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Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

tanayagrawal.substack.com

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Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#71
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have worked with a number of people who are really good at interviewing and then continue to focus on impressing important people and climbing ladders, but without being particularly skilled and/or particularly collaborative.

I have also worked with a number of people who are quite bad at interviewing but were excellent colleagues: highly collaborative and technically excellent.

When I create hiring processes, it's the latter people I try to select for. So assorted coworkers aside, the data I have come from those hiring processes. The glibbest and most charming people often do poorly in the pair programming portion; the most awkward often settle down into doing excellent work once you get them in a familiar context.

Some people are great at both, of course, and some people are bad at both. Which should be unsurprising given the number of people recommending a focus on developing interview skills. The whole idea requires that job skill and interview skill are not well correlated.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#72
post #44

> You should avoid scheduling interviews post-lunch Interesting opinion when weighed against studies like PNAS' famous parole decision study that found morning and right after lunch were the most favorable rulings: https://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889

Schedule it right before lunch and finish early. The interviewer will have a positive imprint of you in their lizard brain since you gave them earlier access to their food. Plus your interview will be followed up with the dopamine and please of their meal/break, which might boost their memory of you as well.

this is exactly opposite of what you should do, if the study is to be believed:

"They found that the likelihood of a favourable ruling peaked at the beginning of the day, steadily declining over time from a probability of about 65% to nearly zero, before spiking back up to about 65% after a break for a meal or snack."

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#73

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 toge…

I wouldn't take 1 too seriously anyway. There's some evidence for instance that judges are harsher before lunch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_judge_effect.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#74
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve interviewed many candidates and I’ve interviewed many times myself. Having good conversation skills is the single biggest influence on whether a candidate proceeds or not. Talking is a skill and that really stands out against other candidates. When I’m interviewing, I’ll usually choose a stronger communicator over a stronger engineer.

Isn't that kind of odd? I've worked with software engineers who are good talkers but their code and problem solving skills leave something to be desired. Meanwhile, I've worked with guys who took a while to get comfortable with in terms of having conversations and yet they were some of the most productive members of the team both in code output and skill. Ultimately, most of the time I 'talk' with my team members, we…

It might be reflecting the fact that it's easier to talk about something if you know it well.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#75
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve interviewed many candidates and I’ve interviewed many times myself. Having good conversation skills is the single biggest influence on whether a candidate proceeds or not. Talking is a skill and that really stands out against other candidates. When I’m interviewing, I’ll usually choose a stronger communicator over a stronger engineer.

Isn't that kind of odd? I've worked with software engineers who are good talkers but their code and problem solving skills leave something to be desired. Meanwhile, I've worked with guys who took a while to get comfortable with in terms of having conversations and yet they were some of the most productive members of the team both in code output and skill. Ultimately, most of the time I 'talk' with my team members, we…

You're right to point out the difference between conversational and writing skills. However, generally engineers tend to overvalue technical skills and undervalue soft skills.

IMO engineering orgs tend to set the bar really high for tech skills and really low for communication skills. Tech skills are easier to test and they feel more "objective" so they get more focus.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#77
meh kind of another fluff content marketing piece making unsubstantiated generalizations, but to raise brand awareness about a PM rather than a vc firm etc.

> Just like you interview with multiple companies and choose between multiple offers, companies also interview multiple candidates for the same role. Duh. So if you are interviewing with a company, assume that you are interviewing with a pool of candidates.

Sure, but here is an opposite take, maybe you should delay your interview rounds as long as possible. Hiring managers can be hesitant to extend an offer before having fully explored their options. If your candidacy is evaluated at the end of the cohort the hiring manager might feel more pressure to extend an offer to keep their headcount.

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#78

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 toge…

I wouldn't take 1 too seriously anyway. There's some evidence for instance that judges are harsher before lunch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_judge_effect .

This is considered dubious [0].

[0] https://nautil.us/blog/impossibly-hungry-judges

Re: Interview success can depend on how you schedule interviews

#79
post #19

I have a few as well: - You will face rejection (likely a lot). Don't take this personally and don't let it affect your confidence. - Unless you are an outstanding interviewee, this is like a skill/muscle which you need to develop and practice. Hence ensure that you don't schedule your "dream job/company" early in the process. Keep practicing. - Always have a beginner / practice mindset. Otherwise, you will accept th…

I’ve interviewed many candidates and I’ve interviewed many times myself. Having good conversation skills is the single biggest influence on whether a candidate proceeds or not. Talking is a skill and that really stands out against other candidates. When I’m interviewing, I’ll usually choose a stronger communicator over a stronger engineer.

I'm fairly sure the reason I've gotten many of the jobs I've had is that I smile a lot.
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