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That's not a very charitable interpretation of my rhetorical question. More to the point, why would a person presumably not specialized in hiring be tasked to m
by nefitty 5y ago
That's not a very charitable interpretation of my rhetorical question. More to the point, why would a person presumably not specialized in hiring be tasked to make a decision about a role they have no expertise in, based on a 40 minute video conversation? What signal could they have possibly picked up on in that timeframe that should override the judgement of HR and engineers in the preceding multiple screenings and technical assessments?
"Don't hire. Brown guy didn't smile enough. Total jerk."
- bigbillheck 5y agoI wasn't trying to imply anything about you personally being a jerk or otherwise. Of course they're not assessing you on engineering ability! They're assessing your soft skills, like how you are at talking with people in other departments. It's kind of like if you go on a date with someone and you're rude to the wait staff, that's a big red flag, right? You're not going to ask the server if you should plan on a second date, but their presence in the interaction gives you information.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago> Why is (non-technical person) interviewing me, a full-stack engineer? > "Don't hire. Brown guy didn't smile enough. Total jerk." It's possible to do the soft skills, personality and culture fit section of the interview really really badly, as in the racial bias example that you gave above. That's not the same thing as asking why it exists at all though. You could say exactly the same about the technical section, e.g. "don't hire, Brown guy misplaced a semicolon on the whiteboard". And yet a technical interview still needs to exist, has value when done with some fluency. Hiring well is hard. At least two people doing each stage of the interview is supposed to mitigate this bias. How well it works is other matter.