2 ms·

While I agree, how much training does anyone get as an interviewer? I spent 10+ years doing interviews at all sorts of orgs (including Fortune 500s, government,

While I agree, how much training does anyone get as an interviewer? I spent 10+ years doing interviews at all sorts of orgs (including Fortune 500s, government, etc.) without a single hour of interviewer training. Now that I think about it, none of those organizations ever trained me at anything at all. Huh.

sefrost 7mo ago
Same here. I receive a training budget at some places but it goes unspent. Everything is self directed learning in my own time.
nsxwolf 7mo ago
Sounds common to have training in big tech but I never received any training either. Sometimes we’d discuss changes we wanted to make to the interview process, which suppose could be considered adjacent to training.
munchbunny 7mo ago
> While I agree, how much training does anyone get as an interviewer? TL;DR: not enough training. As a hiring manager, whenever we start a hiring period I have a conversation with my interviewer team about what qualities we're looking for and review the questions they plan to ask in order to normalize the process. Stuff like "what does a good answer look like, and why? what does a bad answer look like? is this something easy for a candidate to engage with or will you spend half the interview just explaining the background? is this coding question unreasonably hard?" and so on. I also look at the evaluations that interviewers give relative to other interviewers. Almost every hiring cycle I've done I've had to deal with some interviewer (all over the seniority spectrum) asking unreasonably hard questions.
Sohcahtoa82 7mo ago
Yeah, I had no training on being an interviewer before I started doing interviews. My manager gave me some tips, and I came up with two security bug-hunt exercises (was hiring AppSec engineers), but that was it. Now, I wonder if I had rejected earlier candidates that I would have passed if I was a better interviewer.
- geoduck14 7mo ago
  The best advice I've had on interviewing is: Find an actual problem that your team is actually working through and ask the candidate how they would approach it. Then to jazz it up: simplify the proble. To get to the root stuff that needs to be covered (e.g. ignore creating Jira tickets and focus on connecting to a database with cross-refion replication). You also want it to be simple enough that it can be solved in <30 minutes
david-gpu 7mo ago
> none of those organizations ever trained me at anything at all They trained us repeatedly not to bribe foreign government officials, even though I had zero access to anybody like that. There was also some mandatory training against harassing coworkers. I.e. "protect the company from lawsuits" training, not "here are some ideas for how to do your job more effectively" training. They were megacorps, too.
- Quarrelsome 7mo ago
  > "protect the company from lawsuits Yeah that's proven by the fact they get degree educated level engineers and force feed them videos designed for people working entry level positions. Its a crying shame because there's actually a lot of interesting discussions around nuance that are just sidelined by these videos creating basic bitch absurdities: > During the lunch break, Jim has dipped his penis into Samantha's yoghurt > is this: > a) entirely acceptable, its just his culture > b) a borderline issue > c) something that someone should report to HR Instead of: Jane is developing feelings for someone that reports to her, they meet up outside of work and have a one-night stand. What should Jane do next?
  - Paracompact 7mo ago
    > It's just his culture. Wrong. Her yogurt, her culture.
EthanHeilman 7mo ago
Seriously? I worked at startups and research institutions. We trained people on interviews. I know Google used to invest quite a bit on interview training.
elictronic 7mo ago
Quite a bit based on the number of interviews performed at software companies. Being on either side of the fence gives you experience.
dcminter 7mo ago
That's unusual. Maybe that's a US thing? In Europe anywhere I've had to interview people I've received at least a couple of hours of training and then usually sat in as the shadow on at least one interview. Quality varies, but I think it's only the super small outfits where I've been expected to just wing it.
HeyLaughingBoy 7mo ago
In my case? Two days I think (it was long ago). Two very eye-opening days.

sefrost 7mo ago

Same here. I receive a training budget at some places but it goes unspent. Everything is self directed learning in my own time.

nsxwolf 7mo ago

Sounds common to have training in big tech but I never received any training either. Sometimes we’d discuss changes we wanted to make to the interview process, which suppose could be considered adjacent to training.

munchbunny 7mo ago

> While I agree, how much training does anyone get as an interviewer? TL;DR: not enough training. As a hiring manager, whenever we start a hiring period I have a conversation with my interviewer team about what qualities we're looking for and review the questions they plan to ask in order to normalize the process. Stuff like "what does a good answer look like, and why? what does a bad answer look like? is this something easy for a candidate to engage with or will you spend half the interview just explaining the background? is this coding question unreasonably hard?" and so on. I also look at the evaluations that interviewers give relative to other interviewers. Almost every hiring cycle I've done I've had to deal with some interviewer (all over the seniority spectrum) asking unreasonably hard questions.

Sohcahtoa82 7mo ago

Yeah, I had no training on being an interviewer before I started doing interviews. My manager gave me some tips, and I came up with two security bug-hunt exercises (was hiring AppSec engineers), but that was it. Now, I wonder if I had rejected earlier candidates that I would have passed if I was a better interviewer.

geoduck14 7mo ago
The best advice I've had on interviewing is: Find an actual problem that your team is actually working through and ask the candidate how they would approach it. Then to jazz it up: simplify the proble. To get to the root stuff that needs to be covered (e.g. ignore creating Jira tickets and focus on connecting to a database with cross-refion replication). You also want it to be simple enough that it can be solved in <30 minutes

david-gpu 7mo ago

> none of those organizations ever trained me at anything at all They trained us repeatedly not to bribe foreign government officials, even though I had zero access to anybody like that. There was also some mandatory training against harassing coworkers. I.e. "protect the company from lawsuits" training, not "here are some ideas for how to do your job more effectively" training. They were megacorps, too.

Quarrelsome 7mo ago
> "protect the company from lawsuits Yeah that's proven by the fact they get degree educated level engineers and force feed them videos designed for people working entry level positions. Its a crying shame because there's actually a lot of interesting discussions around nuance that are just sidelined by these videos creating basic bitch absurdities: > During the lunch break, Jim has dipped his penis into Samantha's yoghurt > is this: > a) entirely acceptable, its just his culture > b) a borderline issue > c) something that someone should report to HR Instead of: Jane is developing feelings for someone that reports to her, they meet up outside of work and have a one-night stand. What should Jane do next?
- Paracompact 7mo ago
  > It's just his culture. Wrong. Her yogurt, her culture.

EthanHeilman 7mo ago

Seriously? I worked at startups and research institutions. We trained people on interviews. I know Google used to invest quite a bit on interview training.

elictronic 7mo ago

Quite a bit based on the number of interviews performed at software companies. Being on either side of the fence gives you experience.

dcminter 7mo ago

That's unusual. Maybe that's a US thing? In Europe anywhere I've had to interview people I've received at least a couple of hours of training and then usually sat in as the shadow on at least one interview. Quality varies, but I think it's only the super small outfits where I've been expected to just wing it.

HeyLaughingBoy 7mo ago

In my case? Two days I think (it was long ago). Two very eye-opening days.