4 ms·

As an interviewer, the only signal I ever take away from interviewee questions is if they manage to come across like a complete asshole. And this isn't common b

by jghn 3y ago

As an interviewer, the only signal I ever take away from interviewee questions is if they manage to come across like a complete asshole. And this isn't common because most people aren't complete assholes, and those who are usually have displayed their colors earlier on in the interview. As an interviewee, I refuse to put any effort into gaming the system and hoping to come across as a better candidate. I treat these sessions as me interviewing them. And yes, this means that a lot of times my questions will come across as banal. But you can get some decent signal on red flags by asking several potential peers to describe their day, challenges that they're facing, and that sort of thing.

foobarian 3y ago
On few occasions the questions interviewees asked at the end did help me form a better picture of them as candidates; example, someone asked what Java version we run predominantly and, and this is the important bit, didn't balk when the answer was some ancient LTS version but instead a nervous laugh of commiseration followed by war story time. This told me a lot both about the candidate's maturity and experience.
- jrockway 3y ago
  That's a good heuristic. Someone just starting doesn't know what "best practices" are. Someone early into their career demands strict adherence to the best practices. Someone later into their career knows what rules can be bent, and knows a good reason for doing it.
pandaman 3y ago
>As an interviewee, I refuse to put any effort into gaming the system and hoping to come across as a better candidate. This is something missing from all the "interview coaching" advise and very few people seem to understand. Suppose there is an actual technique that allows you to get a job you otherwise would not get. Say, hypothetically, you used it to become an astronaut. Do you think you perform well as an astronaut even though the selection process would have culled you? I'd imagine you get kicked out anyways so all you gained is a line in a resume. The same advise also insists that having a whole bunch of 0.5-1 year "gigs" in your work history is normal, but is it really? Do people really believe hiring managers don't see the pattern? Does anyone really think that people go: "Oh, we should hire this person, he worked in all of FAANG, one year in each, must be very good!"?
- solarmist 3y ago
  Do you really think interviews only cull people that would be a poor fit? People are terrible judges of character and interviewing is every bit the shit show dating is.
  - pandaman 3y ago
    It depends on the company, I guess. The first-round interviews, which are the subject of this topic, that I have seen, were all Fizz Buzz level to cull the obviously incompetent.
  - wyclif 3y ago
    The biggest companies and the FAANGs don't care. It's a numbers game for them. They know interviewing isn't a science but there's very little incentive for them to improve the process because they get so many applicants.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  Well, yes, interview preparation is a bet on the incapacity of the interviewer to determine a candidate's capacity. Anyway, neither of those things is binary, if you ask me, I would really advise into getting some amount of preparation; but if it too useful, it's actually a red flag.
  - pandaman 3y ago
    Indeed, it's a bet that you, an outsider, know better than the interviewers that you will not be fired after the first performance review (note that it says nothing about your general competency, just the performance metrics of this particular company). If you had not been personally involved, which side of such a bet you would have taken?
    - marcosdumay 3y ago
      As I said, it's not binary. I would be on the interviewer having a lot of issues undermining his evaluation; and I would be on the performance review having them too. Those are very hard tasks, nobody gets them perfectly right.
kmoser 3y ago
> As an interviewee, I refuse to put any effort into gaming the system and hoping to come across as a better candidate. That reminds me of this part of the article: "You can use mirroring in your interview process. How? Use their language when describing your experiences." I consider mirroring to be a form of gaming the system, or at least something that can backfire. Having heard many interviewees parrot back terminology they didn't really understand, I'm sensitive to when somebody is trying to dazzle me with BS. I'd much rather hear an interviewee use much simpler, even non-technical verbiage, when describing things than try to use the words they think I want to hear.

by jghn 3y ago

foobarian 3y ago

On few occasions the questions interviewees asked at the end did help me form a better picture of them as candidates; example, someone asked what Java version we run predominantly and, and this is the important bit, didn't balk when the answer was some ancient LTS version but instead a nervous laugh of commiseration followed by war story time. This told me a lot both about the candidate's maturity and experience.

jrockway 3y ago
That's a good heuristic. Someone just starting doesn't know what "best practices" are. Someone early into their career demands strict adherence to the best practices. Someone later into their career knows what rules can be bent, and knows a good reason for doing it.

pandaman 3y ago

>As an interviewee, I refuse to put any effort into gaming the system and hoping to come across as a better candidate. This is something missing from all the "interview coaching" advise and very few people seem to understand. Suppose there is an actual technique that allows you to get a job you otherwise would not get. Say, hypothetically, you used it to become an astronaut. Do you think you perform well as an astronaut even though the selection process would have culled you? I'd imagine you get kicked out anyways so all you gained is a line in a resume. The same advise also insists that having a whole bunch of 0.5-1 year "gigs" in your work history is normal, but is it really? Do people really believe hiring managers don't see the pattern? Does anyone really think that people go: "Oh, we should hire this person, he worked in all of FAANG, one year in each, must be very good!"?

solarmist 3y ago
Do you really think interviews only cull people that would be a poor fit? People are terrible judges of character and interviewing is every bit the shit show dating is.
- pandaman 3y ago
  It depends on the company, I guess. The first-round interviews, which are the subject of this topic, that I have seen, were all Fizz Buzz level to cull the obviously incompetent.
- wyclif 3y ago
  The biggest companies and the FAANGs don't care. It's a numbers game for them. They know interviewing isn't a science but there's very little incentive for them to improve the process because they get so many applicants.
marcosdumay 3y ago
Well, yes, interview preparation is a bet on the incapacity of the interviewer to determine a candidate's capacity. Anyway, neither of those things is binary, if you ask me, I would really advise into getting some amount of preparation; but if it too useful, it's actually a red flag.
- pandaman 3y ago
  Indeed, it's a bet that you, an outsider, know better than the interviewers that you will not be fired after the first performance review (note that it says nothing about your general competency, just the performance metrics of this particular company). If you had not been personally involved, which side of such a bet you would have taken?
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    As I said, it's not binary. I would be on the interviewer having a lot of issues undermining his evaluation; and I would be on the performance review having them too. Those are very hard tasks, nobody gets them perfectly right.

kmoser 3y ago

> As an interviewee, I refuse to put any effort into gaming the system and hoping to come across as a better candidate. That reminds me of this part of the article: "You can use mirroring in your interview process. How? Use their language when describing your experiences." I consider mirroring to be a form of gaming the system, or at least something that can backfire. Having heard many interviewees parrot back terminology they didn't really understand, I'm sensitive to when somebody is trying to dazzle me with BS. I'd much rather hear an interviewee use much simpler, even non-technical verbiage, when describing things than try to use the words they think I want to hear.