A good interviewer

🚧 This article talks about engineering interviews, but certain points can be applicable across industries.

For me, the worrisome thing about changing careers is interviews. Learning new things, and preparing for the interview is easy compared to taking the actual interview.

Interviews are hard enough for the candidate without the interviewer making them harder. The interviewee has all kinds of thoughts that are making them nervous.

1. What if I don’t crack this interview?
2. What if I suck at this, I’ll look like a fool in front of the interviewer.
3. If I don’t crack this, my friend who referred me, what will they think?

And the list goes on and on.

Interviewers can’t do much about these thoughts. Except make the interview not intimidating and a pleasant experience for the candidate.

A pleasant interview will set the right tone about your company. Because, after HR, the interviewer is the next person the candidate talks to. I will never join a company if the interviewer is arrogant, or rude.

Starting the interview

Most of the time, when the candidate joins the interview, they are tense. A relaxed mind can think better, communicate better, and be more confident about themselves.

It’s a good idea to start with small talk.

• Where are they from and what’s unique about the place?
• How are they enjoying remote work/coming back to the office?
• Anything else you found from the resume, like hobbies or side projects they worked on.

A 2-3 minute small talk can calm the candidate and fill them with some positivity.

Diving to interview topics

Job Interviews shouldn’t be like a quiz, but more conversation should be added.

Why so?

When you do a quiz format, you end up getting mugged-up book answers. But when you converse, you can have a real talk about things from the same level.

• How would you do so-and-so?
• What’s your thought process for doing something, what would you use for it, and why would you choose those tools?
• when was the last time you faced something similar?

You get the gist.

🚧 These questions might differ for a fresher as they might have less exposure to real-world implementation. In that case, I resort to some problem-solving questions. I’m more interested in the pseudo-code, doesn’t have to be in any programming language.

Working with the candidate

It is possible that the candidate gets stuck on certain questions. Reasons for that could be, that they are not familiar with the scenario explained, or terminology, or just forgot it.

If you feel the candidate has misunderstood, It'll help to rephrase the question to make sure the candidate understands what you're talking about.

If you feel the candidate is stuck at a certain point or at some stage in problem-solving, give them a slight nudge. Try to see where they are stuck and giving small clues gets them going. After all, as developers, we take help from online communities on daily basis.

And if all of this is not working out, better move on to the next question.

Taking the decision after the interview.

The decision-making can be the hard part of the interview.

At times, it is pretty clear the candidate is not a good fit for the role. And sometimes you find the right candidate for the role.

Rewind

• Take a hard look at the job responsibilities for the role candidate is interviewing. How good would the candidate be in that role?
• Even though the candidate might’ve missed a few details in the interview, do you see the potential in them to pick up things and be ready for the role?
• Would you be ready to accept them to your team, and work with them?

If the answer for all the above points is yes, it’ll be good to move them to the next round.

And if it’s a NO, it's best not to proceed with the next rounds. There’s no reason to feel bad for the candidate, it’ll work out for everybody. The candidate doesn’t have to stick with a role that he’s not a good fit for, and the company should not end up with somebody who’s not a right fit.

It is much, much better to reject a good candidate than to accept a bad candidate - Joel Spolsky, The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing

Improving your interview

You always have room to improve your interview process. The interview methods and questions keep evolving, and you should make sure you keep up with them.

• Talk with your peers about their interview process and discuss your methods as well. Learn from the methods that have worked well for them, and avoid the mistakes they made.
• Let someone with interview experience shadow your interviews. An experienced peer of yours can join your interview, and observe the process. After the interview, you both can talk about how did the interview process go.
• Do research about your questions. You should know your questions and answers well. And that'll help you to judge the answers better. Not every candidate answers the question in the same way.