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People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance

blog.interviewing.io

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Re: People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance

#11

Post by GoToRO »

ng12 wrote: post #9
GoToRO wrote: post #6

I often wonder how would these people hire soldiers? "So I see you have no previous experience in killing people... We are looking for people that have at least 5 years of experience in killing people." My point is you need smart enough people for your job and nothing more. You do an IQ test, a personality one and that's all. The rest can be learned.

There's a line there somewhere. Hiring someone for knowing Node is pretty silly, but hiring someone who's spent 5 years developing web apps is a useful metric.

In my experience, not that much. The 5 years experience might mean one year repeated 5 times. The person might be bored but he has no choice but to continue with web development and so on. Get somebody who is interested and smart enough for the job. Note I didn't say "the smartest".

Re: People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance

#12

Post by civilian »

GoToRO wrote: post #6

I often wonder how would these people hire soldiers? "So I see you have no previous experience in killing people... We are looking for people that have at least 5 years of experience in killing people." My point is you need smart enough people for your job and nothing more. You do an IQ test, a personality one and that's all. The rest can be learned.

I think the personalty trait we call "grit" or "stick-to-it-ive-ness" is hard to test for. And I think the best way to test for it is by looking at someone's track record. And it's one of the big three requirements. (which are: smart, works hard, someone you want to work with. )

Re: People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance

#13

Post by Retric »

RyanCavanaugh wrote: post #2

I would draw the opposite conclusion from that data. The mode difference was 0, and 91% of people were within 1 star of the interviewer. Without knowing what the interviewer's bar is for any particular star level, I don't see how the interviewees could do any better. Rounding to 1-star increments amplifies relatively small changes -- if the interviewer rounds up 3.6 to 4 and you round 3.4 down to 3.

+/- 1 star is a huge range. That's 50th to 90th percentile.

Re: People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance

#14

Post by GoToRO »

civilian wrote: post #12
GoToRO wrote: post #6

I often wonder how would these people hire soldiers? "So I see you have no previous experience in killing people... We are looking for people that have at least 5 years of experience in killing people." My point is you need smart enough people for your job and nothing more. You do an IQ test, a personality one and that's all. The rest can be learned.

I think the personalty trait we call "grit" or "stick-to-it-ive-ness" is hard to test for. And I think the best way to test for it is by looking at someone's track record. And it's one of the big three requirements. (which are: smart, works hard, someone you want to work with. )

Don't test then. Have somebody with real life experience judge the candidate. And by real life experience I don't mean 10 years in the same job...

Anyway the interview process is so broken that they could actually improve it by just flipping a coin.

Re: People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance

#16

Post by rifung »

GoToRO wrote: post #6

I often wonder how would these people hire soldiers? "So I see you have no previous experience in killing people... We are looking for people that have at least 5 years of experience in killing people." My point is you need smart enough people for your job and nothing more. You do an IQ test, a personality one and that's all. The rest can be learned.

Not that I disagree with you, but sadly, most companies don't seem to want to train people anymore. They rather push that responsibility to either universities or the applicants themselves.

In fairness, I do think that someone who is very comfortable with a language or framework will be able to do things much faster than someone who isn't. Considering how quickly people change jobs nowadays, I can also see how companies don't want to train people only so they will leave shortly after or even before they're useful.

Obviously this is just based on my own experience in the US.

Re: People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance

#17

Post by Yhippa »

fecak wrote: post #7

>some portion of interviewees are losing interest in joining your company just because they didn’t think they did well, despite the fact that they actually did. This is the key takeaway for me. This is IMO and experience probably based on a "sour grapes" type defense mechanism, where candidates will internally try to talk themselves out of wanting a job that they felt they didn't get. They walk out of the interview f…

I absolutely judge a company by the interview process and the questions they ask.

"Would I want to work for a company where the employees pass their given process?"

Re: People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance

#18

Post by GoToRO »

rifung wrote: post #16
GoToRO wrote: post #6

I often wonder how would these people hire soldiers? "So I see you have no previous experience in killing people... We are looking for people that have at least 5 years of experience in killing people." My point is you need smart enough people for your job and nothing more. You do an IQ test, a personality one and that's all. The rest can be learned.

Not that I disagree with you, but sadly, most companies don't seem to want to train people anymore. They rather push that responsibility to either universities or the applicants themselves. In fairness, I do think that someone who is very comfortable with a language or framework will be able to do things much faster than someone who isn't. Considering how quickly people change jobs nowadays, I can also see how compan…

I agree with you about the training. However if the stack is too specific, then the stack it's like a fingerprint and they are looking for somebody with the same fingerprint...

Re: People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance

#19

Post by Jemmeh »

GoToRO wrote: post #6

I often wonder how would these people hire soldiers? "So I see you have no previous experience in killing people... We are looking for people that have at least 5 years of experience in killing people." My point is you need smart enough people for your job and nothing more. You do an IQ test, a personality one and that's all. The rest can be learned.

If I am a business owner, and I need someone to create a website for me to do something, the first thing I will reach for is someone who has already done similar projects and has a track record of getting it done. Teaching people is expensive, takes time (my website could be making me money -right now-) and doesn't always pay off. Whenever possible, it's often preferred to grab someone who can just hit the ground running.

I'm not saying this is perfect, just that's why experience is sought after. We have an annoying problem of way too many job ads being for seniors and very few for entry level. People have to get their foot in the door to ever become senior.

Re: People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance

#20

Post by Kephael »

These interview training programs seems to be really reminiscent of coding bootcamps and appear to have grown rapidly in a very short period of time. I think I'd almost prefer interviewees being judged based on the schools they attended and companies they worked at. I'm not sure that I find the ability to cram for data structures and algorithms questions to be indicative of intelligence and problem solving skills. Schools attended and companies worked at could be a very strong potential signal of applicant performance and not involve several rounds of "implement that algorithm from memory". Are interviews becoming more difficult as a result of the proliferation of all the interview test prep material?
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