Interview Nightmares

16 points by shauns 5 years ago | 18 comments

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.

aguilar 5 years ago |

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/

shauns 5 years ago | |

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.

adsjhdashkj 5 years ago | | |

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?

DamonHD 5 years ago |

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.

shauns 5 years ago | |

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.

giantg2 5 years ago |

Don't worry. Even if you're a shitty developer (which I doubt), I'll always be shittier.

I once had an interview that was so bad that I asked the manager at the end why he even gave me an interview. He wanted a UI expert. His posting didn't mention that requirement and my resume didn't list that type of experience. It was a huge waste of our time.

duggable 5 years ago | |

Ooof, that sounds awful.

Don't worry, there's no way you're a shittier developer than me. Maybe we should form a club.

giantg2 5 years ago | | |

I don't think so. Pretty sure it's only a matter of time before I get fired. I'm very demoralized by the past treatment the company has given me. I moved to a new team but they just bounce me from technology to technology with no training (Splunk, Tableau, Python, AWS). This will not allow me to become an expert in anything. They aren't happy with my output. Because my prior experience was FileNet and Neoxam, I don't have any career options.

rikroots 5 years ago |

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.

sethammons 5 years ago |

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.

shauns 5 years ago | |

That is a perfect analogy!

ipi 5 years ago |

I recently had an interview where I was supposed to record the screen while I am solving the problem and share it with the interviewer. I couldn't do it. I am one of those people who's mind goes blank when someone is standing behind me and watching over the shoulders. The thought of recording my screen induced the same feelings.

smtlaissezfaire 5 years ago |

Thanks for posting. We've all been there.

This is something I'm working on solving:

https://www.srchparty.com/