t had to deal with any of the scrappiness. Of course, if you’re hiring for a startup and that level of scrappiness is part of the job, by all means, continue to extract signal. I guess in my mind scrappiness (or just resourcefulness, which maybe the same thing) is a requirement for any job I'd hire for. In this day and age of WFH, your internet connectivity is clutch to your ability to do work and whether it's intuitive to you or not, you have to figure it out (same as in the physical space, whether you like commuting or not, you have to figure out some way to reliably show up at the office.) Even if you're not technical where troubleshooting wifi is up your alley, you could solve the problem with: 1. Money. Go buy the most expensive insane router and see what it does for you. 2. People. Ask your friends whether they have good wifi and how they got there. Pay someone to help you. 3. Brute force. Can't fix the wifi? Run a big dumb cable down your hallway into your office. 4. Get creative. Can you work out of a co-working space? Can you drop by your friend to use their basement? At the end of the day, you need connectivity to do your job and if you can't figure that out you're gonna struggle at the job as well. So open mindedness is one thing but realism matters too. You just can't be successful in a WFH setup if your job requires meetings and your wifi can't handle it.
  - timcederman 5y ago
    I think you could work on your empathy for the candidate. Sometimes the internet drops out for a minute and then comes back. Maybe that happens once a week. Is it worth going to a co-working space (during a pandemic) so there isn't a temporary issue during a Zoom interview? It's a fairly extreme position to take.
    - xyzelement 5y ago
      Yes look if they have one quick connectivity hick-up or things genuinely go badly in a one-off way, there's ways to handle that (eg reschedule.) But if people have consistently shitty wifi and they don't bother to mitigate that even for an interview, that's a different story. A professional understands that success takes some prep - and if you have one hour to convey to someone that you're qualified for a job you want, but you don't line up basic things like good connectivity -- it's the same as not bothering to find a clean shirt to wear to a real interview.
- nkohari 5y ago
  If they're interviewing for a remote position, then their ability to use the equipment that allows them to communicate is part of the interview. There might be intermittent problems (internet outage, power outage, etc.) but if they are just entirely unable to manage videoconferencing during an interview then it doesn't bode well for them using it day-to-day.
thih9 5y ago
> If you can't nail Zooming after so much time, the whole thing is a little suspect. This assumes they spent a lot of time Zooming already, which seems a bit risky. E.g. some workplaces focus more on text chats, emails, etc.
- xyzelement 5y ago
  That's actually my point. There's an overall competency thing about how prepared you are. A few months ago, I was interviewed over BlueJeans which is a video conf software I'd never used before. I made sure the client installed and detected my mic/camera well ahead of the interview, as well as playing around with various settings for optimal experience. I cared about the interview and it seemed the least I could do to prepare in this way. It doesn't make sense that someone wouldn't do that - and if they don't do it and the tech blows up on them, that is a bit of a data point for the interview.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    OK, but you are going to miss good people over silly IT stuff like this. Google made "techstop" because they want people focusing energy on real work not helpdesk self-support.
    - xyzelement 5y ago
      Again you are completely missing the point. It's not about "do you have the IT skill" it's about "you have a major problem (connectivity) - can you find some way to solve it"
      - thih9 5y ago
        I think you're missing the GP's point. What you call a major problem (connectivity that doesn't interrupt a video call) isn't a major problem for many (perhaps most) people. Your hiring process seems to favour candidates whose streaming setup is above average; so you're more likely to hire people whose hobbies include YouTube streaming than people who use email to send git patches.
dathinab 5y ago
> having silly wifi issues Except that this "silly wifi issues" might be unexpectable temporary, but in short time unfix-able issues of your ISP which just popped up recently. > can't nail Zooming You kinda imply people use Zoom all the time but they don't, they might use video-conference systems all the time but not necessary Zoom, and Zoom is kinda well known to sometimes have arbitrary issues as long as you are not on a Mac with the native Zoom client. When doing interviews recently Zoom was the only Video Conference software which sometimes had arbitrary issues which where far beyond "it's selected a non-existing microphone" or similar, i.e. short term unfixable issues. Worse they sometimes popped up out of nowhere even after doing other calls where it worked... (Other conference software which had been used included MS Teams, Google Hangouts, Jitsi Meets. All in the end providing a better interview experience then Zoom, even through zoom might be better if it works...).
- ghaff 5y ago
  So, for a series of video interviews I was conducting last summer through an outside agency, I decided to up my game and use my DSLR given that Canon's webcam software now supported my somewhat older model. Tested it and all. But when I did tech check with the agency they were having some problems with it (which they said were not uncommon) so I went back to my high-end Webcam which was fine. ADDED: And things like this were the reason that the agency had half-hour tech checks with senior professionals before taping the interviews. (And still usually had us redo one or two segments because of glitches.) I was also in a workshop last summer. Power was out for a couple of days. I used my cellphone but I have lousy reception where I live so it barely worked. Even drove to my local library to see if I could leach Internet from the parking lot but I couldn't. So lots of out of control things can happen.
hawaiianbrah 5y ago
I live on a houseboat in Seattle. I’m a software developer that’s been working remote even before the pandemic. It’s great generally, but the worst thing about houseboat life is the crappy internet. I somewhat recently upgraded to 40mbps down, but that isn’t super consistent. Internet problems don’t always have easy or reasonable solutions. I’m wired in but still sometimes have to drop from calls because it lags and stutters. Judging someone for their internet problems doesn’t make any sense to me.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- xyzelement 5y ago
  You say: >> Judging someone for their internet problems doesn’t make any sense to me but also: >> sometimes have to drop from calls because it lags and stutters. That sounds insanely unfair to people you work with. If you're in a role where meetings are infrequent and unimportant, maybe this flies. But if you work with/for me and you constantly drop calls so the entire group has to wait for you while you freeze, can't hear what you're saying, etc etc etc - that's not a dynamic I want to inflict on my organization. There's some inherent tradeoff between how you want to live and what jobs you can take on. Back in the work-from-the-office days, you had to limit your housing options by where you can reach the office daily in a reasonable time. With WFH, your ability to connect to the internet is analogous to your ability to get to the office. If your choice of living on a houseboat means that you can't reliably connect to key meetings, it means you're not able to take on jobs where meetings are key. It's as simple as that and is a totally reasonable tradeoff to make, as long as you're making it consciously.
  - jameshush 5y ago
    Also can't agree enough. I have someone on my team who lives on a farm in a remote part of India. His area has power outages 1-2 times a week. Does he just let video calls end when the power goes out? No, he got a generator. It's his choice to live in that area. The amount of money he saves by not being in a major city more than enough covers the cost of a generator. As an IC it seems like a small inconvenience, but as a manager having other team members and other departments complain about so-and-so for being unresponsive and cutting out of calls constantly is just one more problem I have to deal with.
dkdbejwi383 5y ago
I get where you’re coming from, but I personally can’t do anything about my bad wifi, because I rent a room in a shared flat and don’t have control over it. The router is in another room and I can’t run a cable there either. There’s also going to be noise I don’t have full control over, because there are three other people here (who you can sometimes hear despite us being in different rooms), and it’s summer so I either need the window open (my room is on the ground floor near a noisy road) or a fan on. I’d urge a bit more empathy before coming to the conclusion that people are lazy/incompetent.
- xyzelement 5y ago
  The world isn't black and white, so if someone was in your situation and explained it upfront, I would be fine with it. It's the silent "I am just going to expect the interviewer to put up with all my issues" assumption that really bugs me. It also depends on what role you are interviewing for. If your role is mainly going to be heads-down maybe it's OK. But if you're interviewing for a role where you'll have to be meeting lots of people all day, then the situation you describe above may actually be unfair to your coworkers.
- rahimnathwani 5y ago
  Not disagreeing with your general point but, if bad wifi is a problem for you and you can't run a cable, consider: A) plugging a better wifi router or AP into the existing router, or B) Using a pair of powerline ethernet adapters, or C) Same as A, but using a pair of mesh routers, with the main one set in 'access point' mode. None of these require a cable run between two rooms. Unless the flat is huge or has concrete walls, one of these solutions will work. (I'm assuming the problem is with the wifi connection between you and the router, and not the connection between your router and the internet.)
  - thrashh 5y ago
    No, there is no guarantee one of those solutions will work. source: 1000 sq ft flat, no concrete. Already tried all 3, and I pay good money for networking equipment. Currently run cables for 2 APs
Yoric 5y ago
> Just like being late to a physical interview is a bad signal (sure there was traffic but what does it say about your planning skills?) I feel totally justified "reading" into how people are on their zoom interviews. Fun fact: depending on your cultural background, one person's "late" is another person's "giving you time to prepare". It is my understanding that Anglo-Saxon and German education insist on starting a meeting at the time written on the calendar, while some other countries understand the time written on the calendar as the moment the main presenter (or interviewer, in that case) is getting ready, so if you arrive then, you embarrass them and/or prevent them from doing their work. Coming from a Latin country, it took me some time to understand the unspoken rules for working in a US company. After ~10 years, I'm not sure I still know them all. All along the way, I have been judged for compliance with these rules that culturally make no sense to me and nobody cared to explain. There are dozens of examples I could quote, including different meanings of "Yes" and "No" or "I" or "responsibility". Where I'm coming at is: please don't be too fast to judge people on unspoken rules, especially across cultures.
- recursive 5y ago
  I'm not even from another culture, but the persistent use of "no" for "yes" drives me nuts. https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/no+yeah https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/no+yeah
- xyzelement 5y ago
  I've done business all over the world and understand that the meaning of time is very different between say Switzerland (on time = 5 mins early) and Portugal (on time = sometime same day). But, that's not relevant to the point I am making as a US based employer who was interviewing for a NYC position. Show up on time.
  - regularjack 5y ago
    I'm Portuguese, and to me, on time means on time.
heavyset_go 5y ago
You should type this up in an email and send it to candidates before interviews so they can judge whether or being judged like this themselves is worth their time. It would be the empathetic thing to do with respect to their time and money, after all.
- xyzelement 5y ago
  Actually, it might be helpful for you to understand that an overwhelming majority of good interviewers are evaluating you on far more signals than just the literal correctness of your answers. The interviewer's job is to assess whether you're going to work out and be an asset to the organization. They also assume that what you're showing in the interview is a much rosier picture of yourself than you'll normally be. So if you're late for an interview, the interviewer has to assume you're gonna be late to stuff all the time. If you can't solve your connectivity problems, the interviewer has to assume you're gonna have all sorts of other problems that will drag down yours and the team's productivity. It also shouldn't surprise you if you bad-mouth your old employer, the interviewer is going to assume that you're insanely negative and divisive. etc. It's not "being judged" - the company has to make a high-risk high-impact decision to hire you, and your behavior may just "leak" the information that you're not a good bet. You may think this is unpleasant but it's just fact of the decision making process. If you make it harder for people to say "yes" to you, you will get "no" much more often. Simple as that. >> to do with respect to their time and money I don't understand the "money" part. Are you paying companies to interview you? This is a sure sign of a scam.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    > Actually, it might be helpful for you to understand that an overwhelming majority of good interviewers are evaluating you on far more signals than just the literal correctness of your answers. That’s a two way street though. If a candidate gets the feeling that they’re being judged for things that are outside of their control, they might decide that you or your company isn’t worth dealing with. And in this labor market, the candidate might have more options than the hiring manager does. Some of the things you’re talking about are well within the normal bounds, such as timeliness. But some of the stuff you’re talking about edges up to the “not your business” line. If I felt that an interviewer got annoyed at me for an internet issue, I certainly might come to the conclusion that they’re unreasonable and take a pass. (I also think your comment is a bit patronizing. I suspect that most people who have interviewed are aware that they’re being judged on more than just their answers)
Nimitz14 5y ago
You've gotten a lot of pushback but I just want to say I totally agree with your POV.
- xyzelement 5y ago
  I appreciate that, this is always the pattern with recruiting/hiring/comp topics. It seems like there's a well meaning percentage of the population that has a strong view of how things ought to be (eg "connectivity isn't 100% your fault so you shouldn't be judged for it") without realizing that it's completely untenable ("how can I possibly hire you if I can't hear anything you say because your connection is bad.")

rokobobo 5y ago

I would encourage you to be a bit more open-minded when judging people with technical issues. Debugging WiFi or microphone might seem intuitive to you, but there’s a good amount of people out there that are experts at coding or data science, who haven’t had to deal with any of the scrappiness. Of course, if you’re hiring for a startup and that level of scrappiness is part of the job, by all means, continue to extract signal.

dathinab 5y ago
> Debugging WiFi Honestly, debugging WiFi issues is a nightmare I don't expect anyone to be guaranteed in doing a good job (except someone specialized in Wireless Access Points with specialized equipment). I have seen more then a view cases where ISP provided Routers sometimes arbitrary caused havoc and in some countries you can't just switch out the Router and the issues might not be limited to WiFi but look like WiFi issues and if you are unlucky they are a temp. problem with your ISP and... The best choice is to not use WiFi if you need to do Video Conferences, but sadly this is not always the case. (E.g. in my case I only have WiFi due to reasons I can't really change and while it works completely fine I would be very worried if I ever had to do a Conference around 1-3AM in the night, because my ISP tend to has issues (short for max. 10min) around that time from time to time, and all other ISPs I can buy go through that same ISP and have the same issue... Well it's in the middle of the night so luckily not a problem for me.)
xyzelement 5y ago
>> there’s a good amount of people out there that are experts at coding or data science, who haven’t had to deal with any of the scrappiness. Of course, if you’re hiring for a startup and that level of scrappiness is part of the job, by all means, continue to extract signal. I guess in my mind scrappiness (or just resourcefulness, which maybe the same thing) is a requirement for any job I'd hire for. In this day and age of WFH, your internet connectivity is clutch to your ability to do work and whether it's intuitive to you or not, you have to figure it out (same as in the physical space, whether you like commuting or not, you have to figure out some way to reliably show up at the office.) Even if you're not technical where troubleshooting wifi is up your alley, you could solve the problem with: 1. Money. Go buy the most expensive insane router and see what it does for you. 2. People. Ask your friends whether they have good wifi and how they got there. Pay someone to help you. 3. Brute force. Can't fix the wifi? Run a big dumb cable down your hallway into your office. 4. Get creative. Can you work out of a co-working space? Can you drop by your friend to use their basement? At the end of the day, you need connectivity to do your job and if you can't figure that out you're gonna struggle at the job as well. So open mindedness is one thing but realism matters too. You just can't be successful in a WFH setup if your job requires meetings and your wifi can't handle it.
- timcederman 5y ago
  I think you could work on your empathy for the candidate. Sometimes the internet drops out for a minute and then comes back. Maybe that happens once a week. Is it worth going to a co-working space (during a pandemic) so there isn't a temporary issue during a Zoom interview? It's a fairly extreme position to take.
  - xyzelement 5y ago
    Yes look if they have one quick connectivity hick-up or things genuinely go badly in a one-off way, there's ways to handle that (eg reschedule.) But if people have consistently shitty wifi and they don't bother to mitigate that even for an interview, that's a different story. A professional understands that success takes some prep - and if you have one hour to convey to someone that you're qualified for a job you want, but you don't line up basic things like good connectivity -- it's the same as not bothering to find a clean shirt to wear to a real interview.
nkohari 5y ago
If they're interviewing for a remote position, then their ability to use the equipment that allows them to communicate is part of the interview. There might be intermittent problems (internet outage, power outage, etc.) but if they are just entirely unable to manage videoconferencing during an interview then it doesn't bode well for them using it day-to-day.

thih9 5y ago

> If you can't nail Zooming after so much time, the whole thing is a little suspect. This assumes they spent a lot of time Zooming already, which seems a bit risky. E.g. some workplaces focus more on text chats, emails, etc.

xyzelement 5y ago
That's actually my point. There's an overall competency thing about how prepared you are. A few months ago, I was interviewed over BlueJeans which is a video conf software I'd never used before. I made sure the client installed and detected my mic/camera well ahead of the interview, as well as playing around with various settings for optimal experience. I cared about the interview and it seemed the least I could do to prepare in this way. It doesn't make sense that someone wouldn't do that - and if they don't do it and the tech blows up on them, that is a bit of a data point for the interview.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  OK, but you are going to miss good people over silly IT stuff like this. Google made "techstop" because they want people focusing energy on real work not helpdesk self-support.
  - xyzelement 5y ago
    Again you are completely missing the point. It's not about "do you have the IT skill" it's about "you have a major problem (connectivity) - can you find some way to solve it"
    - thih9 5y ago
      I think you're missing the GP's point. What you call a major problem (connectivity that doesn't interrupt a video call) isn't a major problem for many (perhaps most) people. Your hiring process seems to favour candidates whose streaming setup is above average; so you're more likely to hire people whose hobbies include YouTube streaming than people who use email to send git patches.

dathinab 5y ago

> having silly wifi issues Except that this "silly wifi issues" might be unexpectable temporary, but in short time unfix-able issues of your ISP which just popped up recently. > can't nail Zooming You kinda imply people use Zoom all the time but they don't, they might use video-conference systems all the time but not necessary Zoom, and Zoom is kinda well known to sometimes have arbitrary issues as long as you are not on a Mac with the native Zoom client. When doing interviews recently Zoom was the only Video Conference software which sometimes had arbitrary issues which where far beyond "it's selected a non-existing microphone" or similar, i.e. short term unfixable issues. Worse they sometimes popped up out of nowhere even after doing other calls where it worked... (Other conference software which had been used included MS Teams, Google Hangouts, Jitsi Meets. All in the end providing a better interview experience then Zoom, even through zoom might be better if it works...).

ghaff 5y ago
So, for a series of video interviews I was conducting last summer through an outside agency, I decided to up my game and use my DSLR given that Canon's webcam software now supported my somewhat older model. Tested it and all. But when I did tech check with the agency they were having some problems with it (which they said were not uncommon) so I went back to my high-end Webcam which was fine. ADDED: And things like this were the reason that the agency had half-hour tech checks with senior professionals before taping the interviews. (And still usually had us redo one or two segments because of glitches.) I was also in a workshop last summer. Power was out for a couple of days. I used my cellphone but I have lousy reception where I live so it barely worked. Even drove to my local library to see if I could leach Internet from the parking lot but I couldn't. So lots of out of control things can happen.

hawaiianbrah 5y ago

I live on a houseboat in Seattle. I’m a software developer that’s been working remote even before the pandemic. It’s great generally, but the worst thing about houseboat life is the crappy internet. I somewhat recently upgraded to 40mbps down, but that isn’t super consistent. Internet problems don’t always have easy or reasonable solutions. I’m wired in but still sometimes have to drop from calls because it lags and stutters. Judging someone for their internet problems doesn’t make any sense to me.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
xyzelement 5y ago
You say: >> Judging someone for their internet problems doesn’t make any sense to me but also: >> sometimes have to drop from calls because it lags and stutters. That sounds insanely unfair to people you work with. If you're in a role where meetings are infrequent and unimportant, maybe this flies. But if you work with/for me and you constantly drop calls so the entire group has to wait for you while you freeze, can't hear what you're saying, etc etc etc - that's not a dynamic I want to inflict on my organization. There's some inherent tradeoff between how you want to live and what jobs you can take on. Back in the work-from-the-office days, you had to limit your housing options by where you can reach the office daily in a reasonable time. With WFH, your ability to connect to the internet is analogous to your ability to get to the office. If your choice of living on a houseboat means that you can't reliably connect to key meetings, it means you're not able to take on jobs where meetings are key. It's as simple as that and is a totally reasonable tradeoff to make, as long as you're making it consciously.
- jameshush 5y ago
  Also can't agree enough. I have someone on my team who lives on a farm in a remote part of India. His area has power outages 1-2 times a week. Does he just let video calls end when the power goes out? No, he got a generator. It's his choice to live in that area. The amount of money he saves by not being in a major city more than enough covers the cost of a generator. As an IC it seems like a small inconvenience, but as a manager having other team members and other departments complain about so-and-so for being unresponsive and cutting out of calls constantly is just one more problem I have to deal with.

dkdbejwi383 5y ago

I get where you’re coming from, but I personally can’t do anything about my bad wifi, because I rent a room in a shared flat and don’t have control over it. The router is in another room and I can’t run a cable there either. There’s also going to be noise I don’t have full control over, because there are three other people here (who you can sometimes hear despite us being in different rooms), and it’s summer so I either need the window open (my room is on the ground floor near a noisy road) or a fan on. I’d urge a bit more empathy before coming to the conclusion that people are lazy/incompetent.

xyzelement 5y ago
The world isn't black and white, so if someone was in your situation and explained it upfront, I would be fine with it. It's the silent "I am just going to expect the interviewer to put up with all my issues" assumption that really bugs me. It also depends on what role you are interviewing for. If your role is mainly going to be heads-down maybe it's OK. But if you're interviewing for a role where you'll have to be meeting lots of people all day, then the situation you describe above may actually be unfair to your coworkers.
rahimnathwani 5y ago
Not disagreeing with your general point but, if bad wifi is a problem for you and you can't run a cable, consider: A) plugging a better wifi router or AP into the existing router, or B) Using a pair of powerline ethernet adapters, or C) Same as A, but using a pair of mesh routers, with the main one set in 'access point' mode. None of these require a cable run between two rooms. Unless the flat is huge or has concrete walls, one of these solutions will work. (I'm assuming the problem is with the wifi connection between you and the router, and not the connection between your router and the internet.)
- thrashh 5y ago
  No, there is no guarantee one of those solutions will work. source: 1000 sq ft flat, no concrete. Already tried all 3, and I pay good money for networking equipment. Currently run cables for 2 APs

Yoric 5y ago

> Just like being late to a physical interview is a bad signal (sure there was traffic but what does it say about your planning skills?) I feel totally justified "reading" into how people are on their zoom interviews. Fun fact: depending on your cultural background, one person's "late" is another person's "giving you time to prepare". It is my understanding that Anglo-Saxon and German education insist on starting a meeting at the time written on the calendar, while some other countries understand the time written on the calendar as the moment the main presenter (or interviewer, in that case) is getting ready, so if you arrive then, you embarrass them and/or prevent them from doing their work. Coming from a Latin country, it took me some time to understand the unspoken rules for working in a US company. After ~10 years, I'm not sure I still know them all. All along the way, I have been judged for compliance with these rules that culturally make no sense to me and nobody cared to explain. There are dozens of examples I could quote, including different meanings of "Yes" and "No" or "I" or "responsibility". Where I'm coming at is: please don't be too fast to judge people on unspoken rules, especially across cultures.

recursive 5y ago
I'm not even from another culture, but the persistent use of "no" for "yes" drives me nuts. https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/no+yeah https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/no+yeah
xyzelement 5y ago
I've done business all over the world and understand that the meaning of time is very different between say Switzerland (on time = 5 mins early) and Portugal (on time = sometime same day). But, that's not relevant to the point I am making as a US based employer who was interviewing for a NYC position. Show up on time.
- regularjack 5y ago
  I'm Portuguese, and to me, on time means on time.

heavyset_go 5y ago

You should type this up in an email and send it to candidates before interviews so they can judge whether or being judged like this themselves is worth their time. It would be the empathetic thing to do with respect to their time and money, after all.

xyzelement 5y ago
Actually, it might be helpful for you to understand that an overwhelming majority of good interviewers are evaluating you on far more signals than just the literal correctness of your answers. The interviewer's job is to assess whether you're going to work out and be an asset to the organization. They also assume that what you're showing in the interview is a much rosier picture of yourself than you'll normally be. So if you're late for an interview, the interviewer has to assume you're gonna be late to stuff all the time. If you can't solve your connectivity problems, the interviewer has to assume you're gonna have all sorts of other problems that will drag down yours and the team's productivity. It also shouldn't surprise you if you bad-mouth your old employer, the interviewer is going to assume that you're insanely negative and divisive. etc. It's not "being judged" - the company has to make a high-risk high-impact decision to hire you, and your behavior may just "leak" the information that you're not a good bet. You may think this is unpleasant but it's just fact of the decision making process. If you make it harder for people to say "yes" to you, you will get "no" much more often. Simple as that. >> to do with respect to their time and money I don't understand the "money" part. Are you paying companies to interview you? This is a sure sign of a scam.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  > Actually, it might be helpful for you to understand that an overwhelming majority of good interviewers are evaluating you on far more signals than just the literal correctness of your answers. That’s a two way street though. If a candidate gets the feeling that they’re being judged for things that are outside of their control, they might decide that you or your company isn’t worth dealing with. And in this labor market, the candidate might have more options than the hiring manager does. Some of the things you’re talking about are well within the normal bounds, such as timeliness. But some of the stuff you’re talking about edges up to the “not your business” line. If I felt that an interviewer got annoyed at me for an internet issue, I certainly might come to the conclusion that they’re unreasonable and take a pass. (I also think your comment is a bit patronizing. I suspect that most people who have interviewed are aware that they’re being judged on more than just their answers)

Nimitz14 5y ago

You've gotten a lot of pushback but I just want to say I totally agree with your POV.

xyzelement 5y ago
I appreciate that, this is always the pattern with recruiting/hiring/comp topics. It seems like there's a well meaning percentage of the population that has a strong view of how things ought to be (eg "connectivity isn't 100% your fault so you shouldn't be judged for it") without realizing that it's completely untenable ("how can I possibly hire you if I can't hear anything you say because your connection is bad.")