I’ve given a tentative acceptance for a new job until they’ve had time to do reference checks. That typically guarantees that I’ll get the offer because even in cases where I’ve been terminated it usually boils down to me being relatively expensive and not being particularly patient with managers who practice a retail style of management that involves repeating the phrase ‘customer service’ so many times that it loses all meaning. I tend to treat the folks I support slightly better than they treat me but I don’t tolerate yelling or abuse from anyone. At my present job I have ejected the CEO from his office after he became verbally aggressive and got in my way while I was troubleshooting a fairly straightforward issue and people thought I was nuts for that. Maybe I’m not destined to be a greeter at department store but I am generally very good at what I do. Unlike most of the job offers (and there have been a bunch over the years) that I’ve accepted over the past six or so years, I’m actually excited to start work for this company because their interview process actually made me believe that they weren’t completely full of shit. That’s a tricky one, right?
Most interviews that I’ve taken part in over the past decade or so have been insanely stressful and intentionally humiliating. I’ve grimaced my way through so many situations that depended entirely on situations that were a single step removed from an A+ exam from the early 00s that I’ve probably defensively wiped many of them from memory. I left those interviews feeling less like I’d been either evaluated or even challenged and felt more like I’d been part of some hazing ritual that evaluated how well I could answer quiz show style questioning on what the letters in obscure networking acronyms meant and how I recovered from being heckled while white boarding infrastructure architecture. I’ve said this many times before but interviewing at software companies is one of my least favorite things to do because of the predetermined expectation that you’re going to sweat blood, recall obscure edge cases irrelevant to the role you’re interviewing for, and generally be entertainment for a room full of folks who’ve been trapped in the amber of their roles and now want to challenge an outsider to a pressurized dick measuring contest.
Anyway, bitterness over past interview experiences aside and excusing the usual cliches that come along with the interview process like me wearing a shirt with buttons on the front of it, this process was so linear and stressless that it energized me after each round was over. Granted, there were seven rounds of interviews so I can’t excuse the amount of time that I was expected to commit but I did enjoy each of the conversations that I had.
Obviously I can’t name companies here or any of that tempting but ultimately self-defeating sort of thing but I can mention what I think worked well.
1. Most of the interviews were me talking to a single person. I enjoy conversations deeply when I feel like I’m both hearing everything the other person is saying and I feel like they’re actually paying attention and reacting to my answers. The panel style interviewing process that’s become such an overused standard is at best uncomfortable and at worst feels oddly confrontational. I had a great time talking to everyone during this interview process and, judging by the amount of actual laughing that happened during most of my interviews, the folks talking to me were engaged as well. That just felt good even in my situationally weakest interviews.
2. While all of the interviewers were frank about having their feedback hidden from one another to prevent a single poor impression from biasing everyone they were also very upfront about their impressions at the close of the interview. I never felt like I ended an interview with no idea how I’d performed or what the litmus for success might be. That was also refreshing and removed a large amount of the post-interview doubts that typically plague me. That was also refreshing and felt to me less like some black box bullshit and more like people interested in genuinely trying to get what I was all about. I’ll confess that I did tailor some of my answers towards what I thought they might want to hear but I think that’s become standard operating procedure these days.
3. Generally all of the interviews involved solving one particularly knotty technical question and I was able to talk through it with the interviewer instead of producing something in a cone of silence while the people interviewing me tapped randomly on keyboards. One of the theoretical situations was technically impossible to solve all the way but the interviewer told me during the course of trying to work my way through the situation that they were more concerned about the process than the solution. Once I’d presented as much of answer as possible then we dissected the question mutually which felt much less like a gauntlet thrown down and more like collaborative problem solving. This also was much more comfortable than I’m accustomed to and made me feel more like I was working through an unfamiliar issue with a friendly colleague. Take note of this because the opposite approach — how big is your algorithmic dick — makes me lose all enthusiasm for both the interview process and the team I might be joining. Oh! So, you cribbed your approach from a Fortune 500, venture capital funded unicorn, huh? Why aren’t you a Fortune 500, venture capital funded unicorn you fucking poser?
4. For the first time in what felt like a century, I knew what was going on and what was expected of me in each phase of the interview process. The recruiting person always pitched me time slots when people were available instead of asking for my availability over the course of several days. The ‘does this data and time for this duration work for you” approach was also super refreshing and left me feeling less like I was an unpaid peon doing unpaid work for the potential of a prestigious position and more like someone who was setting aside a large amount of time while still working for another company and needing a little bit of flexibility.
5. Every interview had a very tight time frame and everyone that I spoke with asked me periodically if I still had time to talk more. I’ll admit that every single one of my interviews took more time than was allotted but I never felt like I wanted to escape and was willing to continue the conversation from what was initially 30 minutes into over an hour because the conversation was interesting enough that I actually wanted to continue.
6. When I completed my final interview, I had a follow up call with the hiring manager. The absolutely brilliant part about this conversation was that the manager asked me about every single concern that anyone interviewed me had about my experience or average tenure length and gave me the opportunity to address it before they made their final decision. Again, leaving the black box of opaque assessment and hiding behind the anonymity of HR software made me so much dehumanized than I have in past interviews. Being able to address concerns directly is so much more helpful than getting a generic ‘moving forward with other candidates’ robot response. I feel as though even if I hadn’t been chosen that at least being given the opportunity to address concerns that interviewers had would be less disappointing in the end. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve gotten to the first interview stage and received one of those canned responses with no explanation or qualification for the rejection. I was very relieved to encounter neither rejection nor a generated response. That makes me feel as though I’m working towards something instead of against something.