[lojack]

Interviewers tend to have one of two different mentalities...

Some are trying to see you fail. They're looking for a reason to say "no". They tend to not be of any help on a problem, will often try to find ways to trick you. They also tend to have an ego problem -- you need to prove to them that you're worthy of joining the team.

The other class of interviewers are those that want you to succeed. They will answer questions, and help clarify things. Even if you are unqualified for the role, and they know it, they still want to help you along so they can see your best work. People that shut down when they get nervous tend to open up to these interviewers. They also tend to be the people that are more pleasant to work with.

[jjkaczor]

>Even if you are unqualified for the role, and they know it, they still want to help you along so they can see your best work

So ~14 years ago - after about a year at Microsoft, I was encouraged to assist with interviewing new candidates. At that time, there was no official guide/rulebook for interviewing, but I was told unofficially;

"We hire people with a solid technical base, who may not know EVERY thing at the time of interview, because we really want to hire on their future potential".

"If a candidate is doing poorly, don't be rude - if they asked where they failed, tell them - because, they may very well interview again in 6-months, and if they show a significant improvement, they may well get hired then."

"Any technology they list on their resume is 'fair game' - they had better know it, and if you have direct experience in a niche technology that they list, grill them to see if they are being 'honest'"

And - we were often paired with other technical interviewers, and everyone kept detailed notes. A single veto by any interviewer during any of the multiple phone sessions (and/or eventual in-person interviews) would end that stage of the process for that candidate.

It worked well - I interviewed more than one person who didn't make the cut in the first round of tech screen calls, but 8-months later - they did - and ended-up being very valuable members of our group.

However - there were definately other interviewers that were basically trying to trick the candidate at every step of the process - they were not some of our better team members and honestly, should not have been involved in interviewing.

[ebrewste]

"Any technology they list on their resume is 'fair game' - they had better know it, and if you have direct experience in a niche technology that they list, grill them to see if they are being 'honest'"

Such a strange stance for MS to take (IMHO). I've got 20+ years experience in lots of different languages and different technologies. I've been looking for a new job and have been brushing up on skills for interviewing. I just don't think it's possible for me to be ready to be grilled by a current expert on 15+ languages that I've shipped high quality, production code. The flip side is to only list the three I can take a grilling on today on my resume? It seems like a pretty short sighted approach. Maybe they have moved on in this stance?

[smsm42]

Grilling may not be the best word there, but if you say you worked with language X, I think it makes sense to give you some questions about it to gauge how good you are with it. Some people stuff the resume by mentioning every language that they did for a toy project once in college, and then we don't want them to be put in charge of the project which requires deep knowledge of the same language. Better to find it out in advance. That doesn't necessary means that candidate will fail and not be hired - just maybe not for the project that requires the knowledge they don't have.

[lscharen]

Having done plenty of interviews, it's surprising how many candidates list every technology they may have touched for the briefest of moments. For me, "grilling" someone on something like a programming language is about determining if they've _really_ used it or not.

If a candidate lists multiple languages on their resume, I'll often ask them to do a compare and contrast -- what do they think are the strengths and weaknesses of the languages? What did you use language X for? Do you think language Y would have been better/worse/same to attack the same problem?

I'm not looking to trip them up, just find out if their resume is an accurate reflection of their experience.

[seanp2k2]

"I used it so I wouldn't need to rewrite the 300 proprietary internal libraries and dependencies our company also paid to write and maintain in that language" is probably a valid answer for many BigCo employees.

[EdwardDiego]

I just had an interview with MS, they seem to have a far better approach these days.

I was surprised that they approached me because the team works primarily in C# and Go, and I've been doing JVM languages mainly, and only a small amount of Go, but the interviewer emphasised that they want people who can learn and enjoy learning.

They then asked me to choose a language I know well and describe a strength and weakness of it.

It was a really good interview experience tbh.

[lloydatkinson]

Does MS have many remote jobs? I’m UK based and it seems most MS jobs are in the US

[EdwardDiego]

I'm not sure about many, this one is though.

[seanp2k2]

Interviews exist in this weird space disconnected from the reality of the work and being judged by those closest to the work. Not many real on-the-job situations would require someone, for example, to be able to recall the protocol number for a given protocol without looking it up, yet that's one of the questions that a particular very famous tech company has their recruiters ask, and you get auto-rejected for not knowing. It's unfortunate when a place becomes so large and so desirable that they'd rather force people to try multiple times to get through an arbitrary obstacle course and succeed on some combination of chance and skill vs attempting to more honestly assess if a given candidate could actually succeed in the role they're hiring for.

[k10er]

I hate 'trivia' interviews with 'gotcha' questions dealing with experiences their team may have recently dealt with (and probably took weeks to identify/resolve).

I would say the port/protocol memorization may be required depending on what job you are interviewing for. If its for a tech support job, maybe the ports/protocol question is pointless.

[denton-scratch]

> Some are trying to see you fail.

I have no respect for such people. Not because of their lack of "niceness", but because that kind of behaviour betrays a lack of technical confidence.

That remark isn't just about interviewers; it applies to all colleagues. More generally, I tend to respect people who are smart enough to know what they don't know, and honest enough to admit it.

[version_five]

> behaviour betrays a lack of technical confidence.

Yes agreed. I've seen this in interviewing and in teaching. People who are insecure make it about how smart they are, people who are confident make it about helping others.

[akulbe]

In a former role, I got the opportunity to be on the interviewer side of the table.

I considered it a privilege to have the potential to influence progress in someone else's career.

I am very much in the latter category of wanting to see folks succeed.

We had one candidate that didn't have experience in the particular technology we were interviewing for, but I could tell he was highly intelligent, just very nervous.

I asked him questions on another complex technology that he'd listed on his resume, to try and draw out some of his thinking on his problem solving skills.

He did great.

I suggested to him that he should come to us with questions, and interview us as much as we were interviewing him. I wanted to see him get the job.

He didn't… at first.

The others on the panel didn't give him their vote. We'd picked someone else that ended up flaking out.

I went back and tried to make the case that we should extend him an offer.

They ended up doing so… dude was an absolute ROCKSTAR.

Please be the one that wants people to succeed. Interviewing is hard, people.

[FalconSensei]

> The other class of interviewers are those that want you to succeed. They will answer questions, and help clarify things. Even if you are unqualified for the role, and they know it, they still want to help you along so they can see your best work.

That's how I go about it. Even unprepared candidates can return someday with more experience/knowledge, or apply to a different position where they can succeed - or letting their friends/acquaintances know about the role.

Also, as we can see in this post, a bad interview experience can really taint a company's image, which can to some degree prevent people from applying

[kurupt213]

A good interviewer will have you leaving the interview feeling as if you did well, even if you didn’t.

[guenthert]

Nonsense. Misleading people is hardly ever the right or long term beneficial approach. If the candidate is insufficiently experienced, skilled or prepared then it's not wrong to let them know (they might actually appreciate to learn why they don't get the job). This doesn't have to be done in an impolite way though.

[andsoitis]

as an interviewer myself:

a) I think as interviews as auditions rather than exams.

b) I try to find someone's edges, so that the hiring manager has better information. In other words, if I were to give a candidate full marks, I've probably failed as interviewer.