Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews • Hacker News Board

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#31

Post by daxfohl » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 8:00 PM UTC

I disagree with not scheduling before holidays. If I like a candidate I'm not going to forget about that just because of a holiday.

The first person that makes a good impression almost always has an advantage IMO. The hiring manager will remember that person, and human psychology makes your memory of that interview better than it actually was. So for someone to unseat you they have to do significantly better. (And obviously the reverse goes if you are among the last to interview). I think recency bias would only into play if the first couple successful candidates reject their offers or something.

Most important is to get your resume in early though. After spending that first weekend with the mind-numbing task of sifting through hundreds of resumes, a hiring manager is only going to look at new ones if absolutely nothing works out from the first batch.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#32

Post by jacurtis » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 8:02 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #7

It's pretty tough to follow these rules. Mornings only gives you half the time. All rounds at once and as soon as possible would also mean you got in touch with all the recruiters at once and they got back to you promptly. In practice you more likely to see a steady drip as you ramp up your search. Some recruiters get back fast, some slowly. There's no real way you can control this other than giving some feedback as…

Yes these ideas are all certainly valid concepts about interviewing. But it would be nearly impossible to optimize for all of them.

Furthermore, some really are impossible. For example #2 is to schedule interviews in cohorts. I tried to follow this in my most recent job hunt and it is truly impossible. The problem is that some jobs I would go through a phone screen and hear back later that day or the next morning in order to schedule another interview. Some companies will wait a week to get back to you. Others are 3-4 days. As just one example, I interviewed with a large tech company and they were the first ones to actually offer me an initial interview. I went through 3 stages of interviews with them and had the 4th stage scheduled when I canceled because i had already received multiple job offers from other companies, which I had applied to several weeks after them.

In tech a lot of these are easier because you have a lot more power over the interview process if your job skill is one of the in-demand ones. In my interview process I really could bend most of the companies to meet my needs and to move faster than they planned for. But that is a fortunate position to be in. I am watching my sister go through job interviews right now for HR related jobs and the process is completely different. I was going through a 3-4 stage interview process in 1.5-2 weeks. My sister was waiting 2-3 weeks between individual interview stages. In my interviews I could tell people that I want to accept an offer in 2 weeks, so they need to speed up and they would do it for me. If my sister said that in her HR interviews, they would simply disqualify her.

So count your blessings if you are in tech. Sure, we get to complain about take-home interview projects and technical interviews. But we can get jobs within weeks (or even a week) that pay 2-4 times what other people are getting after months-long interview processes. So consider ourselves fortunate.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#33

Post by JamesBarney » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 8:02 PM UTC

UncleOxidant wrote: post #28

andrewflnr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their actionable advice is in the sentence before that. You're quoting a supporting motivation and treating it like the thesis.

They're actionable advice was: "getting and applying professional feedback for one's interview skills has a better ROI in my opinion." And I specifically addressed that: it's difficult to get any actionable interview feedback because companies tend not to supply much (if any) useful interview feedback probably due to legal concerns.

I don't think he was suggesting getting professional feedback from the place that just rejected you.

I think he was suggesting getting feedback from doing mock interviews with friends or interview specialists.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#34

Post by mitchdoogle » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 8:19 PM UTC

UncleOxidant wrote: post #17

elevanation wrote: post #2

While this is an interesting optimization strategy, getting and applying professional feedback for one's interview skills has a better ROI in my opinion. If you're amazing at interviews, the interviewer will remember you and want to hire you. They will even rave about you to their colleagues... "Hey, this person was awesome, we need to hire them." Accomplish that special human ability, and you don't have to worry abo…

> If you're amazing at interviews... Accomplish that special human ability "It's easy, you just..." Most of us are not amazing at interviews so telling people to be amazing at interviews isn't too helpful. Interview feedback tends to be pretty sparse. Often you don't hear anything back unless you got the job. Even if you do get a "no" response it will be light on details (and it's usually this way due to legal concer…

If you wanted to learn to play the piano, how would you do it? You'd get lessons, or watch videos, or read a book. You'd definitely practice. Treat interviewing the same way.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#35

Post by lnanek2 » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 8:21 PM UTC

daxfohl wrote: post #31

I disagree with not scheduling before holidays. If I like a candidate I'm not going to forget about that just because of a holiday. The first person that makes a good impression almost always has an advantage IMO. The hiring manager will remember that person, and human psychology makes your memory of that interview better than it actually was. So for someone to unseat you they have to do significantly better. (And ob…

As an American, I totally feel the same. But working with some of my European counterparts, they can just totally disappear for a month or two when they vacation, like into a black hole. They just take vacations more seriously. If one of them was a decider for a hiring decision, we definitely wouldn't hear back from them until after. Not anything good or bad about it, it's just a different culture.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#36

Post by darth_avocado » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 8:24 PM UTC

Great ideas, they don’t work.

1. Mornings only is impossible because a lot of interviewer availability is in the afternoon since for a lot of them, it’s an unproductive task

2. Batching sounds good, but doesn’t work because different companies move at different paces and you almost always can’t batch them. You’d be lucky if you could batch 2 onsites back to back.

3. You may not be able to batch subsequent rounds together because you sometimes may not hear back on time

4. Most important of all, none of this takes into account that you already may be working a demanding job that you cant take time off from that easily

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#37

Post by mitchdoogle » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 8:28 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #20

UncleOxidant wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're amazing at interviews... Accomplish that special human ability "It's easy, you just..." Most of us are not amazing at interviews so telling people to be amazing at interviews isn't too helpful. Interview feedback tends to be pretty sparse. Often you don't hear anything back unless you got the job. Even if you do get a "no" response it will be light on details (and it's usually this way due to legal concer…

For sure. And I also am not sure I want to work at a place where being really good at interview skills is what gets people jobs. The correlation between "interviews well" and "collaborative, productive coworker" isn't very strong.

How are you determining your lack of correlation ? Is there data on this somewhere?

Because I would assume that people who study and prepare for the interview are more likely to be studious and prepared in other aspects of life, including their workplace.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#38

Post by mitchdoogle » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 8:30 PM UTC

lijogdfljk wrote: post #9

elevanation wrote: post #2

While this is an interesting optimization strategy, getting and applying professional feedback for one's interview skills has a better ROI in my opinion. If you're amazing at interviews, the interviewer will remember you and want to hire you. They will even rave about you to their colleagues... "Hey, this person was awesome, we need to hire them." Accomplish that special human ability, and you don't have to worry abo…

Can you recommend how to go about this? It's the first i've heard of this strategy, and interviews are a big fear of mine. I would have assumed most of these "pay for feedback" things to be scams in one way or another. Thoughts?

Don't pay for feedback. Do some mock interviews with friend and family and ask them for feedback

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#39

Post by chiefalchemist » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 8:33 PM UTC

chrisBob wrote: post #27

chiefalchemist wrote: post #24

The #1 Rule of Thumb I've read and used is: try to be as close to last as possible. The point being, you want to be fresh in their minds. Going early is not the way to do that.

Some places are interviewing for a single open role, conduct all interviews and then make a decision from that candidate pool. Being towards the end might be an advantage in that case. Other places open up several new roles, and conduct rolling interviews until all are filled. In this case I would rather get in early and compete for one of N positions instead of competing for the final one. With several similar roles…

Well, yeah. It works for A role. It wouldn't make sense to wait too long if there was a bunch. That said, at some point there's a decision to be made. The older their memory of you at that point, the more forgettable you are.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#40

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 8:37 PM UTC

The biggest one that I always forget: don't schedule somewhere you really care about first. I make this mistake when I look because it's the place i'm really interested in that convinces me to start looking in the first place. But then I'm super rusty and do worse than everywhere else.