How i love to be an interviewer

Nguyen Thanh Xuan
Sep 4, 2018 · 5 min read

Since I was a student, I remembered someone shared with me like this “Interview is the process that the one who already knows the answer pretends to be a fool and keeps raising questions for the fool who pretends to know everything”. That definition stuck in my mind makes me feel really bad about the interviewer and the whole process.

Luckily, in my first company, my coach changed my mind. I was wondering the reason why at that company, I were surrounded by good engineers who are not just only very talented in the technical stuff but also friendly and open for sharing everything. I asked my coach on how interviewers can detect and differentiate from good and bad candidates, who can match with the team’s culture, how we know the candidate can grow in given company’s environment… The more answers and shares from him, the more motivations from me to reach to an interviewer position one day.

It’s harder than I think.

After a few years of working, I gained more experience as a software engineer and finally had a chance to join in an interview session. I still remembered that experience until now. That’s the time I realized I need to have more things than not just working experience to be a good interviewer.

I made a crazy decision at that time that I would join in interviewing to different companies frequently, I remember I joined around 2 interviews per year. I would love to see where am I know in the technical world, what is the missing things that I need to learn and what is the different interviewing styles with different interviewers.

I realized that for the candidate, having a good interview it’s not that just mean they pass it. Having a good interview also means candidate met a great interviewer who helps them to see their missing points and how to become a better one. One more thing I can see that the interviewer bring a lot of impressions to the candidate about the company culture, the way how people work there and can if they can grow their career in that organization.

What is interviewer role

Being an interviewer that means you’re doing many things that conflict with each other, but those conflicts help me a lot to think of myself and know how to grow. Let me explain to you the reason why I say that.

Right on the starting phase, by reviewing profile given from candidate, you’re trying to find as many good candidates that can match with your company’s expectation but don’t want to waste time with the unqualified candidates. Now I know how important it is to prepare a clear, short profile that can show more about you, your abilities and can attract the interviewers. Be honest with what you did before in your previous projects because of nothing worse than being a liar in interviewer’s point of view.

Moving to the next step in the technical interview with a candidate. It’s the most confusing action that I’ve ever tried. You are trying to make sure about the abilities of a candidate, make sure what he wrote in his CV is true, find out whatever things from a candidate can raise a concern from you. A part of you is playing a role as a detective who wants to find weak points from the candidate. However, another part of you is playing a role to sympathy and try to look at the good side whenever it comes to a bad situation. In the end, you will have an argument, a battle inside your mind to make the final decision to say “YES” or “NO” for the candidate to move to the next steps.

Last but not least is the final phase of the interview session with answering questions given from candidate. In the beginning, I think this is the hardest part of the interview session. However, the more I spend time doing the interview, the clearer I realize that this one is the easiest part. All that you have to do is being honest and try to help a candidate to have a good interview experience. Don’t forget to play a sale role also, I mean you just have that short amount of time to let the candidate know the reason why they should join your organization. If they pass the whole interview process, then congratulation. But if they fail, you should give them the reason why and the motivation to try it next times.

The reasons behind

With all being said, you may confuse with the reason why I love being an interviewer. I don’t love the feeling of being a judge who can make the decision on someone’s chance or who should join with the team. I absolutely hate the feeling when you have to say “NO” to the candidate.

The reason why I love this job is that it gives me the motivation to grow and learn more.
Whenever you meet a great candidate, a young talent one who knows a lot of different things and show up their passion you may feel it and gain more energy to go ahead. The feeling is like you have to say something to yourself like “Wow, this candidate is amazing, how can he has that knowledge about these things, those aspects are incredible. I will take some time to do more research about it and try to be as good as them”

In another way, even when you face a bad one, it is also a chance for you to look back on what you’ve done so far. Let imagine someone else is interviewing you and with what you’re understanding so far, is that enough? Or you need to do it better and spend more time to investigate those topics?
Finally, whenever you have a chance to meet special candidates who should overcome a lot of obstacles to be in that level, it’s the greatest chance for you to know how lucky you are. Forget all about the negative things, all the complaints from your side and all the excuses you’ve said so far when you cannot complete anything.

Outside there, people with a much harder situation can still do it, so why you say you can’t.

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