Everything about interviewing sucks. Being the interviewer sucks. Being the interviewee sucks. The politics of hiring sucks. I hate it on both sides. The m

Everything about interviewing sucks. Being the interviewer sucks. Being the interviewee sucks. The politics of hiring sucks. I hate it on both sides. The more I interview people the more empathy I have for good candidates who can't get hired. I've seen so many potentially good candidates passed over because someone in the hiring chain didn't find them good. Usually this has to do with "lacking experience with X technology." This is incredibly frustrating because usually the person doing the rejecting didn't know X when they were hired, but they were paid to learn it by the company. On the flip side, I've been forced to re-interview obviously poor candidates because a hiring manager liked that they had "experience with X technology." Even though I was pretty confident that they were lying. Usually this ends up being merely a waste time, as I've never changed my mind and usually bring along another interviewer who concurs. I think the hiring process is 50% luck, and 50% having experience with the right tools. My new strategy, after working in the sausage factory, is to look at prospective jobs, find the tools they are looking for, and find a reason to use them in my current role. Read all of the documentation so you really sound like you know what you're talking about, then interview. I'm not sure if this works in the SV startup culture, but it does seem effective in my situation.