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Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?

#51

Post by _swfb »

m0llusk wrote: post #40

I never do this. If I am hired then my personality comes along as part of the package. If the potential employer and coworkers reject my personality then the position is not a good match. For what it is worth in my recent experience most interviewers have commented about how pleasant and likable I am before they reject me, usually for some perceived technical flaw such as not realizing the essence of software quality…

I'm actually surprised that they gave you a reason. Usually I get some email like "while we were impressed by your skills and enjoyed talking to you, we do not believe that you're a good fit for CompanyX".

Re: Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?

#52

Post by _swfb »

geocrasher wrote: post #25

When you find the right employer, your personality won't be a barrier, it'll be an asset. Wait for the right fit. Do you . You're the only one who can do it as well as you do.

I mean, I don't disagree in principle but in practice I don't have years to spend waiting for the perfect job. I have decent savings so if I need to survive I can for awhile, but not forever.

Re: Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?

#54

Post by 9rx »

blindriver wrote: post #27
_swfb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, at some level I know this; I've given interviews before and seen people get declined for the dumbest reasons, or no reason at all, and I usually give people this same advice when they're down. Dunno, it's just hard not to take this a bit personally sometimes. As I said, if I felt like I knew what I was screwing up, then that would be something I could work on. It's not hard to buy textbooks and learn more about…

If you don't keep a stiff upper lip and be emotionally and mentally resilient about this, then someone who is exactly like you but has the resilience to keep going on will take your job. This is the worst job market I've seen since the dot com bust. It's much worse than the Financial Crisis. There are tens of thousands of out of work programmers, and in the next few years more and more new grads are joining the mix.…

> It's much worse than the Financial Crisis.

That's not saying much. While there was a month or two early on where it was a bit touch and go, granted, all-in-all the Financial Crisis period was one of the best times ever to be a programmer. That was the App Store gold rush era and all the investment dollars running away from every other industry due to financial crisis concerns was funnelling into tech.

Re: Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?

#55

Post by yieldcrv »

codingdave wrote: post #19

Don't change who you are for an interview. It will just result in a job where you aren't happy being a different version of yourself. I know it is frustrating to not find work, but finding work that isn't right for you brings whole new levels of frustration later. And, as others have said... this rejection might have nothing to do with you. If they had 1000 applications, and you were their choice above 998 of them, y…

For those wondering if you are privileged enough to willingly make yourself ineligible for some jobs that your qualified for like the above poster is:

This has never been my experience. Quirkyness in the interview loops have never dictated my on the job experience. And having been pulled in to conduct interviews, I can say that its all so last minute and unplanned, that it reinforces how little it matters. Judge a company all you want, just get the offer first.

You’ll probably never talk with the hiring manager or that recruiter again. You’ll probably be working with a different PM and engineers.

Re: Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?

#56

Post by _swfb »

tracker1 wrote: post #32
golly_ned wrote: post #18

Speaking from my experiences in dozens of debriefs: I don't think I can recall a case where an otherwise good candidate was rejected for something like not liking someone's personality. There might be a middle ground between "technical skills" and "personality", though, which we do take into account, falling under "soft skills", which may be affected by certain personality traits. Things like polling the interviewer…

I would counter, in that depending on the position(s) and candidate pool soft skills will make all the difference in the world when choosing between two technically sufficient candidates. It may not even be a conscious bias, so much as, "I'd rather work with this person." Most technical jobs can be done by most sufficiently skilled, or motivated candidates with enough intellect to handle the work. Not always to a cer…

> Beyond this, comes the counter-intuitive position of being far more skilled than an interviewer. This can definitely work against you at times as well for a number of reasons. Just because you are the most technically adept for a position, doesn't mean you get the position. The technical aspects of most jobs are more about a minimum of, can they do the job. Not, are they the best fit.

This has been happening to me a bit, at an increasing frequency lately

I don't want to come off as cocky, but I think I have a decent understanding of concurrency and distributed systems, and I think a lot of interviewers simply do not. Sometimes I'm "corrected" on my whiteboard examples, and I have to push back because I'm not actually wrong about something.

And that kind of makes me seem like a douchebag, but at the same time I'm not going to pretend that I'm wrong on something if I don't genuinely think I might be wrong.

Re: Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?

#57

Post by ryandrake »

kevinventullo wrote: post #5

The rejection might also be random and out of your control. E.g. if they already filled the position or the higher-ups decided to save costs by taking back open headcount. Frustrating for sure, but not actionable. From my POV, if you don’t have any strong signals about why you were rejected, I would just move on rather than trying to infer the reason.

Had to scroll too far down the page for this response. I wouldn't try to guess the reason why any particular company rejected you. 1. They usually aren't going to tell you why. 2. If they do, it's not necessarily going to be the real reason. There are so many internal reasons for not choosing to move forward with a candidate that have nothing to do with the candidate or their interview performance. The company's internal priorities and projects might have suddenly shifted. The headcount may no longer exist anymore. The hiring manager may have decided they really don't need another person after all. The job might not have existed in the first place and they're just fishing. The job might exist but they already know who they want and are doing throwaway interviews as a formality or for legal compliance reasons. Or they're just randomly rejecting candidates because they don't want to hire someone who is unlucky. No way to know for sure.

Re: Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?

#58

Post by _swfb »

kmoser wrote: post #26

Have you tried asking them whey they didn't select you? If you express genuine disappointment and ask what it was about you that didn't fit what they were looking for, there's a reasonable chance they'll give you feedback on the interview.

In this particular case I actually have a phone call with the recruiter scheduled today to ask why they passed on me.

In general they don't tell me when I do ask though. I understand that; they don't want to risk me suing them if they divulge anything that could be even construed as illegal, I probably wouldn't give feedback either honestly.

Re: Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?

#59

Post by esseph »

loa_in_ wrote: post #36
stuartjohnson12 wrote: post #23

Will be blunt since I imagine you're fed up and don't want affirmations. In the most common case where I see engineers who say they struggle with the soft skills parts of interviewing, the underlying issue is a lack of skill in communication - working out what's important, stating it clearly and concisely, and in a way appropriate to the audience. I read some of your blog and found it pleasantly chatty, well structur…

A good reason to not have social media. Thinking if my vent post will upset a future employer on a Saturday afternoon is not the future I want.

Then they get upset that you either don't have socials (antisocial, don't hire), or hide them (untrustworthy, don't hire).

It's awful. I think the best thing is maybe a fake profile you touch once a year.

Re: Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?

#60

Post by VirusNewbie »

Did you do practice interviews? I highly recommend doing pramp.com and/or paying for actual interview feedback.

Until you have someone with nothing to lose giving you brutally honest feedback, you won't know what the issue is. Years ago I had thought I passed technical interviews but I had given non optimal code.

I had one mock interviewer (paid) tell me I wasn't explaining my solutions enough and I needed to take charge of the conversation more.

Invest some time into finding out what your real weaknesses are.

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