3 ms·

I am miserably bad at soft-skills interviews and never get past this round. Been over a year since I've had somebody actually try to assess my technical compete

by ddejohn 4mo ago

I am miserably bad at soft-skills interviews and never get past this round. Been over a year since I've had somebody actually try to assess my technical competency in any real capacity. I'm also getting maybe 1 INITIAL interview every 3 months right now because of this AI screening stuff and I just haven't felt like re-writing my resume to game them.

teiferer 4mo ago
> miserably bad at soft-skills interviews Is that because of an actual lack of soft skills or is it because the interviews are bad? > I just haven't felt like re-writing my resume to game them. Not defending the AI interview assistance BS, but if you wanted a job bad enough then you'd eventually do this, not the latest after several months?
awesome_dude 4mo ago
It could be that those HR teams are engaging in some busy work - pretending to be looking for candidates so they/their company looks busier.
woadwarrior01 4mo ago
IMO, soft-skills interviews more a test of your storytelling abilities than anything else. At Google, people often used to joke about candidates who cannot even pass the Googleyness interview, which is supposed to be the easiest of all Google interviews.
arethuza 4mo ago
One thing I discovered years ago was that even if you are pretty good at soft-skills type stuff and also pretty good at technical stuff what I couldn't do is context switch between an hour or so of doing "soft" stuff to a technical question - even though it was a trivial question. I lost a CTO position over that - mind you I think they went out of business a couple of years later...
justonceokay 4mo ago
Aren’t soft skills much more important than hard skills when it comes to building a team?
- mrkeen 4mo ago
  It depends on the objective. If you're trying to cultivate a chill workplace with colleagues you enjoy having coffee with, that's a different objective from building software which works correctly. Right now I'm trying to watch Book of Boba Fett on Disney Plus. When I cast Disney to my TV and hit play, it shows the animated Disney logo and sound for about a second, pauses/buffers for a couple of seconds, and then skips to the start of the next episode (and so on, until it runs out of episodes). I can temporarily fix it by turning everything off and on again, and starting the episode on my tablet before hitting the cast button. Maybe they have a really strong team, I dunno.
- simongr3dal 4mo ago
  Lots of people have a hard time just freebasing in an abstract conversation about how they work and storytelling “My Journey” type stuff but work just fine in an actual team setting with concrete products, features, and problems to think and talk about.
  - ddejohn 4mo ago
    > storytelling “My Journey” type stuff This is the stuff with which I struggle the most. I'm an introvert, and "my journey" sounds so insufferable and egotistical to me, I physically cringe at the thought of having to talk about this kind of stuff. At the end of the day, I just want a paycheck and to work on at least marginally interesting problems. I'm not interested in having to lie about how passionate I am about what company X is doing, nor am I a salesperson that feels comfortable hyping myself up. It feels so fake it becomes a distraction during the interview, which causes me to freeze up and start floundering. I work hard and I take pride in what I produce, I have plenty of hobbies and get along with others well, and I thrive in environments where I get to mentor and be mentored by others. These are the soft skills that are actually important for working on a team, but they're the most difficult to convey in the traditional interview format.

by ddejohn 4mo ago

teiferer 4mo ago

> miserably bad at soft-skills interviews Is that because of an actual lack of soft skills or is it because the interviews are bad? > I just haven't felt like re-writing my resume to game them. Not defending the AI interview assistance BS, but if you wanted a job bad enough then you'd eventually do this, not the latest after several months?

awesome_dude 4mo ago

It could be that those HR teams are engaging in some busy work - pretending to be looking for candidates so they/their company looks busier.

woadwarrior01 4mo ago

IMO, soft-skills interviews more a test of your storytelling abilities than anything else. At Google, people often used to joke about candidates who cannot even pass the Googleyness interview, which is supposed to be the easiest of all Google interviews.

arethuza 4mo ago

One thing I discovered years ago was that even if you are pretty good at soft-skills type stuff and also pretty good at technical stuff what I couldn't do is context switch between an hour or so of doing "soft" stuff to a technical question - even though it was a trivial question. I lost a CTO position over that - mind you I think they went out of business a couple of years later...

justonceokay 4mo ago

Aren’t soft skills much more important than hard skills when it comes to building a team?

mrkeen 4mo ago
It depends on the objective. If you're trying to cultivate a chill workplace with colleagues you enjoy having coffee with, that's a different objective from building software which works correctly. Right now I'm trying to watch Book of Boba Fett on Disney Plus. When I cast Disney to my TV and hit play, it shows the animated Disney logo and sound for about a second, pauses/buffers for a couple of seconds, and then skips to the start of the next episode (and so on, until it runs out of episodes). I can temporarily fix it by turning everything off and on again, and starting the episode on my tablet before hitting the cast button. Maybe they have a really strong team, I dunno.
simongr3dal 4mo ago
Lots of people have a hard time just freebasing in an abstract conversation about how they work and storytelling “My Journey” type stuff but work just fine in an actual team setting with concrete products, features, and problems to think and talk about.
- ddejohn 4mo ago
  > storytelling “My Journey” type stuff This is the stuff with which I struggle the most. I'm an introvert, and "my journey" sounds so insufferable and egotistical to me, I physically cringe at the thought of having to talk about this kind of stuff. At the end of the day, I just want a paycheck and to work on at least marginally interesting problems. I'm not interested in having to lie about how passionate I am about what company X is doing, nor am I a salesperson that feels comfortable hyping myself up. It feels so fake it becomes a distraction during the interview, which causes me to freeze up and start floundering. I work hard and I take pride in what I produce, I have plenty of hobbies and get along with others well, and I thrive in environments where I get to mentor and be mentored by others. These are the soft skills that are actually important for working on a team, but they're the most difficult to convey in the traditional interview format.