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People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance

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

#111

Post by rifung »

sidlls wrote: post #47
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…

Define "much faster." I am seriously trying to think of a developer I'd describe as competent and smart who could not pick up a new language or framework with sufficient understanding to be minimally productive (fixing minor to moderate bugs, contributing to new if simple features) inside a week or two. If that's not fast enough, something has gone terribly wrong planning the project.

I actually didn't mean the time it took for them to start contributing, I meant the time it would take for them to complete the same task.

Someone who knows the ins and outs of their language won't have to look up or learn new stuff as they go for example. This isn't even necessarily restricted to languages or frameworks, if you've done something similar to an assigned task, you would likely have already encountered certain pitfalls and know the best way to complete the task.

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

#112

Post by morgante »

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #102
fecak wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Or perhaps by actually reading resumes instead of keyword-filtering them This one is a two-way street. I launched a resume writing side-business a couple years ago (resumeraiders.com) because I saw how poor many developer resumes were and how they were getting ripped off by resume writers who had no experience in hiring or in tech. Most were just failed writers. If you expect a recruiter to read a poorly-written 5 p…

This is fascinating to me. I recently did a resume swap with an American lady I know (I'm Australian). We're both around mid thirties. She's in SF. Her resume was 1 page. It's the first time I've ever seen a 1 page resume in my life except for someone out of highschool with no history or experience. Mine is 4 pages. I've worked really hard to cut it down to that while including relevant things and nice formatting/rea…

Honestly, I'm incredibly skeptical that you need 4 pages.

Almost anyone can fit their entire experience onto a single page. You don't need to write an essay for each position—just highlight a few bullet points.

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

#113

Post by fecak »

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #102
fecak wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Or perhaps by actually reading resumes instead of keyword-filtering them This one is a two-way street. I launched a resume writing side-business a couple years ago (resumeraiders.com) because I saw how poor many developer resumes were and how they were getting ripped off by resume writers who had no experience in hiring or in tech. Most were just failed writers. If you expect a recruiter to read a poorly-written 5 p…

This is fascinating to me. I recently did a resume swap with an American lady I know (I'm Australian). We're both around mid thirties. She's in SF. Her resume was 1 page. It's the first time I've ever seen a 1 page resume in my life except for someone out of highschool with no history or experience. Mine is 4 pages. I've worked really hard to cut it down to that while including relevant things and nice formatting/rea…

There is a cultural element, and I've worked with candidates using longer form CVs to shorten them to the preferred US length. It's part formatting, part redundancy, and usually just sharing more information than is necessary.

The resume doesn't need to include everything you did. It's a highlight reel, not a bio. You don't need to list every responsibility or even every accomplishment.

If I forced you to tell me your background in one page, you'd be able to do it if you have any sense as to what is most impressive, what is important, and what isn't. The reason your resume is four pages is that it's acceptable where you are.

I once reduced a 26 page resume to a couple pages for a non-US client. It's usually just triage and deleting, some sentence "refactoring", and formatting. Not too tough, as long as my client doesn't have too much emotional attachment to every detail from their career.

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

#114

Post by morgante »

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?

It doesn't have to be as extreme as that.

If I think I did poorly on an interview, I will probably stop following up with the company and will more aggressively pursue other options. In particular, I might accept another offer prematurely because I assume one isn't forthcoming from the company.

As the post mentions, this relates heavily to timing. It's the long delays which many companies introduce that force candidates to make assumptions/prune early, especially since some companies will never even tell you you were rejected. Speeding up candidate responses is one of the easiest ways to dramatically improve a hiring process.

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

#115

Post by p4wnc6 »

rifung wrote: post #22
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 a…

Using the measurement, "how likely are they to be hired" seems like it's precisely the problem. "How likely someone is to be hired" is a totally erratic and unpredictable property of a bureaucratic hiring process. It's exactly not the sort of thing you want to use to define an absolute notion of skill or performance in a job interview.

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

#116

Post by morgante »

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…

What do you define as "training?"

Personally I don't think companies should be paying for specific training because as a developer you can learn anything you need online.

On the other hand, my experience is that many/most companies are willing to hire a senior developer even if they don't have experience with the company's specific stack. They rightly assume that any developer can pick up a new stack quickly enough.

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

#117

Post by wpietri »

boardwaalk wrote: post #89
wpietri wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was at Code for America I redid their hiring process to optimize for interviewee experience rather than hiring manager experience. One of the things that really struck me at the time was that traditional interview processes are built around a notion of worker surplus and job scarcity. They make very little sense when the opposite condition applies. Even little things like contacting all applicants within 24 ho…

Oh gosh, this is totally true. I honestly find it almost disrespectful when you feel some company is putting you through a pipeline. They set up an interview day, line everyone up, grind through them one by one. The other thing is the technical interview which is unreflective of the job itself. In one recently, I was told before going in I had to code on a whiteboard. I ask, "Can I have I use a text editor, not an ID…

For what it's worth, one of the things I did with my interview process was to make all the coding involve an actual computer. I gave the interviewee their choice of editor, and was happy to let them use their own computer.

My theory was that in an interview I wanted to see people at their best. I wasn't hiring them to code on whiteboards or learn how to use new text editors; I was hiring them to spend a lot of time coding in an environment they liked.

More details here: http://williampietri.com/writing/2015/slightly-less-awful-hi...

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

#118

Post by wpietri »

vonmoltke wrote: post #56
wpietri wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was at Code for America I redid their hiring process to optimize for interviewee experience rather than hiring manager experience. One of the things that really struck me at the time was that traditional interview processes are built around a notion of worker surplus and job scarcity. They make very little sense when the opposite condition applies. Even little things like contacting all applicants within 24 ho…

I agree with you, but here's the thing. If the vast majority of companies are running like that and succeeding, does that not suggest that there really is a workeer surplus and job scarcity, and that impressions to the contrary are self-imposed?

For some jobs, sure. But what I really think it suggests is a power asymmetry. A company can do without 1 worker much more easily than a worker can do without 1 job. Plus, current processes let hiring managers feel powerful. Given the high percentage of hiring managers who are social primates, I expect that's a big factor.

In tech, though, you hear endless complaints about how hard it is to hire, so I didn't hesitate to optimize the process for interviewee happiness. I expect it would make people more likely to apply, more likely to stay through the process, more likely to accept an offer, and more likely to refer friends.

Regardless, there's enormous waste to be removed from the process for anybody who's willing to put a little thought and work in.

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

#119

Post by SilasX »

8_hours_ago wrote: post #75
amorphid wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

If "not illegally confining someone" is all it takes not to be a "high-pressure sale tactic", then I confess I don't understand the term.

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

#120

Post by latimer »

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…

That quote reminded me of something my mentor told me when I was training to interview people in-person. He said if they're really struggling, change it up with an easy question for exactly the reason you gave, but also to get their confidence up so they don't start the next interview feeling bad.
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