It was made the clearest to me when I interviewed a colleague who had left to another company and two years later was interviewing to return. I knew he knew everything and had the skills for the job because, well, I know him, I’d worked with him before. He’d done this very job previously. Yet he still performed terribly in the interview and (rightly or wrongly) I had to base my evaluation on my knowledge of him rather than his performance in the interview. Interviews suck so much for evaluating people. If you want a job and good career progression the best advice has to be prioritize making friends with lots of people.
Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study
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Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study
#12Huh, the only successful interviews I have are the ones where I'm burned out after a long, fruitless, frustrating job search. And so I walk in assuming the interview will be a waste of time and just not caring anymore. That's when I get an offer.
People can smell desperation, and rightly or wrongly, it pushes them away.
This is so true and yet so difficult to control for.
Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study
#13Huh, the only successful interviews I have are the ones where I'm burned out after a long, fruitless, frustrating job search. And so I walk in assuming the interview will be a waste of time and just not caring anymore. That's when I get an offer.
I had a similar experience for my current job. I went to the interview on whim, assuming that I would fail horribly. It was only practice.
Then my brilliant plan was spoiled.
Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study
#14Huh, the only successful interviews I have are the ones where I'm burned out after a long, fruitless, frustrating job search. And so I walk in assuming the interview will be a waste of time and just not caring anymore. That's when I get an offer.
This was true for me, too.
My previous startup I worked at had gone under, and I was thinking about starting my own. An old coworker of mine invited me to lunch. We had a couple of margaritas, and he asked if I wanted to see his office.
I went to check it out, and suddenly he asks if I can talk to some of his coworkers.
So I basically interviewed while drunk and not fully realizing I was being interviewed.
They offered me the job, and I have been working there for 8 years now.
Maybe the best way to be relaxed during a job interview is to not even realize it is happening. And having a couple of margaritas can't hurt.
Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study
#15Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study
#16Uh, maybe at times, but I assure you -- I've interviewed some VERY confident, VERY incompetent software dev candidates.
You're conflating the personality traits of the interviewee with criticism of the generally accepted 'best practice' of interviewers.
On my experience far too many companies are using processes that select for entirely the wrong criteria.
Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study
#17Uh, maybe at times, but I assure you -- I've interviewed some VERY confident, VERY incompetent software dev candidates.
Same here. A guy was soaked in arrogance even though the test he submitted was average at best. "This looks good enough. when do I start?"
Even worse: I had an encounter with another guy who refused to make a test because his CV demonstrated everything we needed to know and asking him to solve a few problems was "incredibly disrespectful". He was also apparently going to start next Monday. Needless to say he didn't.
Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study
#18Huh, the only successful interviews I have are the ones where I'm burned out after a long, fruitless, frustrating job search. And so I walk in assuming the interview will be a waste of time and just not caring anymore. That's when I get an offer.
That is funny as that is the way alot of my interviews go as well. I tend to have extreme anxiety on a job I really want and "pysch myself out" so to speak. I really dislike typical tech interviews as it is alot of pop quiz obscure answers under extremely tight timelines never seen on the job. I have had interviews where 3 interviewers are all demanding answers at the same time and it was horrible. I hope at some point in the future this is realized as a colossal fail in the industry and a new method is realized.
Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study
#19> In short, the findings suggest that companies are missing out on really good programmers because those programmers aren’t good at writing on a whiteboard and explaining their work out loud while coding.
In most of my programming jobs, explaining your work was most of the job and writing code was less important.
The whiteboard environment is a bit unnatural but I don’t want to hire someone who gets the right answer if they can’t explain it to me.
Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study
#20[deleted]