Mindset of a technical interviewer

As with many professionals, I have been on both sides — interviewer & interviewee. Tried to capture what I like to practice when I interview someone. Though the concepts discussed here are generic, some of my thoughts may be biased towards software programmer interview.

An organisation is a soil — every candidate is a seed

Photo by icon0.com from Pexels

• There are different kinds of soil and different kinds of seeds
• Not every kind of soil is suitable for every kind of seed
• In an interview, the intend is to select the right seed for the given soil.
• Of course, we need quality soil and quality seed. Quality of a soil is relative to seed. For cactus plant, dry rocky soil is a quality soil. For paddy plant it isn’t.
• Every seed demands the right kind of soil to flourish and reach full potential.
• Every soil has it’s own characteristics.

Organisation should be an environment. Not an extraction center

Photo by Charlotte May from Pexels

Scenario 1

• Skill set and task is well defined for a specific job opening. Let’s say, candidate should know Java language (expert level). He should develop features for shopping cart application.
• Interviewer meets the candidates
• Interviewer judges his Java skills.
• Interviewer judges how comfortable the candidate is with shopping cart and previous experience developing such features.
• Select or reject based on the above judgement

What do you feel about scenario 1 ?

Some may argue, It’s the right thing to do. what’s wrong with this ?

IMHO, it sounds like “can I extract the work from him”. There is no empathy. In the above example, skill (Java) and task (shopping cart) are less relevant. They can be trained. The most important thing is knowing the characteristics of the organisation & characteristics of the candidate.

Interview is more of a match making job. Can this pair live happily together.

Once we start seeing the organisation as an environment, we will have a completely different mindset.

• We will reject a candidate not because he is not talented. But because this environment is not the right place for the candidate to reach his full potential. Interviewer is doing the right thing for the candidate. We are not taking away his opportunity. Here the interviewer practices empathy and not sympathy.
• We will do more inward understanding of the organisation & its characteristics.
• Interviewer is doing the right thing for the organisation by allowing only people who will not dilute the organisation’s vision.

Characteristics of an organisation

• Mission & Vision of the organisation. What it stands for and what it will die for. Mission & Vision seems to be out of fashion nowadays. That’s because few organisation have a generic, template based, out of the shelf statements.
• Every company need not have a unique vision & mission. We could have multiple companies / communities who try to solve similar problem.
• Every decision, in such good organisations, can be questioned whether it is inline with their vision & mission. Taking concrete decisions are easy, if a business strategy deviates from it’s values.
• There should be a strong reason for the company to exist in good times and in bad times.
• An organisation is a community of people. Work culture plays a huge role in selecting employee who can flourish in this ambience. Each work culture has its own merits.
• Kind of problems that the organisation tries to solve plays a key role in candidate evaluation.

Focus 80% on strength and 20% on weakness

During any interview, interviewer can quickly know which areas the candidate is strong and which areas he is not so strong.

• Probing more on a candidate’s weakness is counter intuitive. Once a candidate starts feeling bad, there is no going back. He is not going to express himself when we talk about his strength.
• We need to realize that there is no award for the interviewer to deduct how weak the candidate is on a certain area. Let’s say, if a candidate is weak with Data structures, that’s good enough data. Let’s say, if the interviewer says, candidate is weak in Data structures, he doesn’t even know bubbleSort, he don’t know how a simple binary tree works, he doesn't know about time complexity. This actually means the interviewer kept probing more & more on an area that the candidate is weak & made him so uncomfortable. I would personally reject the interviewer from doing any more interviewers and send the same candidate to another panel for a proper evaluation.

Effects of org — candidate mismatch on candidate

• Interview is just a gateway. Once you enter, that is when the actual journey begins
• In a mismatched environment, employee will usually go through imposter syndrome. Employee doubts their own skills, talents and has a persistent fear of being exposed as a “fraud”.
• Employee may not be able to meet the expectation. He keeps forcing himself, working too hard but keep hitting the wall. Slowly his confidence level goes down.
• All this is comparable to planting a cactus in a clay soil. The cactus tries really hard to survive. In the initial days, it stays alive and hard at work. Eventually it gives up. If we move this plant to some other place well in time, there is a chance that it may come back to life. But there will be some damage or scars that will last for it’s life. Who is responsible for that ? I think both the interviewer and interviewee is responsible.
• Interviewer doesn’t realise he caused this pain on someone’s life by selecting him.
• An interview is not just for the interviewer to understand the interviewee. It is also an opportunity for the candidate to understand the company, people etc.,

Effects of org — candidate mismatch on organisation

organisation’s total potential = sum of all employee’s potential to solve the problem that the organisation stands for.

• A mismatched candidate dilutes the organisation’s total potential. The more mismatched employees, the more diluted the organisation’s potential. If this continues, after a period in time, there won’t be any relationship between employee’s core strength and what the organisation aspired to solve.

Organization needs different variety of skill sets

• An organization is not a green revolution. If all the developers have similar strength, it mostly results in less creative, less out of the box outcomes.
• Going back to plants & soil example, think of companion planting technique. By having intentionally selecting a the right mix of different strength enriches the team.

If it’s not the right fit, quit early

Google may be an amazing company. But for some, it may not be a good fit. Knowing this early, understanding whether we belong here gives us more insight into how we operate. There are times when an employee may feel it’s not the right place for him. In such cases, quit early. I don’t believe in using the company as a launch pad and keep moving to another company.

An organization invest in multiple ways on each employee. It could be time spent to upskill the new employee, building synergy, forming the work culture etc., Let’s say, if an employee quits after a year or 2, it’s a huge loss to the company than an employee who quits in first month. The same applies to the employee. Spending a year or 2 on an environment that is not a right fit does a permanent damage to the individual’s core values and confidence. It might either slow down or derail the individual’s path towards achieving their full potential. Since it is one life, how & where we spend our time matters a lot at the end of our journey.

Conclusion

If a candidate gets rejected after an interview but still the interviewer & the interviewee feels good about the decision and have great opinions about each other that’s the signal of a good interview. Though it may sound idealistic, it is practical once we start doing it. At the end of the day, everyone should reach their full potential. Let’s not judge each other. Let’s help each other.