Having integrity means not putting on an act. If you're trying too hard to please rather than be yourself, that comes across as dishonest and untrustworthy.
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?
#62Will 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.
I was declined from a job recently specifically because I wrote a blog post about my history with depression and medication for it [1]. That's not me justifying after the fact, they actually told me this.
I took down most of the posts on my blog that were personal as a result. Most of the stuff on there now is just technical stuff that I'm not too worried about being attached to my name.
[1] To be clear, the blog post was only talking about prescribed medication, I've never done any illegal drugs and I've never been an alcoholic, I'm not speaking in code for "self medicating".
Re: Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I was declined from a job recently specifically because I wrote a blog post about my history with depression and medication for it [1]. That's not me justifying after the fact, they actually told me this. I took down most of the posts on my blog that were personal as a result. Most of the stuff on there now is just technical stuff that I'm not too worried about being attached to my name. [1] To be clear, the blog pos…
Hope you got that in writing, because that is a hell of a ADA lawsuit you've got there.
Re: Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?
#64Having integrity means not putting on an act. If you're trying too hard to please rather than be yourself, that comes across as dishonest and untrustworthy.
As it stands I don't really think I'm putting on an act during interviews. I am a very bad liar and if I lie people can tell almost immediately so generally I tend to be pretty brutally honest, and my personality more or less shines through there.
I don't really want to put on an act, I guess I'm asking for more "how do you present forward the more positive parts of your personality and quiet the bad parts during an interview?"
I acknowledge there is still some dishonesty in that, my personality is a package deal, good and bad, but I do think that most of my coworkers end up liking me after they get to know me.
Re: Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was declined from a job recently specifically because I wrote a blog post about my history with depression and medication for it [1]. That's not me justifying after the fact, they actually told me this. I took down most of the posts on my blog that were personal as a result. Most of the stuff on there now is just technical stuff that I'm not too worried about being attached to my name. [1] To be clear, the blog pos…
Hope you got that in writing, because that is a hell of a ADA lawsuit you've got there.
This company doesn't have fifteen employees so I don't think I'd have much recourse regardless, but it was over the phone and it wasn't recorded. It would be my word against theirs. I did end up reporting them to the NYC Department of Labor, though.
Of course, they were just the ones stupid enough to be honest about it. I have no idea how many jobs I've been declined for where they just gave me a generic form letter.
Re: Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?
#66Will 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…
Because of these "digital footprint checks" now nobody can truly say what they want online. Either you have to put on a fake persona or just go completely silent. It’s self-censorship in disguise. Dead Internet Theory confirmed.
Just create 2 accounts
Re: Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?
#67Will 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.
at some point the AI based searching is going to just make it that much easier to incorporate social posts on any background checks.
Re: Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?
#68So I like to use this metaphor (it was originally for dating but applies here too).
Think of your body. Specifically how tall you are. You can't easily change your height. However, you can do the following:
- workout
- wear clothes that fit you and flatter your particular body type
- etc
The same applies to interviews.
e.g. if you are a quiet, introverted person then there probably isn't much you can do if you are interviewing for a job that requires an outgoing personality like sales or event planning
However, you can get better at rapport, asking questions and seeming interested and excited in the role. A lot of this is also how you respond to questions. For example, if someone asks "Tell me about X", X can be either vague or you are not sure why they are asking. If you respond with "Well, I have a couple examples of X here they are: A, B, C. Which one would you like to hear about?" then that shows you are both experienced and also good at clarifying what is being asked.
One EXCELLENT way to practice this is to reach out to friends or family members who have done a lot of interviewing and have them do a mock interview. This is useful b/c they know both:
- what hiring managers are looking for in general
- you as a person and what may be "the best side of you" vs "pretending to be something you're not"
I will also repeat what some other commenters have said:
You are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. Much like a marriage, you want to partner with someone that "fits" with you and vice versa. In other words,
Re: Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?
#69Will 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…
Really appreciate seeing comments like this on HN. You got me thinking about my own presence online. I decided to use gpt-5-thinking and perplexity's deep research with the same prompt to deep dive on my legal name, find aliases, research those aliases, etc. Then report on positive and negatives findings. Both did a good job and helped me feel a bit at ease. They both noticed that I worked at a place that later had a controversy and knew that I left prior to that but gave actionable ideas on how to answer questions around that during interviews or via linkedin. I think I might set up a perplexity task to run and email this once a month.
I'll probably one seperate ones for my own handles that are not attached to my name to monitor them as well. The panopticon never sleeps.
Re: Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?
#70Will 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…
Really appreciate seeing comments like this on HN. You got me thinking about my own presence online. I decided to use gpt-5-thinking and perplexity's deep research with the same prompt to deep dive on my legal name, find aliases, research those aliases, etc. Then report on positive and negatives findings. Both did a good job and helped me feel a bit at ease. They both noticed that I worked at a place that later had a…
Yeah honestly it really is something I hadn't considered much, especially my old Twitter which I haven't logged into for years and the last posts were when I was in an extremely bad state mentally. I completely forgot about it even existing, but of course whether or not I remembered it doesn't mean it won't potentially hurt my prospects.
It's impossible to know how many jobs I've been turned down for due to my online presence and edgy takes; most of my takes really aren't that edgy or even that out there, but they might be enough make a potential employer think twice.
I just deleted my old Twitter, my Reddit account, and most of my posts on LinkedIn. I don't think any of them were really that bad but I don't really need them haunting me for forever.