People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by Sleaker » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:54 PM UTC

>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.

Maybe this is because the interviewee feels partly abused, as if communication isn't a two-way street. I think interviews would be less terrible if interviewers actually told you at the end that you did above/aswell as/below expectations, and/or why instead of just waiting 1-2 weeks before getting back to you and then telling you that you are/aren't moving on to the next step. A huge part of the interview process produces emotional ups/downs that no one wants to deal with and which ostracize potential employees, but the interviewers don't really do much to help with this.

I also think that having a 1-4 range is not a good guide for gathering sweeping datasets. Adding any amount of numbers will help to show actually how much. Or actually using human language to define them would be better. 1) Terrible/Unhirable. 2) Unhirable/Not Passing 3) Passing 4) Exemplar would actually be beneficial right now arbitrary numbering doesn't help to give people much context as to what they should choose, and the numbers are so close that you're going to get outliers where maybe some people think that a 2 is passable but not great, and interviewer thinks 3 is passable but not great, or vice-versa.

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

#22

Post by rifung » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:54 PM UTC

p4wnc6 wrote: post #3

Maybe I'm missing something, but why isn't the implication going the other direction? In my experience, the problem is that interviewers have no idea how to correctly value a candidate's performance. Maybe the candidates are closer to being well-calibrated, but their self-assessments don't match up with the interviewers' because the interviewers don't know how to gauge what they are looking for? Making the assumption…

If you consider how well someone does as how likely they are to be hired, then it makes sense that interviewers are the source of "truth", because it's their grade or opinion which will decide whether you get hired or not.

We certainly can speculate whether whose opinions are more correct or valid, but if we just objectively consider that doing perfectly means you get hired, then what the interviewer thinks matters and what the interviewee thinks doesn't.

I do think you raise an interesting question though. I do wonder whether, in a scenario where many interviewers saw the same interview performance, how varied their scores would be.

After all, most people fail at many job interviews before landing one they get, but is that because of variation in the performance of the interviewee or because of the differences in interviewers?

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

#23

Post by mhurron » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:54 PM UTC

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…

> This is IMO and experience probably based on a "sour grapes" type defense mechanism

It's not just going to be 'sour grapes' but also going to be preparing themselves for the rejection they now believe is coming. They're making it so they're not surprised when it shows up or when they don't hear back.

They're also making themselves more open to other offers instead of focusing on this one.

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

#24

Post by in_cahoots » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:57 PM UTC

p4wnc6 wrote: post #3

Maybe I'm missing something, but why isn't the implication going the other direction? In my experience, the problem is that interviewers have no idea how to correctly value a candidate's performance. Maybe the candidates are closer to being well-calibrated, but their self-assessments don't match up with the interviewers' because the interviewers don't know how to gauge what they are looking for? Making the assumption…

This is my concern too. Any person who's gone in for many interviews has seen that the interviewer isn't the absolute measure of performance: we've all seen problems that are just trivia questions, are designed to show off the skills of the interviewer, or (worst of all) where a second solution isn't accepted because it's not what the interviewer thought of. All of these issues can result in disagreements on performance, in both directions.

I would like to see a different analysis: for multiple interviewers of the same candidate, how similar are the ratings?

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

#25

Post by Jemmeh » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:58 PM UTC

GoToRO wrote: post #18

rifung wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

This is actually one of my interview red flags. For example if I say "I've worked with VB.NET 5 years, but not much C#" and they want 1 year C# experience. If they say that's a problem most of the time they don't know what they're talking about or they're not a company willing to invest in training their employees. I want a job that lets me learn.

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

#26

Post by GoToRO » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:58 PM UTC

Jemmeh wrote: post #19

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 run…

Trust me, if you have a passionate non-web developer he can do the job just fine. And he/she applied for the job so they are interested to learn something new, maybe already started doing so but there is nothing to put down in a CV. They will read the tutorials, the documentation and they will deliver. I feel that nobody wants to give a chance to anybody.

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

#27

Post by fecak » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:58 PM UTC

Yhippa wrote: post #17

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?"

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

And rightfully so.

The term these days is "candidate experience" for the overall interview process, which can include everything from a company's handling of logistics and time spent in a waiting room to the types of questions being asked.

That said, what I'm referring to in my comment isn't necessarily related to the interview process at all. A candidate can be asked questions that he/she felt were relevant and entirely fair for the job at hand, yet if he/she performed poorly there is still a tendency to try and find flaws in the overall opportunity.

My reference wasn't to candidates performing poorly and thus giving a bad review to the interview process. Rather, the candidate might perform poorly and say that the vacation time was inadequate or the commute would have been too long.

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

#28

Post by askAwayMan » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 8:00 PM UTC

Kephael wrote: post #20

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. Sc…

Maybe if you've been fortunate to have attended an elite school. For the rest of us no name state school alumns, there's the nice illusion of meritocracy either way.

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

#29

Post by GoToRO » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

GoToRO wrote: post #18

rifung wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

@Jemmeh I "failed" a similar interview (VB, C#) Don't they know that the VB and C# examples are shown on Microsoft's site side by side?!

The only conclusion I reached is that one should navigate in life in such a way that your well being should not depend on people that are less smart, less experienced, less curious than yourself.

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

#30

Post by collyw » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

Surely a lot depends timing and circumstances. One interviewer said they gave me the job based on asking if the guys accent was Dutch (he was Norwegian and found that hilarious). It was a maintenance programming job and had a high turnover of staff. Other interviews you may have done well but had some serious competition.