Is tech interviewing broken?

Pedro Gil Carvalho Sorry for making this a new post, but LinkedIn's reply character limits prevented me from doing a full reply. I'll link this in your comments

Pedro asked:

I have a different take on this: it is a workaround for lacking interviewing skills.

I’ve done tons of interviews, both giving and receiving and i’ve learned that very few people had actual training or instruction in interviewing tactics.

Myself, and many of my peers and colleagues who were starting to interview with only the most basic training, eventually cobbled together a set of methods and questions that we find are working for us.

The level of tech knowledge in any candidate is a challenging thing to describe or challenge. Additionally, engineers are being asked to tech skill interviews, again with no training.

What i see happen is that when tech people (i’ve coached many) interview as a “guessing game”. The interviewer has a correct answer they want, let’s say “Red Apple”. The questioning will start with e.g. “what is the best thing to keep doctors at bay?”

In the interviewers mind and bias, they have now linked “Red Apple” to “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”. It should be simple right? But, as Robert Burns is so tacitly telling us today, some 200+ years later; “The best laid plans of mice and men can still go wrong”.

What then happens is the guessing game continues - but the interviewee was not famliar with the saying, and, because the candidate is being interviewed for a serious position, the candidate assumes that the question must be difficult, and then starts thinking like: “hmm… well, exercise is good and also take your vitamins, and I guess eating healthy is good too”

The interviewer now says “yes! but what specifically can you eat?”

Then rince and repeat while

- the interviewer gets frustrated because why don’t they get it!?

- the candidate gets frustrated because just what is this interviewer going on about!?

- it takes literally half the interview to get to that one answer, if they ever do get to it at all.

- excellent candidates get missed out

- candidates are hired who are not a good fit

- happenstance is more involved

- book knowledge will trump this everytime

- it does not get into the experience

Appointing a candidate, as we know, a massively expensive process:

- current person leaves role, with let’s say a 3-month notice period (my condolences, americans)

- job role is defined, let’s say that takes a month, because we’re busy, and the search starts.

- many hours are dedicated to JUST finding candidates

- many more hours go to interviews, debriefs, CV reviews, skill assessments and so on.

- a candidate is found, but then withdraws or finds another position because we took too long

- all of this can easily last up to a year, while that position in unfilled and impacting the bottom line. we don’t hire people because we’re philathropists.

- now another candidate is found, and signs a contract abd then the waiting starts: first the rest if the calendar month of the signing and then 3 more months while this candidate is serving out their notice period

- the candidate joins. then another 3-6months for probation, only to find out later that you made a massive misjudgement in the issue and after the first year the candidate is not performing to expectations or leaves

- and the process starts from scratch.

Problematically, this never gets addressed because by the time the role is actually filled, some things may have changed in the org or whatever and it is now a slightly different place.

A very small amount of interviewers i’ve encoutered have had the opportunity to reflect back on their findings from two years ago when they interviewed this person.

My solution: everyone needs training on how to interview in both directions. with coaching, shadowing, feedback and some sort of certification.

Let me know your thoughts