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>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 "

>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.
    - pandaman 3y ago
      It's not the absolute evaluation of the candidate as a human being. It's an evaluation of fitness for the particular job by someone who has some insight into the company requirements vs. evaluation of the same requirements by someone outside. It is not binary indeed but, statistically, the outsider will be wrong more often than the insider unless insider's evaluation has no or a negative correlation with the performance metrics.
Mawr 3y ago
> Do you think you perform well as an astronaut even though the selection process would have culled you? Yes, and it's not even remotely close. It shouldn't really be surprising, "code up an algorithm that some genius needed half a lifetime to develop, but from scratch, in 45 minutes, on a whiteboard, while being watched, with the job on the line" has nothing whatsoever to do with what you'd do at the actual job. So why would the interview be a predictor of job performance?
- pandaman 3y ago
  >So why would the interview be a predictor of job performance? Because most companies want to hire people who perform well and not hire people who don't perform well. They have variable success at that but even some fly-by-night startup will try to adjust interviews when they find that a significant number of people they hired needs to be sacked.

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.
  - pandaman 3y ago
    It's not the absolute evaluation of the candidate as a human being. It's an evaluation of fitness for the particular job by someone who has some insight into the company requirements vs. evaluation of the same requirements by someone outside. It is not binary indeed but, statistically, the outsider will be wrong more often than the insider unless insider's evaluation has no or a negative correlation with the performance metrics.

Mawr 3y ago

> Do you think you perform well as an astronaut even though the selection process would have culled you? Yes, and it's not even remotely close. It shouldn't really be surprising, "code up an algorithm that some genius needed half a lifetime to develop, but from scratch, in 45 minutes, on a whiteboard, while being watched, with the job on the line" has nothing whatsoever to do with what you'd do at the actual job. So why would the interview be a predictor of job performance?

pandaman 3y ago
>So why would the interview be a predictor of job performance? Because most companies want to hire people who perform well and not hire people who don't perform well. They have variable success at that but even some fly-by-night startup will try to adjust interviews when they find that a significant number of people they hired needs to be sacked.