| > I asked about a time where something went wrong on a project, and he [said] that had never happened to him. I can see my past self responding similarly just due to being unaware of what interviews are usually like. Nowadays I know that "no, they are not necessarily asking for a time when someone got fired for something, or for a time when the project was down for so long that people got mad; here they mean 'wrong' in a more lax way, like a time you had to rollback something even if nobody noticed, or a time a refactor went longer than expected (or didn't complete), or a time a query was being a little slower than expected, even if it didn't impact anyone". My past self to my current self: "But surely that's normal? Those are small things, and it doesn't seem like anything went wrong in any of them." My current self to my past self: "Still, that's the kind of thing they want to know. Now shut up and be thankful you at least get the chance to talk to someone instead of getting ghosted." > I tried asking the question a few different ways, giving him lots of opportunities to come up with something I thank you for at least trying to rephrase the question just in case the response was only due to not having had that many interviews. That the candidate wasn't able to pick up on your intentions is on them. I hope they at least thought about the interview after they did it and try to see what they could have done better. |