On the other hand, I frequently come across some inexperienced interviewers (often young, or early in their career). They interrupt you before you finish, ask obscure questions, and try to assert that your professional experience and knowledge is somehow inferior to theirs (or at least make you feel that way).
I feel excited about challenging questions/interviews but sessions with such folks (over the phone, or in person) are always disappointing, and negatively impact the interview outcome. I was wondering if there are any tips on how to handle such interviewers.
There are times where I just botch interviews. Here and there, I look back and realize I came off the wrong way, like wow, I did that. But I reflect, and strive to get better. Sometimes it's just not a fit. Or someone comes along that's a better option than me.
But there is a growing pocket of places I interview at where they blatantly lie, bait and switch, ignore my portfolio and go right into brainteasers, code golf, and refactors that have absolutely nothing to do with the role being filled. Then radio silence.
I'm coming to the conclusion I'd rather earn less and work more hours on my own than enable this system. Because I have an indictment far more damning the OP: Some of the people interviewing me can barely code and are trying to survive another day. Not to mention, there are some who are afraid of letting in a stronger candidate that could replace them. Heh, what do you think they do?
Last interview I had, I discussed multiple times it being in Django and Python. Come the time of our call, interviewer flipped the script, it's in JavaScript, Underscore, and the data being passed around is so ambiguous it meshed together in my mind through the remainder of our call. I don't know if it's a clueless interviewer - or a really shrewd one who knew how to lay one over me.
Or is it me? The problem I face is getting beat down by all these tests makes me feel I'm not a good coder. Due to the fog of Dunning-Kruger, I know I can never be sure if the deficit is really on my end or not.
Does anyone else out there feel this?
I have published code all over. I code 10+ hours a day, even on the weekends. I get hammered in technical interviews.
I personally get bad anxiety from interviews, from some negative experiences. To the point where I actively avoid interviews, even if in my best interest. Not worth the risk, I think. I recognize this is self defeating and self limiting though. And it's something I need to deal with and overcome.
All I can offer is that you try to accept there is the "interview game" and you have to play it. Fortunately once you get that job, you can forget about it for a while.
When I look back it seems I'm experienced at hearing other peoples software requirements and implementing them.
From university to the workplace, I seem to be very good since those who receive the end result always benefit.
Done it so many times, for others and for my own ideas.
But check this out, occasionally in a dry period, when I feel I should find a job and get an interview.
I get asked a puzzle, unrelated to anything, no benefit to the interviewer or their company, in a language that requires a thicker than the bible manual, to program in some corner case that I would never find myself in and to someone to see the solution in the future to also feel the urge to puke.
And don't even get me started on the latest frameworks buzzword bingo crap.
You know, the tipping point was once when I got a rejection email where the top guy said I wasn't even good at a particular language, one which I'd programmed several applications for some years.
Some guy, who last "coded" by "clicking" on a button which generated a TODO list single page web fucking app.
Fuck all of you because we do what you dream of wanting to do that you'll never be able to do, not because you are running out of time, it's because you just don't have the chops.
You really should be doing something else with your life.
I hate that every other interaction I have with the developer community is suggesting that a newbie back up a few steps and understand the problem they're trying to solve before introducing a solution, or worse yet, suggesting that the person trying to help them shut the fuck up and stop recommending things this beginner has no business using. The mindset is literally everywhere. It's like I'm surrounded by a cult of redux middleware worshippers that is trying to drain my will to live before they hand me a cup of cyanide.
I'm interviewing candidates for front-end roles at the moment and every other one is someone that has launched into a huge React project with barely any basic understanding of Javascript or web development. Half the candidates have every buzzword under the sun in their resume, and a GitHub full of little React projects with all the dependencies checked off nicely, then you get them into an interview and half of them can't name a single HTTP method, while the other half have done 5+ years of jQuery, and yet couldn't tell a closure from a prototype.
One of my first questions is always to ask them what front-end tools they are familiar with, and then follow up with "what problem does that tool solve?". 90% of the interviews are pretty much donezo by the time that question is answered (or more often not), and it feels like the rest of the time is wasted just running out the string.
Since most of the people in this thread are candidates rather than interviewers, if anyone has any suggestions about how to make the interviews more inviting and find out quicker and easier whether someone is the right fit, please let me know! I feel like I'm strugglinga bit.
If I thought I was interviewing for a Django/Python job and they completely changed the job description on me I'd have probably cut it right there. You can't just completely change the job someone is interviewing for from under them.
I definitely feel you on it though, I'd much rather earn less in a comfortable job where I'm happy than go through the stress of interviewing and having to refresh my knowledge of CS trivia so interviewers can throw a few at me.
>the stress of interviewing and having to refresh my knowledge of CS trivia
I was recently visiting a friend from uni, he wanted to start working in a bigger company, so he took his chances on Amazon (they had office 10min walk from where he lived). He applied for Java/C++ backend role with some indication that's related to robotics.
First week interviewer told him to refresh knowledge from basics of machine learning, searching algorithms and path finding, so he spent all weekend reading wikipedia and our notes from uni. During the interview he was asked questions about his experience with JS, Angular and CSS. What interesting JS projects he did and why links to the projects are not in his CV.
He graduated with second best grade at the uni with a major project from autonomous sailing robot and failed interview in Amazon because he didn't do anything hipsterish with Angular on Github. I showed him link to the FACE of Amazon to cheer him up... and it worked, he decided not to apply there any more. What a waste of time.
5 minutes into the job interview the guy seemed very obsessed with my direct reports number. I have 12 engineers currently (CTO), have worked in China with 30 engineers reporting to me and in my previous life as a school principal I had 40+ staff and a few hundred students. With many other software roles in between around the planet.
Anyhow, it seemed that the position was not a good fit, they were recently acquired, the founders had all left and a new management team had taken over. Multiple interviews were expected as well as attending their office on-site on the other side of the planet. Ended the call once I heard this and told them this was not the right role for me. Have to be respectful but not every position is a good fit for the candidate. Trust your gut especially if red flags are raised. The guy conducting the interview seemed a bit shocked that i bailed on the process so quickly. Ain't no-one got time for the commitment some interviews require some days.
Come interview technical test, they start asking JS questions. I asked if their would be JS in the role, as it wasn't specified anywhere, I've never done JS, don't want to do JS.
They sorta dodged the question a bit and continued to ask me JS questions. Which was pointless as I had no clue.
The whole interview they both sat their looking incredibly smug adn the whole interview had a definite sense of hostility and them trying to prove they were smarter than me.
I let the recruiter know straight after that I had no intention of going back for a second interview.
I think this is the only weapon the interviewed person has. Not applying is not a solution as it will lead to even more disconnection. Apply, talk with people, disconnect when the bullshit level is too high.
Looking for years of experience in your exact Angular/React stack? Cheerio.
From what I've read, the common advice is just to keep slogging away and not let the terrible interviewers get you down. Which doesn't seem particularly helpful.
I personally avoid any interviews like this and simply end any interview that starts going down that path. Fortunately, I work for myself and currently have no problem getting work through networking and take-home projects to showcase my skills. But I am fearful of if (when) I have to interview again for full time positions because I know how awful it is.
Anyways, I feel your pain. Know that you're not alone, and I'm reasonably confident that you're a solid programmer!
Yes, yes, and yes. I've been meaning to blog about this experience (as an update, after last touching on it a few years ago). But I wanted to blog from a position of triumph. You know, "now that I've beaten the coding challenge I can say with conviction what is wrong with the coding challenge". That sort of thing. Except it's becoming obvious that I'll never beat these coding challenges, despite them being completely unsuitable for the role being advertised.
Apart from now, I hit the job market about 2 years ago, and before that another 2 years ago, and there seems to be a lot more of these gatekeepers around now who favour irrelevant coding challenges. Are German or French language teachers rejected on some obscure piece of Latin taught 10 years ago in college, but can't recite perfectly anymore?
The current crop of gatekeepers in tech seem to be a really bizarre mix. I'm having the hardest time in trying to find work this time, despite being more skilled, and having more people skills (hopefully). I'm at a loss.
You might be onto something with people trying to protect their jobs by using these obscure challenges to filter out suitable candidates. It's some kind of negligence. I don't think it's me, or you, but I feel like I'm going crazy. I can do the job, well I think, but the interviews (and perhaps the interviewers) aren't suited to filling the role.
I'm a data scientist in healthcare with approaching 10 years of experience (since, you know, people were doing "data science" since before "data science" was a thing, they just called it epidemiology, biostatistics, or biomedical informatics). I had two recent interview experiences that left a really crappy taste in my mouth.
One was at Grail. Recruiter contacted me. I have a biology background from undergrad, but little direct experience in that field since then. Recruiter says that's totally fine, they were happy with even a little bit of bio experience and would happily get people up to speed after that. In my five panel interviews, they literally all asked the same technical question. Literally all of them. Asked the same question. The exact same question. It was a question related to a project that they had all worked on previously, and required some biology knowledge specific to this problem. I did not get that question right. However, by the fifth time I was asked that question, I had surmised enough tidbits from the previous four times that I could piece together a decent answer. No response from the recruiter (which was fine by me, as I assumed there was our opinions of each other were mutual). Well, until three months later, when I get an email saying they had long considered my application and would not be moving forward. Uh huh.
Second experience was at one of the big companies. Recruiter contacts me about a very specific role that seems perfectly aligned with my background. It's a new team, there isn't a job description for it. I've previously chatted with this recruiter and some of the folks on the team, but timing never worked out (or, alternative theory, an ex had been working on the same team and would not be ok working together). They bring me in, and the technical screen is done by someone from a totally different part of the organization. This person apparently does a lot of signal processing. I have never done signal processing in my life, and it's not something that's on my resume. I'm very open with that, and yet all of the technical questions he asks me are ones involving signal processing techniques. Recruiter tells me that I "didn't have enough data science experience" for that job. I almost snapped back (but didn't; not worth burning bridges) that I was surprised they would even know that, since they never asked any questions that tap into my data science skills. Someone screwed something up in that process, and it wasn't me — if signal processing is required for that job, then I should never have been a candidate; if signal processing is not required, then I should never have been quizzed on it. There are plenty of studies that show unfavorable answers to irrelevant questions tend to negatively bias perception of candidates.
Being set up for failure really blows. If I could redo everything again, I would ask recruiters more questions about the interview process and how that process lines up with job requirements; I would not be shy with the interviewer or recruiter if I felt like I was being judged on something that wasn't in line with my expectations ("I noticed that you're asking a lot of signal processing questions and not questions around things I have experience with — is that a core aspect of the job? I'm not sure I would be a good fit if that's the case, otherwise I'd love an opportunity to demonstrate my skills that might be more relevant"); and I would not be shy about cutting an interview early, as it saves everyone's time.
As soon as the phone call started, the interviewer asked a puzzle question which had absolutely nothing to do with what I would eventually have to do if I got the offer. Bemused, I promptly solved the puzzle. He went on to ask three more puzzles after that. I solved each one of them. Now, it had already been 20 minutes into the interview and not one relevent question had been asked. I was getting a bit edgy.
He then went on to ask me textbook questions like difference between a process and a thread, types of memory management and so on.
It was one hour into the interview and he hadn't asked meaningful question that could justify the lofty requirements they had mentioned of their desirable candidate in the Job description.
When after around 1 hour, he asked me another puzzle, I politely asked him the relevence of that question with respect to the job. He told me that since he was the one interviewing me, he got to decide what was relevent and what was not.
I told him that I would like to end the interview right there. He protested. I hung up.
I almost did this after a disastrous interview at AKQA a while back.
OTOH, if the recruiter reacted to this expectations mismatch with an equivalent of "no explanations are given", I would have bailed, too: the interview is a two-way street, and both sides are interviewing - "do I want to work in such a company culture as evidenced by the recruiter"?
Once you bring the candidate onsite you can ask deeper and more open questions. A phone is simply not a good medium for this.
If the company thinks this is the person best qualified to judge applicants, you're dodging a bullet.
There are so many reasons this is a bad way of thinking.
- A sample size of one is never enough. This alone is enough of a reason.
- The interviewer could have normally been a great person but been having a rough day (maybe some personal stuff or a huge deadline coming up - every company has those every once in a while, you might have just got them at a bad time)
- The original interviewer had to cancel last-minute (call from the hospital/school, car crash, etc) and the company decided that it would be more professional to put you with someone with less experience than cancel thirty minutes before your interview (which could be good or bad depending on how you see it)
I'm not saying that you're completly wrong - it's definitely an indicator that the company may not be one you want to work for. But you shouldn't rule out a company because of one bad interview.
I think the candidate's ability to communicate about non-technical matters is important, and if you can put someone at ease, you're likely to get a more realistic view of their abilities.
TL;DR: Bad interviews are a strong, pretty reliable symptom of a lack of good company culture.
What few people understand is that interviews aren't just for the employer, they are also your chance to choose who you're working for, what you get to know and how to progress your career. Your colleagues are the people who you will regularly spend more time awake with than your spouse.
They say "you don't leave a company, you leave a boss" — and it's true. Interviews are exactly the other side of this coin: You will usually sit across the table of your future boss. So choose well, as your choice will have a profound impact on your wellbeing for next few years, impacting work-life balance, chances and hirability afterwards.
Don't screw it up and just politely leave as soon as possible.
Sometimes it's just the recruiting dept that's bad. I've interviewed with one company, where the recruiters were quite incompetent and insecure. Forms were extremely long, including personal things like t-shirt size and education level of siblings.
But the company was quite good. It was just a side effect of a rapidly growing company not hiring the right people for those slots. People who filled in those forms just treated it as another hurdle and the tech team still remains awesome.
I'm sure they asked pregnancy status too. Also I've heard some forms will even ask your spouse's race and religion.
Very personal questions are normal where I live, but there's no law that says I have to answer them.
He was interviewing me for a Sr. Engg role , and his first question was what is the difference between Server side and Client side scripting. I took it in good humor and answered him. He stunned me by saying "That's not what I was looking for. You should have just said server side scripting runs on the server and client side runs on the client" :P
I know I should have hung up there, but I was referred by a friend so had to sit through the entire hour.
I arrived at the final interview and waited 50 minutes. Then the two people doing the interview never even read anything about me and came into it cold. I was prepared for a very detailed interview and instead I got ambiguous questions and when they asked me questions they actually reflected back what they heard and it was 50% just wrong. I corrected their mistake and the person gave me attitude. Later in the interview the person read their notes and he wrote down what was factually inaccurate that I corrected before. I corrected the inaccurate statement again and he was beyond pissed. I didn't get the job. When I was called I said to the person who I was in contact with for the whole 9 months that it was the worst interview I have ever had and made me look very negative at the whole experience. He just acknowledge what i stated and stated sorry. I still get request to reapply. I still might.....
Just to give an example, in one of the onsite interviews at a big tech company, I was interviewed by someone 1-2 years out of his undergrad. He asked me to solve a puzzle. Though I am not a big fan of puzzles, I answered it to the best of my ability. Then the conversation turned into what work he is doing and how he was getting frustrated on not having any meaningful projects. I gave him some standard career advice - do a side project that will improve the efficiency of your team (a new build system, test integration, wiki, etc.) and discussed higher education options. Both of us were happy by the end of interview. In addition, it also allowed me to catch a breath between the many back-to-back interviews.
Just generally, be bolder with how you select your employer. If they don't want to know you personally, move on. If they are not interested in what you did in previous positions, move on. If they are only interested in skills you built up previously, move on (because they won't want to develop you). Etc...
That would be a bad idea. The recruiter knows nothing about the OP, and probably not much about the interviewer. But the recruiter probably will be in better terms with the interviewer than the OP (or the one who is being interviewed).
So the end result would be that the OP will be considered not a good candidate because he/she complains the interviewer because it didn't went well, or at least, that will be how the recruiter is probably going to assume.
A recruiter wants to place candidates and thereby earn commissions. If they get a stream of candidates they've sent to interview at company X come back and say "the interviewer was deeply unpleasant and I would never work there" then they are going to have to react - either by raising it with the company or by stopping wasting time by sending candidates there in the first place. No candidates placed == no money.
If company X has inexperienced interviewers, then company X almost certainly has other problems. Inexperienced programmers? Inexperienced managers? Bad processes? Something, anyway, because a company shouldn't be sending people to interview who are unfit for the task.
And if you get past those interviewers and get hired, then you're going to have to live with whatever else was going on that allowed those people to be the interviewers. So I think you're better off taking those people as being a datapoint about the company. Walk away, and be grateful you found out early enough.
I usually just stay friendly and see what I can do to keep the interview short.
And to be honest after I experience that combo I usually give up cause that means most people there were chosen based on that.
My experience is terrible with them. There is a huge chance that they will sent wrong information about you, and you will have problems with even talking with the next recruiter from the same company.
I had this exact situation happen a while ago. I applied for a front-end developer role and the interviewer insisted on asking questions about the deep internals of node. And whenever I gave a satisfactory answer he would immediately tell me an alternative answer, as if mine isn't somehow good enough. The entire interview just felt like he had to one up me at all times.
Downvoting this seems strange... it’s pretty standard practice to explain why you’ve vouched for a dead comment.
