How not to conduct a technical interview

As a startup we often were cash strapped and attracting the right talent was very hard. However what am going to share here will prove useful to anyone wanting to attract the best talent for the right reasons.

I would also hear from HR managers from large corporations and entrepreneurs…

There are a lot of candidates but good talent is hard to find.

While that is certainly true and logical; however I feel organizations make it worse for themselves with a combination of complacency and arrogance.

Having worked for Startups, MNC’s and then recruiting for my own startups; I have learnt some valuable lessons both giving and taking technical interviews. These observations and points are purely my belief.

It is also worth pointing out, taking interviews for too long, I decided to give an interview for a top technical company to understand how they went about it. Based on what I experienced it was an eye opener and I felt I should share my observations to aid in better judgement to select the right people.

I think the fear of rejection, makes us want to pass every interview. While this is a natural reaction and make us behave unnatural to our usual self. To overcome this, the interviewer and candidate should always look at it as a learning experience and one of mutual fit.

As a candidate, this article can also be useful in being aware of how healthy an organization is for you, if you value a true open culture.

Make the candidate comfortable

The interviewer does have the upper hand and also the primary responsibility to ensure the interview goes well. It is the responsibility of the interviewer to ensure the candidate is comfortable. The following points can be useful in ensuring the same:

• Read the candidates resume before you enter. Don’t make the candidate repeat what they have already mentioned in the resume. This shows a complete lack of respect to their CV and highlights your arrogance or ignorance.

Mr. Ignorant : “Hi, I did not get time to read your resume. Can you quickly tell me something about yourself ?”.

• Ensure the candidate is called at an appropriate time based on their comfort; and if possible ensure they have access to a computer with internet.
• Ensure you are in a quiet room, with their resume and a computer in front of you.
• Being over a bridge with an additional text chat is even better. This allows exchange of links, material that aid in meaningful conversations , or code the candidate has written that they wish to share with you.
• Remind the candidate, it is a discussion and not just a Q&A style interrogation. If the answers are open, do tell the candidate that, so the candidate knows to think out of the box in a dialogue or to limit themselves to “this has a particular answer only” thinking mode. People are capable of both, but being in the wrong context can have them thinking on a different track and the interviewer misjudging.
• Don’t assume you know more than the candidate. If there is any point I feel interviewers are guilty in a majority, it is this. Remember, you are good at what you know. Example bad style; I observed a interviewer Mr. know it all, ask this at the beginning…

Mr. Know it all : “How much would you rate yourself in Java?”.

Candidate: “Well, am sure there are lot of things am not aware of. But of what I am aware of, …ummm I’d say 8/10 ?!”

Mr. Know it all: “8/10 (in sarcastic exclamation) ?!; I would not even rate myself 8/10 !”

… ignoring the fact that this is arguably a futile question; the point here is not if the candidates self assessment was right or not. But the sheer arrogance of the interviewer to make an assumption before the even first question was asked.

There are many more examples than am sure a seasoned professional can relate to.

Give answers and feedback within the interview

Am going to go against most HR professionals and companies on this. Most in the industry will not give you answers during an interview or immediate feedback. This is to avoid spending time or being questioned too much and close the door on people questioning their interview methods. These organizations will talk about Open culture, Leadership principles, How its ok to disagree and have a backbone talk, but will contradict all their values and not offer much feedback to the candidate as part of a true closed door policy.

Note ~Feedback~, here does not imply the “outcome”; but at least validation of the answers provided by the candidate so the candidate can learn from their experience.

If you cannot offer quick transparent feedback to a candidate, it means you simply have no confidence in your ability to conduct interviews *fairly*; …at scale.

As a second best outcome, candidates would really value advice that would help them. In my own experience when I share instant feedback and tell people they are wrong; they come up with alternate solutions which many a time lead them to the correct result. Post interview a quick analysis of the candidate and feedback has at times attracted some very good people who appreciate that. Or work hard and come back and pass the next time. It also shows you are not afraid, and makes them respect you.

Earn the candidates respect, rather than make them fear you.

Ask relevant questions to the persons background

It is the responsibility of the interviewer to look @ the resume and filter the candidate based on their experience for the given job. Once you have filtered the candidate you cannot ask them questions only related to your experience no matter how relevant you think they are. The fact that you have filtered the candidate, is your moral responsibility to ask them questions in their areas of strength.

For example, assuming a candidates resume reads she is a seasoned Java professional with additional hands on DevOps in deployment of the systems built. If the interviewer focuses only on DevOps and not software engineering, design, development and other areas of relevance of the candidate. The interviewer has wasted everyone’s time.

Sometimes, what happens is with the best intent of a discussion, the interviewer will get stuck on thread away from the candidates core competency and in a chain ask a series of related questions; but loosing track of the fact that this is not the candidates core strength.

This is predominant in interviews where they wish to check the depth of a candidate but did not bother to check the resume on core strengths; they will drill a hole in the wrong place based on a conversation led-on by them and think they are drilling deep. At this point its hard to tell if they are drilling or screwing the candidate.

If you are drilling for oil, you need to know where to drill !

Ensuring a candidate is relevant for a job, is the job of the HR. The interviewers job is to ensure what the candidate has mentioned on their resume is validated. In this regard, asking questions relevant to the job only and not the resume, is a failure on the HR or the interviewers side; not the candidate.

One must explore aspects of a candidates resume, even if they do not directly align with core job requirements at times. This is implies the interviewer has read the resume and can correct HR if they are filtering the wrong candidates. Thereby improving the process. However, if you don’t read the candidates resume and ask only what you repeatedly ask; neither are you aware of the HR failure nor your own and missing out on some pretty good people or worse, spending time on the wrong ones.

Help the candidate

Many times, the candidate may not have understood the question or the intent of the question. In an interview with a large company, I found the interviewer was rushing through his questions. His definition of clarity was simply to repeat the same question again (bah!).

While in my interviews, asking a question in another way when I did not get the right answer or helping the candidate get an answer proved as a very useful tool to (A) Educate the candidate, (B) Know if I can help a potential recruit solve a problem even if initially they were lost. This reflects also on your own leadership style. If you are unable to get the best out of people during their interview, it can be a pretty good indicator you will be unable to maximize on their abilities too. This is a failure on your part not the candidate. A good leader knows how to bring the best out of the people who work with him or her. Ironically leadership principles published of large organizations seem to miss this point.

If you ask open ended questions, expect open ended replies

With the awareness or I dare say fad questions like, “How would you move Mount Fuji ?” or worse are self styled cocktail of open ended technical questions that have “sorta” a right answer but not really. A category of bad styles are those who iterate “There is no right or wrong answer”, and yet they are looking for a particular type of answer. If you are asking an open ended question, please do have the maturity not to judge the candidate for their answer but rather their approach to the answer. A sure way to know its a wrong open ended question, is when someone asks a technical question pretending its open, and they provide no assistance/room for dialogue or when you cross question them it seems they can only come up with one answer them-self. Open ended replies, require equally imaginative and capable interviewers to understand the mechanics of the replies. Even if the interviewer is a well experienced technician; it does not mean the interviewer is fit to ask such questions verbally and make an on the stop assessment.

Code tests and Hackathon’s

To truly admire a persons talent, holding a code test that may last a day or two is a good idea before you verbally engage a candidate. Giving a candidate time to prove their metal and express themselves in code (when possible), is more reliable and fair than simple verbal exchanges that are fraught with misinterpretations and other cases already mentioned above.

Often, organizations will engage the interview before the coding test. In my opinion this is wrong. There is no better upfront filter than for people to code at scale and have a good way to screen the written code first.

Summary

How you conduct interviews, reflects on your commitment towards future prospects and may even help you recruit some brilliant people within budget. A technical candidates interest makes or breaks at the technical interview.

For organizations of lesser repute; even if you do not select a candidate, you want to ensure that the candidate would say “These are the people I would loved to have worked with !”. Success or failure in selection is irrelevant compared to the overall experience an interview must create. A good technical interview makes even a rejected candidate learn and feel positive about the experience.