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

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

#71

Post by sotojuan » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 10:04 PM UTC

GoToRO wrote: post #26

Jemmeh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The business owner's response is that the experienced person won't take time reading tutorials or asking questions and thus get it done faster.

FWIW I agree most companies should train.

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

#72

Post by Jemmeh » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 10:12 PM UTC

GoToRO wrote: post #26

Jemmeh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I totally agree that they -can- do the job. The most important thing for a software developer is the ability to learn. We need to give people chances so that they even even enter the field to one day become senior level.

But I also understand how a lot of business owners feel about it. It takes time to learn these things vs someone who has basically already done this project before in this stack before. A business in a hurry (most of them) would rather have someone who already knows how to do it.

Look at Stack Overflow Careers. Look how many more ads there are asking for senior devs.

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

#73

Post by 8_hours_ago » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 10:15 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…

The company I work at has a good solution to this. We fly candidates out for an onsite interview and at the end of the day, if we decide we want to hire them, we give them an offer in person. Our goal is to get them to verbally accept before they head back home.

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

#74

Post by amorphid » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 10:19 PM UTC

8_hours_ago wrote: post #73

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…

The company I work at has a good solution to this. We fly candidates out for an onsite interview and at the end of the day, if we decide we want to hire them, we give them an offer in person. Our goal is to get them to verbally accept before they head back home.

Kind of high pressure, no?

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

#75

Post by 8_hours_ago » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 10:24 PM UTC

amorphid wrote: post #74

8_hours_ago wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company I work at has a good solution to this. We fly candidates out for an onsite interview and at the end of the day, if we decide we want to hire them, we give them an offer in person. Our goal is to get them to verbally accept before they head back home.

Kind of high pressure, no?

We don't pressure them, just give them the offer and continue to sell the company. It isn't like we hold the door shut until they accept :)

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

#76

Post by sushisource » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 10:26 PM UTC

sushid wrote: post #10

> Therefore, every bar above 0 is impostor syndrome country, and every bar below zero belongs to its foulsome, overconfident cousin, the Dunning-Kruger effect. Dunning-Kruger effect is attributed to "a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude." [1] Seems like a harsh accusation for being off by a single star. And the author makes a generalization that the imposter effect is "better" than…

I'm so mind-bendingly sick of these two terms (Dunning-Kruger and Imposter Syndrome). They're very much in-vouge as of late and it seems like an overwhelming number of /r/programming and HN posts have at least some reference to it.

Pulling some piece of psychology jargon out of thin air doesn't make it immediately applicable or accurate. Presumably, the terms get used so frequently for the "look how smart I sound" effect, which serves only to piss me off.

I would categorize these two groups as "overconfident" and "under-confident", at most. They're not suffering from some genuine long term psychological condition just because you think it sounds cool to use the terms.

/rant

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

#77

Post by zerebubuth » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 10:31 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #37

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…

>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. Wait. They think they didn't do well, got an offer, but turned it down because they think they didn't do well on the interview?

> Wait. They think they didn't do well, got an offer, but turned it down because they think they didn't do well on the interview?

Yup. Happened to me: I felt like I did poorly in one of the interviews and had to ask myself whether I'd be happy in the job if the day-to-day was like the interview.

It probably wouldn't have been, but I had another offer on the table and the negative experience swayed me in the direction of the other offer.

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

#78

Post by solipsism » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 10:34 PM UTC

red_blobs wrote: post #59

vonmoltke wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. If that is the case, what you need is a contractor , not an employee , and you should hire accordingly.

I disagree. Aside from an entry level position, you want someone with previous experience. Google wouldn't hire someone to manage their datacenter with no previous experience managing anything like it.

Voted down for being about as wrong as possible about Google's hiring practices.

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

#79

Post by Spooky23 » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 10:35 PM UTC

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…

15 years ago, my employer easily invested $15-20k in training into me and most of the other techs. It was a major factor in me sticking around vs taking a raise at another employer.

We've reverted to the mean in recent years unfortunately. No training, and lots of nickel and dime bullshit. Today, if I found the right role, it would just be a matter of finding the right number.

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

#80

Post by kafkaesq » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 10:45 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #38

Yhippa wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

A company's bad interview process might have nothing at all to do with the rest of the company. At this point, isn't it generally accepted that all tech interviewing sucks, and companies would do better throwing darts at resumes? If all interviewing is bad, and all companies are not bad, there's no benefit to judging a company based on that process.

[Wouldn't] companies would do better throwing darts at resumes?

Or perhaps by actually reading resumes instead of keyword-filtering them. Really, it's not that hard.

"Throwing darts at resumes", OTOH, is exactly what many companies seem to be doing right now. Specifically, the practice of setting up a "chat" with an internal recruiter (who inevitably tells you that they think you'll be a "wonderful fit") before passing the resume over to the tech side (which is when you find out whether they really think you're a potential fit or not) comes to mind.