Some notes on interviews

After being on the interviewer side of interviews for a while, I think, the interview can be quite opaque to the candidate and things can be misinterpreted.

Want to share some details that may help avoid stress and frustration (especially for candidates who are at the beginning of their career).

Once I've run into a candidate after the end of interview loop and asked 'how was your interview?', he clearly was in doubt that his interview went well. At the debrief it appeared that he totally nailed it, each interviewer voted "hire" or "strong hire".

So things that may seem as you are not doing well while actually you do:

• Some interviewers don't focus much on the solution itself but rather want to see how the candidate approaches the problem and works through to find a solution. That's why they deliberately give hard problem and are not expecting to get optimal answer quickly. So if you struggled a bit to get to a solution it is not necessary perceived as a failure.
• Some people want to see how candidate collaborates, works with team. In similar way the start with difficult task and are giving hints to drive the candidate to a solution, in order to see how candidate takes feedback/suggestions and communicates. So getting a help from interviewer doesn't necessary mean that you are not doing well.
• Sometimes interviewers are challenging candidate's solution or suggesting wrong/less efficient solution. And it is not because they are stupid or jerks. Some interviewers want to probe if candidate has a backbone and really understands why the solution is right one (e.g. not that they just guessed it or remember solution from internet).

And sometimes candidates are sure that they did well at interview but may be frustrated by not getting an offer. And because of this maybe swearing and being angry on interviewers.

Interview process is not simple in big companies and sometimes candidate doesn't get offer even when all interviewers are happy with the candidate.

Some example situations when well done interview doesn't end up with an offer:

• The position can be unexpectedly canceled. E.g. sometimes companies/orgs are doing temporal 'hire freeze' but they may not want to communicate this publicly
• Position may be already filled, e.g. by internal transfer or by another candidate and scheduling may happen in a way that interviewers don't know this when the interview happens
• A candidate may not be passing level bar just a bit, interviewers may still be happy to have him/her in the team with lower level position but hiring manager may only have position for particular level
• A process... In some companies there is a "gatekeeper" position which goal is to ensure that candidates are stronger than average employee and 'has potential for growth'. These guys may do mistakes but essentially they can pull down decision even if everybody else is inclined to hire. And sometimes it could be really small things, they even can challenge interviewers for not probing enough
• Well, sometimes interview is not actually "well done". I saw example when a candidate nailed all technical questions really well but the conversational side... well, all interviewers considered candidate to have toxic behavior - huge red flag. I imagine a good (but probably very inexperienced) person that may fail in this way: there is popular opinion that it is really bad to be shy, humble at the interview and it is good to be self confident. Well, some people may overplay this and instead of expressing 'self confidence' they show something that looks like arrogance

Of-course there is human factor. Interviewing is hard. Interviewing is also a skill and in any company there are interviewers who have different level of this skill. Interview process is not perfect (but it seems nobody knows a better process so far).

The point here - don't be quick to judge interviewers, it is easy to mistake regarding if interviewer got good impression about you or not. And there are many things that influence the process that are out of control of interviewer.

Some companies clearly understand that there is a risk of "no hire" for good candidates and that's why they really encourage people to try again later.