This is an excellent summary of the kind of things a company should worry about only if they can't actually measure performance.
Though "appearing disinterested" should still be a huge turn-off.
Job Search: Interview Disasters Revealed By Employers
11–20 of 30 posts
Re: Job Search: Interview Disasters Revealed By Employers
#12-- Candidate wore a business suit with flip flops. God, who cares? -- Dressing inappropriately - 57 percent If dropping your dress code expectations will increase your potential hire pool by over 50%, that is a serious competitive advantage over more stodgy companies.
It's not about the suit, it's about the message. As an employer you want to hire people who make an effort, and want to avoid people who can't be bothered to. Dressing well for an interview is so obvious it's actually a pretty good way of sorting candidates. This may apply less for programmers and high-end technical positions, but this is the exception not the rule.
If you hire people that make a relevant effort, and don't punish people for failing to make an irrelevant effort, won't that give you a competitive advantage?
Shouldn't we hire people who know what actually matters, and what doesn't matter, and prioritize?
Re: Job Search: Interview Disasters Revealed By Employers
#13-- Candidate wore a business suit with flip flops. God, who cares? -- Dressing inappropriately - 57 percent If dropping your dress code expectations will increase your potential hire pool by over 50%, that is a serious competitive advantage over more stodgy companies.
I'd be more likely to hire the flip-flop guy, especially if he also played Dungeons & Dragons.
Re: Job Search: Interview Disasters Revealed By Employers
#14-- Candidate used Dungeons and Dragons as an example of teamwork. That's a negative? WTF? There's a hell of a lot more interesting in the way of teamwork, management, etc. in role-playing games (especially MMORPGs) than in most corporations.
On the flip-side, I once had an interviewer ask me to solve a problem where several hurdles/criteria were introduced randomly based on rolling a 20-sided die.
Re: Job Search: Interview Disasters Revealed By Employers
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not about the suit, it's about the message. As an employer you want to hire people who make an effort, and want to avoid people who can't be bothered to. Dressing well for an interview is so obvious it's actually a pretty good way of sorting candidates. This may apply less for programmers and high-end technical positions, but this is the exception not the rule.
If you hire people that make a relevant effort, and don't punish people for failing to make an irrelevant effort, won't that give you a competitive advantage? Shouldn't we hire people who know what actually matters, and what doesn't matter, and prioritize?
If they can't bother to do something as simple as dress nice for something as formal as an interview, I don't want to have anything to do with the candidate.
Re: Job Search: Interview Disasters Revealed By Employers
#16We're going through panel interviews right now, and a lot of that article is rubbish, as others have pointed out. But I want to tease out the "don't be negative" because it's got the reasons wrong.
"Also, no matter how tempting it is, don't say negative things about a previous employer, regardless of how the job ended - hiring managers may fear that you will say the same things about their organization."
That's not why you don't say negative things. You don't say negative things because it means you blame other people or you're a negative person. You say, "I don't like my current job because they don't listen to me," and all I hear is that you don't have very good ideas, you're very bad at explaining those ideas, or your disconnected from the people you work with. And on top of that, you don't understand how to solve interpersonal problems. None of that make me super excited about you.
Instead try realizing that you might bear some of the blame for the things you don't like, and realize the other party might have good justification. So instead: "I find myself getting excited about very different opportunities than my current coworkers. They have a real passion for solving the immediate problem whereas I'm far more interested in solving the underlying cause. So while I appreciate their desire to provide a quick solution, and have even learned when that can be appropriate, I'm really looking for an environment that emphasizes long-term thinking while still making sure customer needs are met as quickly as possible."
Re: Job Search: Interview Disasters Revealed By Employers
#17-- Candidate wore a business suit with flip flops. God, who cares? -- Dressing inappropriately - 57 percent If dropping your dress code expectations will increase your potential hire pool by over 50%, that is a serious competitive advantage over more stodgy companies.
Look at it in the reverse. Dressing appropriately dramatically increases your chance of being hired.
Do you really want to hire the kind of person who can't figure out how to avoid this disadvantage?
Re: Job Search: Interview Disasters Revealed By Employers
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you hire people that make a relevant effort, and don't punish people for failing to make an irrelevant effort, won't that give you a competitive advantage? Shouldn't we hire people who know what actually matters, and what doesn't matter, and prioritize?
If they can't bother to do something as simple as dress nice for something as formal as an interview, I don't want to have anything to do with the candidate.
[deleted]
Re: Job Search: Interview Disasters Revealed By Employers
#19-- Candidate wore a business suit with flip flops. God, who cares? -- Dressing inappropriately - 57 percent If dropping your dress code expectations will increase your potential hire pool by over 50%, that is a serious competitive advantage over more stodgy companies.
It's not about the suit, it's about the message. As an employer you want to hire people who make an effort, and want to avoid people who can't be bothered to. Dressing well for an interview is so obvious it's actually a pretty good way of sorting candidates. This may apply less for programmers and high-end technical positions, but this is the exception not the rule.
What you're overlooking is that attention is a limited resource. Someone who pays attention to how they dress has thereby paid less attention than they might have to something substantive.
So not only don't we care how people dress at YC interviews, dressing up is actually a (minor) red flag. We'd rather you spent that effort on something else.
Re: Job Search: Interview Disasters Revealed By Employers
#20And at this late stage the realization comes that reciting poetry in interviews was the silent assassin of my career! Just the other day I was asked to explain a concurrent design and I just couldn't help but recite the immortal words of Halyna Krouk:
Two couplets and a refrain
a carousel
of non-stop passing
at each turn one more door closes before us
with a rusty whinny
legless horses tear into the prairie –
racing
two couplets and a refrain
eyes gaping
two couplets and a refrain
catching up from hind to front
reach out to me
throw me the lasso of a glance
who made us so hopelessly distant
who conceived us such irreparable losers
on this overplayed record
– two couplets and a refrain –
where even love leaves only scratches