6 ms·

I wonder how much "interviewing" is really testing the kind of performance anxiety that people without other good offers yet have. I experience this too as I n

I wonder how much "interviewing" is really testing the kind of performance anxiety that people without other good offers yet have. I experience this too as I not just as I progressed in my career, but even within one batch of interviewing. I've always tried to batch as many interviews as I can. By the third interview I am feeling much less anxious and just perform much better and by the fourth or fifth I am nailing them to the wall - performance seems to be inversely proportional to how much I am worried about doing well in this particular interview.

kube-system 5y ago
I interview and I explicitly adjust for this in my interviews. Anxiety is not too hard to pick up on, especially if you know family and friends who have it, and I’ll give people the benefit of the doubt in the case that I do notice it. Many people with social anxiety are excellent writers and I make sure we always have a written portion of our evaluation to give them.
- mattnewton 5y ago
  I also do interviews, but find it is really hard to adjust for this. If a person repeatedly locks up and you give them space to come down from their anxious position for example, you simply get less signal than the person who confidently talks through their thought process the whole time and arrives at the right answer. Is the written portion the way to offset this in your experience? In addition to being hard to squeeze into typical 45 minute interview chunks, I’m not sure that would calm my anxiety personally. But I’m certainly willing to try.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    I’ve had some candidates who were mediocre in the verbal portion who blew me out of the water with their writing. They were clearly smart and capable people but were just anxious. I recommend these people be hired. I’ve also had people who did great in the verbal portion completely make a fool of themselves in the written portion. They have the confidence and social ability, but they often show they’re missing the skills. They’d probably make better sales people than engineers. I haven’t yet had someone who totally bombed the verbal do a good job in the written portion. All of the ones I’ve had were just overall poor communicators. If you can’t communicate an idea verbally or written, it’s going to be tough to work with a team of people who like to self-organize. I don’t put the written portion in any time-block, if that’s what you’re saying. I normally give it via email and give people a week to get back to me.
- joshgachnang 5y ago
  This is really interesting! What kind of questions do you ask in the written portion?
  - kube-system 5y ago
    The written portion is part of our take-home coding test. We have the candidate do a short and simple coding exercise, and at the end, there's a couple open-ended questions about their approach, what they could have done better, etc. I find it really insightful to give people a simple exercise to complete and then ask them to talk about it. The answers to the questions are almost more telling than the code itself. You can easily see who is struggling to understand the concepts, versus someone who just didn't have much time to complete it, just by reading their responses. Even for the same exact code, someone might answer "I completed all of the requirements", and another person might answer "I wrote this in a hurry and it doesn't meet requirement [x] all of the time, but to handle circumstances like [y], I'd implement [z]". The latter person is always a better engineer.
    - weq 5y ago
      Yes exactly! If you need to have a take home coding test, do something simple and then use that as you discussion starter! Your developer is making decisions everyday on problems they may not have experience with. They are never making decisions in isolation without any internet connection.
    - agent327 5y ago
      If you want a job, about the last thing you are going to want to say is that you were in a hurry (meaning "I didn't care about this job enough to pay proper attention to this"). This is going to be your calling card, so it has to look great! You make it appear as if you are penalizing people for going the extra mile to complete all the requirements.
      - kube-system 5y ago
        The key phrase above is: > for the same exact code And I’m in no position to expect candidates to treat a take-home code test like a real job. These are all experienced engineers that already have good jobs. They don’t need my job. I 1000% prefer someone who didn’t spend much time on my code test but knows what they’re talking about, to someone who spent a bunch of time and is a bad engineer. The time constraint will be resolved when they quit their existing full time job.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
Do you really want to work for any outfit that believes that's a tactic that brings out the best in someone? Hard pass.
- mattnewton 5y ago
  I really don’t think it’s what is being intentionally tested. Evaluating people is a necessarily stressful process to some extent, and it just takes a lot to counteract how different people handle it. Just like I wouldn’t want to be written off for a place for being nervous I wouldn’t write off a place for doing the standard tech interview day-of-45-min-white boarded-questions.
wpietri 5y ago
This is a really important point. Many of the best programmers I've worked with are extremely conscientious people, and I think interview anxiety goes naturally with that. When I'm interviewing people, I work very hard to put them at their ease and discount interview anxiety when I see it. Too many interview processes are tuned for confidence, not actual skill.
- jader201 5y ago
  Thanks for being empathetic. Not everyone is lucky enough to have empathetic interviewers, and it makes it a really tough experience for them.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    For sure. The upside, though, is that an unempathetic interviewer is a hint that it's not a good place to work at. So if I ever walk out of an interview feeling it was awful or unfair, in some sense it's a blessing. Better to know in the interview than after you're hired.
- roland35 5y ago
  That's a great approach. I try to do the same thing, maybe try to get them to laugh with a witty joke or light comment to lower the stress level. I don't think it helps anybody to put candidates through stress.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    For sure. I'm also explicit that the goal of the process is to see them at their best. So they should ask for accommodations. Split it into two parts? Sure! Specific time or day? Sure! Video off or on? Whatever suits you. If they want to look something up, they can look it up. I also try to give them open-ended questions so they can steer toward their strengths. And their strengths are what I care about. Everybody has weaknesses, so finding them in an interview is uninteresting to me unless it's something truly fatal. I want to see them shine, as a) that gives me an idea of their capacity for growth, and b) that's what I'm going to play to when pointing them at work.
sky_rw 5y ago
I had a strategy for this that I frequently recommend to people. Back when I was "in the game" and living in NYC, I used to take 1-2 interviews per month despite being happy in my then current role. I was up front with current and prospective employers about this. This strategy served me well on many fronts: confidence in my skills and my options, familiarity with evolving interview trends, and networking opportunities with team leaders in a tight knit industry. It also allowed me to chase roles/positions which I wasn't immediately qualified for without feeling stress and anxiety, and was immensely helpful later on as an engineer turned startup CEO to know what product/project management interviews should feel like.
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  Fascinating; how did your "open with current employer" conversations go? How did you present it? How did they react?
  - sky_rw 5y ago
    YMMV, software engineers can usually get away with murder. It really all depends on how you frame it. I probably used terminology like “taking meetings with” instead of “interviewing at”. Just make sure it’s not with competitive companies and maybe more importantly not with sister companies under shared VC funds. Honesty goes a long way, and if your employer is going to fire you because you are keeping tabs on your market value then you need a new employer anyway.
- eropple 5y ago
  I did the same thing for a couple of years here in Boston. (I stopped when I found a job I really liked and developed deeper extracurricular hobbies.) Interviewing can be fun if you have the right kind of mindset for it and you meet all sorts of people. Multiple people I interviewed with, I've run into down the road.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jmchuster 5y ago
You definitely want to have a couple of warmup interviews to get back into practice, into shape. So queue up your "practice" companies first and save the ones you really want for later. You can keep this shape up to some extent by doing a lot of interviewing of candidates at your current job. It really helps you understand what interviewers are looking for, what they expect, how a good interview should feel and flow. But there are just some things you don't practice until your own interviews. So you'll want to have your answers to questions, and stories, and narratives all planned out. And make sure you practice them out loud, multiple times, until it's flowing naturally and easily. And I just accept ahead of time that I'll fail 60% of the interviews that I apply for that I'd be perfect for. Sometimes things click and sometimes things don't. So make sure you've got warm leads and schedule your first rounds at an appropriate number of companies.

kube-system 5y ago

I interview and I explicitly adjust for this in my interviews. Anxiety is not too hard to pick up on, especially if you know family and friends who have it, and I’ll give people the benefit of the doubt in the case that I do notice it. Many people with social anxiety are excellent writers and I make sure we always have a written portion of our evaluation to give them.

mattnewton 5y ago
I also do interviews, but find it is really hard to adjust for this. If a person repeatedly locks up and you give them space to come down from their anxious position for example, you simply get less signal than the person who confidently talks through their thought process the whole time and arrives at the right answer. Is the written portion the way to offset this in your experience? In addition to being hard to squeeze into typical 45 minute interview chunks, I’m not sure that would calm my anxiety personally. But I’m certainly willing to try.
- kube-system 5y ago
  I’ve had some candidates who were mediocre in the verbal portion who blew me out of the water with their writing. They were clearly smart and capable people but were just anxious. I recommend these people be hired. I’ve also had people who did great in the verbal portion completely make a fool of themselves in the written portion. They have the confidence and social ability, but they often show they’re missing the skills. They’d probably make better sales people than engineers. I haven’t yet had someone who totally bombed the verbal do a good job in the written portion. All of the ones I’ve had were just overall poor communicators. If you can’t communicate an idea verbally or written, it’s going to be tough to work with a team of people who like to self-organize. I don’t put the written portion in any time-block, if that’s what you’re saying. I normally give it via email and give people a week to get back to me.
joshgachnang 5y ago
This is really interesting! What kind of questions do you ask in the written portion?
- kube-system 5y ago
  The written portion is part of our take-home coding test. We have the candidate do a short and simple coding exercise, and at the end, there's a couple open-ended questions about their approach, what they could have done better, etc. I find it really insightful to give people a simple exercise to complete and then ask them to talk about it. The answers to the questions are almost more telling than the code itself. You can easily see who is struggling to understand the concepts, versus someone who just didn't have much time to complete it, just by reading their responses. Even for the same exact code, someone might answer "I completed all of the requirements", and another person might answer "I wrote this in a hurry and it doesn't meet requirement [x] all of the time, but to handle circumstances like [y], I'd implement [z]". The latter person is always a better engineer.
  - weq 5y ago
    Yes exactly! If you need to have a take home coding test, do something simple and then use that as you discussion starter! Your developer is making decisions everyday on problems they may not have experience with. They are never making decisions in isolation without any internet connection.
  - agent327 5y ago
    If you want a job, about the last thing you are going to want to say is that you were in a hurry (meaning "I didn't care about this job enough to pay proper attention to this"). This is going to be your calling card, so it has to look great! You make it appear as if you are penalizing people for going the extra mile to complete all the requirements.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      The key phrase above is: > for the same exact code And I’m in no position to expect candidates to treat a take-home code test like a real job. These are all experienced engineers that already have good jobs. They don’t need my job. I 1000% prefer someone who didn’t spend much time on my code test but knows what they’re talking about, to someone who spent a bunch of time and is a bad engineer. The time constraint will be resolved when they quit their existing full time job.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

Do you really want to work for any outfit that believes that's a tactic that brings out the best in someone? Hard pass.

mattnewton 5y ago
I really don’t think it’s what is being intentionally tested. Evaluating people is a necessarily stressful process to some extent, and it just takes a lot to counteract how different people handle it. Just like I wouldn’t want to be written off for a place for being nervous I wouldn’t write off a place for doing the standard tech interview day-of-45-min-white boarded-questions.

wpietri 5y ago

This is a really important point. Many of the best programmers I've worked with are extremely conscientious people, and I think interview anxiety goes naturally with that. When I'm interviewing people, I work very hard to put them at their ease and discount interview anxiety when I see it. Too many interview processes are tuned for confidence, not actual skill.

jader201 5y ago
Thanks for being empathetic. Not everyone is lucky enough to have empathetic interviewers, and it makes it a really tough experience for them.
- wpietri 5y ago
  For sure. The upside, though, is that an unempathetic interviewer is a hint that it's not a good place to work at. So if I ever walk out of an interview feeling it was awful or unfair, in some sense it's a blessing. Better to know in the interview than after you're hired.
roland35 5y ago
That's a great approach. I try to do the same thing, maybe try to get them to laugh with a witty joke or light comment to lower the stress level. I don't think it helps anybody to put candidates through stress.
- wpietri 5y ago
  For sure. I'm also explicit that the goal of the process is to see them at their best. So they should ask for accommodations. Split it into two parts? Sure! Specific time or day? Sure! Video off or on? Whatever suits you. If they want to look something up, they can look it up. I also try to give them open-ended questions so they can steer toward their strengths. And their strengths are what I care about. Everybody has weaknesses, so finding them in an interview is uninteresting to me unless it's something truly fatal. I want to see them shine, as a) that gives me an idea of their capacity for growth, and b) that's what I'm going to play to when pointing them at work.

sky_rw 5y ago

I had a strategy for this that I frequently recommend to people. Back when I was "in the game" and living in NYC, I used to take 1-2 interviews per month despite being happy in my then current role. I was up front with current and prospective employers about this. This strategy served me well on many fronts: confidence in my skills and my options, familiarity with evolving interview trends, and networking opportunities with team leaders in a tight knit industry. It also allowed me to chase roles/positions which I wasn't immediately qualified for without feeling stress and anxiety, and was immensely helpful later on as an engineer turned startup CEO to know what product/project management interviews should feel like.

NikolaNovak 5y ago
Fascinating; how did your "open with current employer" conversations go? How did you present it? How did they react?
- sky_rw 5y ago
  YMMV, software engineers can usually get away with murder. It really all depends on how you frame it. I probably used terminology like “taking meetings with” instead of “interviewing at”. Just make sure it’s not with competitive companies and maybe more importantly not with sister companies under shared VC funds. Honesty goes a long way, and if your employer is going to fire you because you are keeping tabs on your market value then you need a new employer anyway.
eropple 5y ago
I did the same thing for a couple of years here in Boston. (I stopped when I found a job I really liked and developed deeper extracurricular hobbies.) Interviewing can be fun if you have the right kind of mindset for it and you meet all sorts of people. Multiple people I interviewed with, I've run into down the road.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jmchuster 5y ago

You definitely want to have a couple of warmup interviews to get back into practice, into shape. So queue up your "practice" companies first and save the ones you really want for later. You can keep this shape up to some extent by doing a lot of interviewing of candidates at your current job. It really helps you understand what interviewers are looking for, what they expect, how a good interview should feel and flow. But there are just some things you don't practice until your own interviews. So you'll want to have your answers to questions, and stories, and narratives all planned out. And make sure you practice them out loud, multiple times, until it's flowing naturally and easily. And I just accept ahead of time that I'll fail 60% of the interviews that I apply for that I'd be perfect for. Sometimes things click and sometimes things don't. So make sure you've got warm leads and schedule your first rounds at an appropriate number of companies.