Holding wholesome tech interviews [part 7/7]
That last ingredient
The final chapter of a series on how we can further improve the experience and the outcome of technical interviews, from the side of an interviewer.
For a centralised table of contents for the whole series, check out this Github Gist
TL;DR: what’s not a picture but still worth > a 1000 words (per second)?
The calm and energy from a friendly, genuine smile.
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Technical interviews inherently provide this very specific and potentially highly fruitful context, in which 2 parties can very quickly start to form collegiality.
There’s that common base of interests and knowledge, as well as a potentially common incentive — the common potential goal of accomplishing things together in the future, as part of a same organisation.
the what
Additionally, technical interviews are also
a very first opportunity to learn about how to interact with our potential new colleague.
All previous chapters built a lot on what is, at the end of the day, just being more of a good human in this context.
We’ll swap our usual puns to go even deeper with a cringy metaphor this time, and for a moment, in a fun paradox we’ll compare human social interaction to software interaction.
our social APIs
[After facepalming] if you think about it, each of us exposes particular APIs for interaction with other humans — literal instructions, for interacting with each other.
By (social) design, some of these (instructions) interfaces are somewhat more globally available (through culture), while others are only available and gradually exposed to people that we know (through social interaction), and even fewer are more private, exposed with even fewer people we know, and only under specific scenarios.
Being the humans that we are, we almost never list these instructions in writing, but instead we do so throughout series of micro-interactions, and mostly via a lot of non verbal feedback during those interactions.
Circling back to our initial idea, being more human, social and open also during these technical interviews actually enables us to very early on indirectly learn about (and also share) at least some of those human interaction interfaces with our potential new colleague.
the why
If in programming, knowing what an APIs requires and provides is crucial for working with their underlying services, then as humans, depending on who you ask that is at least just as valuable, if not even more so.
After everything unpacked in the previous chapters, what would you think could be a final ingredient, for helping initiate that exchange of communication interfaces?
the how
I think that in many workplace environments, humour is still an underrated thing, and this also goes for technical interview scenarios.
When an interview is not possible live, I think it is imperative to at least use video, so the candidate is able to see when we are curious and want to ask more about a topic, but so they can also see us being happy about them being happy — whenever they are describing a project experience, or unpacking a technical topic in a manner which exudes their passion.
Yes, smiling can sometimes be heard even through audio alone, but I feel it really is too great of a risk to take for too little of a cost, as it is just too critical of a positive feedback to be missed — when the interviewer can resonate with not just the content but also the delivery of an answer, without needing to or getting a chance to verbalise it.
Expressing these sort of states will require us to not be afraid to be transparent.
Being relaxed and having a sense of humor does not need to mean less professionalism.
Smile. Genuinely.
Be grateful and humbled you’re in this position to begin with, and be happy to have another person wanting to join you, in your organization’s quest.
Parting thoughts
#0. Way ahead of you, kid!
If you’re already doing most of this, I salute you.
You are, in my opinion, making this area of our (or any) industry an even better place.
If you haven’t tried most of it yet, maybe give it a shot!
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#1. Fair warning: bandwith
Applying everything proposed in this series all the time can be challenging especially in the beginning, and/or also difficult to maintain long term, especially when we are holding lots and lots of interviews. Furthermore, it may actually also feel forced, in some interviews.
I think a really good approach is to just
- have in mind the principles you resonate with, and
- apply them in interview scenarios that you just feel they would help.
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#2. Fair warning: non linear thread
If you will start to feel that when applying these principles, the technical evaluation itself would occur a bit more fragmented, in between actual depictions of scenarios, parentheses of notions, personal remarks, even topic-related humour, then you are very correct.
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#3. Fair warning: unplanned positive effects
Even if the interview eventually leads to a dead-end due to other factors, applying even some of these principles may initiate such a positive rapport, and if that’s not good enough as it is, it can eventually lead to recommending each other for other opportunities.
Even towards other companies where you or them have friends or ex-colleagues.
And heck, maybe in the future you even eventually meet each other again in another company.
Thank you for your time and your energy, joining me throughout this article series. I wish you a happy journey throughout your careers, and also on both sides of these interviews!
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