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Interviews vs. auditions

ryanholiday.net

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Re: Interviews vs. auditions

#71

Post by LoSboccacc »

ironchef wrote: post #43
spodek wrote: post #25

I teach and coach people to get jobs through performance and it works. Schools teach people to react, take tests, and show how great they are. For a posted opening, you're presenting yourself as a commodity -- a slightly shinier one, you hope. It's based on compliance. Most analytical, geeky types got a lot of schooling. After decades of it, most people have learned that model without awareness of alternatives. If yo…

"If you want to avoid challenges in life and just get a job so you can retire 50 years later with nothing remarkable in between, that strategy works." I find this to be hyperbolic. Compliance and presenting yourself as having more value than the person next you have are not deterministic in "avoiding challenges in life" and not accomplishing anything remarkable. I don't want to run a startup. I want to put my head do…

I'd love to be a commodity tbh. I work just to pay off stuff, and I work hard because I want shinier stuff, but if I had a decent pay at a modest job I'd take it in a heartbeat.

Re: Interviews vs. auditions

#72

Post by frostmatthew »

nunya213 wrote: post #61
frostmatthew wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the analogy I use when people complain that whiteboarding doesn't mimic/approximate they day-to-day job. If you're the casting director for a play you're going to have auditions, you're not going to cast people based (solely) on their resume and having a conversation about their acting background. But auditions are very different than an actual performance: there's no audience or costumes or props, the lightin…

I agree with the sentiment but almost no other profession does this. Could you imagine a Surgeon being forced to "Audition" for his job? "Here perform heart surgery on this guy for us, if he lives you get the job."

> I agree with the sentiment but almost no other profession does this

Almost no other creative profession doesn't do this. Our profession is much more similar to actors and musicians than it is to doctors or lawyers. You also have to factor in practicality and gatekeeping (for lack of a better word) - it's not very practical for a doctor to perform mock surgery for an interview, whereas it's very feasible asking someone to write some code on a whiteboard; and if you're a surgeon you have things that indicate you know how to perform surgery at a much higher level of confidence than knowing someone can problem solve (well) just because they list "developer" on their resume, surgeons have to go to many years or medical school, they have to spend time in residency, they have to pass their boards, if software development had the equivalent of all this (and I'm not necessarily saying it should) then yes there'd be much less need for "auditions" in our field.

Re: Interviews vs. auditions

#73

Post by jogjayr »

scarface74 wrote: post #42
whitexn--g28h wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the big 4 now. See Enron, and Anderson.

Big 5 was in reference to the technology companies FAANG - Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google. I have no idea why people include Netflix and not Microsoft.

> I have no idea why people include Netflix and not Microsoft.

Netflix pays outlandishly well - which is why engineers include it on their list of big companies.

Leaving that aside Netflix is a giant: $150B market cap as of this writing. The term "FANG" was created by TV stock pundit Jim Cramer to describe tech stocks that have done particularly well over the last 7-8 years[1]. Maybe he felt MSFT's stock performance wasn't that strong or that he couldn't make a catchy acronym if he included it?

1. https://www.thestreet.com/story/13230576/1/what-are-fang-sto...

Re: Interviews vs. auditions

#74

Post by walshemj »

ironchef wrote: post #43
spodek wrote: post #25

I teach and coach people to get jobs through performance and it works. Schools teach people to react, take tests, and show how great they are. For a posted opening, you're presenting yourself as a commodity -- a slightly shinier one, you hope. It's based on compliance. Most analytical, geeky types got a lot of schooling. After decades of it, most people have learned that model without awareness of alternatives. If yo…

"If you want to avoid challenges in life and just get a job so you can retire 50 years later with nothing remarkable in between, that strategy works." I find this to be hyperbolic. Compliance and presenting yourself as having more value than the person next you have are not deterministic in "avoiding challenges in life" and not accomplishing anything remarkable. I don't want to run a startup. I want to put my head do…

Actually the military is far more about the smaller team bonds SF even more so i.e. don't conform to grooming regs use first names.

Re: Interviews vs. auditions

#75

Post by lainga »

vinayms wrote: post #66

I only skimmed the article, but whenever I read such material I feel these techniques are suited for jobs banking on charisma instead of knowledge and skill based ones. I am a software engineer. I haven't held too many jobs, and have attended very few interviews. As an interviewee, I always gauged the enthusiasm of the interviewer before 'unleashing my talent'. I have had my share of insipid interviews where the focu…

H[acker] and non-H are the U and non-U of the 21st century!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English

Re: Interviews vs. auditions

#76

Post by trevyn »

IMO, the reason this is rare and stands out is because these types of people tend to already be running their own show, and don’t need to interview or audition.

Re: Interviews vs. auditions

#77

Post by imaadrashied »

I don't know if the need to have the entire program written out is most important.

The best candidates I've hired show aptitude to ask the right questions and, in return, ask probing questions about what led to our decisions, have we thought of [x], this is how [x] might work, what about [y] competitor or space within our industry, etc...

The most memorable interviews I've come out of / been a part of are the ones in which the candidate leaves me thinking or scratching my head about why we're doing what we're doing and whether they'd be a great fit to help us achieve our goals.

This is all from a product management perspective so might not be the same across the board.

Re: Interviews vs. auditions

#78

Post by refurb »

kylnew wrote: post #39

As an engineer I think this is best interpreted as a recommendation to ask a lot of questions when you are given the chance. Take it as an opportunity to demonstrate a greater understanding and care for the opportunity than just the scope of your role. Ask about culture, about challenges, competitive positioning in the marketplace etc.. I try to ask questions that demonstrate a lot of compassion for team dynamics and…

As someone who has interviewed a lot of candidates, I would agree the Q&A is the best place to show this.

Most of the stock questions are filters for people who can't do the job - was this person's answer reasonable?

Where I've seen candidates shine is when they ask really good questions. Question that indicate they've put some thought into the role. When all I get is "How do you like working here?" or "What's the company culture?" it shows the person is either uninterested in the role or incapable of delivering something beyond "here's what you asked for boss".

Re: Interviews vs. auditions

#79

Post by walshemj »

closeparen wrote: post #10
fizx wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worthwhile to distinguish between decision-makers and information-gatherers. FAANG interviewers have notoriously little decision-making power, though if you're given a time slot with your potential hiring manager, this approach might be worth a shot.

A good interviewer wants to stay on their script not because they're a disempowered automaton, but so that they can contextualize your performance relative to others they've given the same questions. Your job on an interview loop is to collect the best signal you can about the candidate's strengths in the assigned topic. You have broad latitude to use your professional judgement in going about that, but what makes yo…

But Most FANG interviewers don't seem to have any training

Re: Interviews vs. auditions

#80

Post by feistypharit »

scarface74 wrote: post #69
ironchef wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you want to avoid challenges in life and just get a job so you can retire 50 years later with nothing remarkable in between, that strategy works." I find this to be hyperbolic. Compliance and presenting yourself as having more value than the person next you have are not deterministic in "avoiding challenges in life" and not accomplishing anything remarkable. I don't want to run a startup. I want to put my head do…

"If you want to avoid challenges in life and just get a job so you can retire 50 years later with nothing remarkable in between, that strategy works. Despite all of the hyperbole in tech, that's what most of us are doing. We work to provide for our family and if we get hit by a bus tomorrow, the company we work for will put out a req for an open job position and life goes on. It doesn't matter whether you are the jan…

And on the scale of millennia, nobody has any lasting impact. The only lasting impact we all have is our DNA.
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