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What's really great is if you can get the interviewer talking about themselves. If you're lucky you'll spend the entire interview nodding and saying things like

by zcw100 5y ago

What's really great is if you can get the interviewer talking about themselves. If you're lucky you'll spend the entire interview nodding and saying things like, "wow", "that's really cool. How did you come up with that?". At the end, if it's the kind of interviewer that will talk about themselves for an hour straight they're going to love you, just sat there and let them be the center of attention. The problem is do you want to actually work for someone like that.

geoduck14 5y ago
A word to interviewers: Watch out for this. It is a real phenomenon. If you "enjoy" thr interview, you are more likely to think the candidate did well. And if you spend a lot of time talking about yourself, you are more likely to think the candidate did well. Don't be fooled. Have a rubric that you can objectively measure the candidate against.
GiorgioG 5y ago
This is how I got a job with a bunch of really smart folks in the early 2000s (they were all MIT grads and I was a graduate of a state liberal arts college in NY.) It was several rounds of interviews and a couple of the folks interviewing me (who clearly liked me) warned me that the interview at the end would be the hardest because the interviewer was an old non-nonsense engineer (MIT CS degree and MIT MBA.) It was intense for sure, but I had read somewhere that (as you stated) if you can get them to talk about themselves and engage them: A) they will love you and B) you'll run out the clock. I can't recall how I got him to talk about 'the good old days' of programming, but I did and I don't think I had to answer more than a handful of questions in that hour.
- heavenlyblue 5y ago
  So that engineer was a full-nonsense interviewer :)
  - GiorgioG 5y ago
    I suppose in my case he might have been less effective at assessing my technical abilities (there were multiple technical interviewers throughout the day.)
- more_corn 5y ago
  His feedback read like this: “Good culture fit, good soft skills. I really liked them. They seemed to understand and appreciate difficult and interesting topics.” I assure you there are worse ways to behave in an interview. I’ve passed on people who were smart as a whip but nobody wanted to work with. And nobody wants a dead fish who just sits there waiting for the next problem to solve.

by zcw100 5y ago

geoduck14 5y ago

A word to interviewers: Watch out for this. It is a real phenomenon. If you "enjoy" thr interview, you are more likely to think the candidate did well. And if you spend a lot of time talking about yourself, you are more likely to think the candidate did well. Don't be fooled. Have a rubric that you can objectively measure the candidate against.

GiorgioG 5y ago

This is how I got a job with a bunch of really smart folks in the early 2000s (they were all MIT grads and I was a graduate of a state liberal arts college in NY.) It was several rounds of interviews and a couple of the folks interviewing me (who clearly liked me) warned me that the interview at the end would be the hardest because the interviewer was an old non-nonsense engineer (MIT CS degree and MIT MBA.) It was intense for sure, but I had read somewhere that (as you stated) if you can get them to talk about themselves and engage them: A) they will love you and B) you'll run out the clock. I can't recall how I got him to talk about 'the good old days' of programming, but I did and I don't think I had to answer more than a handful of questions in that hour.

heavenlyblue 5y ago
So that engineer was a full-nonsense interviewer :)
- GiorgioG 5y ago
  I suppose in my case he might have been less effective at assessing my technical abilities (there were multiple technical interviewers throughout the day.)
more_corn 5y ago
His feedback read like this: “Good culture fit, good soft skills. I really liked them. They seemed to understand and appreciate difficult and interesting topics.” I assure you there are worse ways to behave in an interview. I’ve passed on people who were smart as a whip but nobody wanted to work with. And nobody wants a dead fish who just sits there waiting for the next problem to solve.