Interview Nightmares

#1

Post by shauns » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 8:17 AM UTC

Like lots of people at the moment I found myself back on the job market. Things have been going well, but an interview yesterday included a (virtual equivalent) whiteboard coding exercise.

Now, I’m not a huge fan of these and don’t use them in my own hiring. But as a dev of ~15y experience, still very much hands on, I should be able to handle it.

I found myself drawing an absolute blank. The exercise was nothing too complicated really, but the brain would simply not engage. Nothing was working.

As interviews go it was the worst experience I’ve ever had - I spent maybe twenty minutes in this blocked state but it felt like forever.

So I’m now feeling pretty depressed about job prospects, coding ability, my capability as a human being etc. Sharing or talking about a problem always helps to process it, so I thought 1. Why not do that with anonymous internet strangers, and 2. Why not provide a place for people to do the same. So it would be great if people felt able to share their stories too.

And for those of you also unexpectedly back in the job market: best of luck, you will get there.

Re: Interview Nightmares

#2

Post by DamonHD » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 8:22 AM UTC

I am fairly competent, am CTO of my nth start-up, have had fairly well paid finance IT work in finance in London with multinational banks, etc, etc, and I have still drawn a complete blank sometimes, and other times have bowled the interviewers (and myself) over!

It happens. It's the equivalent of writer's block and the fear of the blank page. Please just don't read too much into individual events.

Re: Interview Nightmares

#3

Post by aguilar » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 8:26 AM UTC

Hi. I went through the same problem. After passing a hard online test on Codility I had a live coding interview with a much simpler problem I just froze and could not solve on time. I found this article here on HN and it helped me understand what happened. https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/07/tech-job-interviews-anxiety/

Re: Interview Nightmares

#4

Post by shauns » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 8:38 AM UTC

DamonHD wrote: post #2

I am fairly competent, am CTO of my nth start-up, have had fairly well paid finance IT work in finance in London with multinational banks, etc, etc, and I have still drawn a complete blank sometimes, and other times have bowled the interviewers (and myself) over! It happens. It's the equivalent of writer's block and the fear of the blank page. Please just don't read too much into individual events.

Thank you. Sleeping on it, and writing this post, has definitely bought things back into perspective: we can all have off days.

It had been a while since I'd had this sort of negative experience, and what I would say is it's re-reminded me to make sure my hiring in the future caters for this sort of thing. Particularly for less experienced devs.

Re: Interview Nightmares

#5

Post by shauns » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 8:44 AM UTC

aguilar wrote: post #3

Hi. I went through the same problem. After passing a hard online test on Codility I had a live coding interview with a much simpler problem I just froze and could not solve on time. I found this article here on HN and it helped me understand what happened. https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/07/tech-job-interviews-anxiety/

Thanks for sharing - and that article is really interesting.

Being "good at hiring" -- and hence having better people -- is such an advantage for an organisation, it always surprises me that too often we fall back on seemingly default hiring processes, and we don't look at the sorts of optimisations we could do to help surface the best candidates for a role.

Re: Interview Nightmares

#6

Post by scott31 » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 9:47 AM UTC

DamonHD wrote: post #2

I am fairly competent, am CTO of my nth start-up, have had fairly well paid finance IT work in finance in London with multinational banks, etc, etc, and I have still drawn a complete blank sometimes, and other times have bowled the interviewers (and myself) over! It happens. It's the equivalent of writer's block and the fear of the blank page. Please just don't read too much into individual events.

How do you know you are fairly competent? If you were, maybe you would still be CTO of your 1st startup.

Re: Interview Nightmares

#7

Post by rikroots » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 10:47 AM UTC

I suffered a brain freeze at an interview once. My brain freeze was not caused by anxiety, but rather the Office Dog wandering into the interview room, sitting down on my feet and shoving its snout firmly between my legs.

Re: Interview Nightmares

#8

Post by adsjhdashkj » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

shauns wrote: post #5

aguilar wrote: post #3

Hi. I went through the same problem. After passing a hard online test on Codility I had a live coding interview with a much simpler problem I just froze and could not solve on time. I found this article here on HN and it helped me understand what happened. https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/07/tech-job-interviews-anxiety/

Thanks for sharing - and that article is really interesting. Being "good at hiring" -- and hence having better people -- is such an advantage for an organisation, it always surprises me that too often we fall back on seemingly default hiring processes, and we don't look at the sorts of optimisations we could do to help surface the best candidates for a role.

What's a good method of (technical) hiring in your view?

For some context on my question:

I'm part of a startup-ish group of people who, frankly, don't have a tech hiring group. We have ~25 engineers (i'm losing track these days lol), but no real manager-engineer bridge. Which translates to, we have a bunch of people who code but none who know how to hire. Unfortunately, i am one of those responsible for hiring, and i've got no clue what to do.

We've gone through various attempts over the years. I've been part of ~15 hires for the company - most of our current tech side, to one degree or another. We heavily value hiring the "person" - so we try to suss out people values and cultural fit, but i think we really suffer from being able to evaluate the technical ability of the candidate.

We're not worried about hiring the top talent of SF - we probably couldn't afford that anyway. But we do want bright people who can grow in the problems we're solving. This is where i'm struggling to improve on, as a person hiring.

Thoughts?

Re: Interview Nightmares

#9

Post by sethammons » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

I once forgot how to write a simple join in SQL during an interview. Full blank. It is like forgetting how to tie your shoes. The second I walked out of the building, I instantly recalled the insanely simple task.

Re: Interview Nightmares

#10

Post by shauns » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

adsjhdashkj wrote: post #8

shauns wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing - and that article is really interesting. Being "good at hiring" -- and hence having better people -- is such an advantage for an organisation, it always surprises me that too often we fall back on seemingly default hiring processes, and we don't look at the sorts of optimisations we could do to help surface the best candidates for a role.

What's a good method of (technical) hiring in your view? For some context on my question: I'm part of a startup-ish group of people who, frankly, don't have a tech hiring group. We have ~25 engineers (i'm losing track these days lol) , but no real manager-engineer bridge. Which translates to, we have a bunch of people who code but none who know how to hire. Unfortunately, i am one of those responsible for hiring, and…

Growth Mindset might be a bit of a wooly term but that tends to be what I look for. I want people who continually get better. There are lots of resources on specific things you can discuss for this. For me, I think simply asking "what was a recent new thing you had to learn" opens up a good conversation.

For ascertaining whether someone meets a technical bar -- the gold standard has to be facilitating some way where they can do some actual work with you. That might be v difficult depending on nature of stack, tech debt, etc. But the closer you can make that sort of process to what would really be happening, the better. Coding exercises really only prove someone is good at coding exercises -- that may or may not have any relevancy to what you do I think.