One interviewer’s nightmare: the candidates from hell
It wasn’t until I’ve started interviewing candidates that I learned all I know about what makes or breaks a job interview. My experience mainly originates from interviewing candidates for developer positions, but these ideas apply to any field.
Let’s start with the nightmares (or don’ts) as they are a lot spicier. Also see the less spicy, more practical, part 2: Be the dream candidate — what candidates do to impress the hell out of me.
These new exciting times with video interviews bring us a slew of opportunities to weird people out. So, without further ado, let’s talk about what you should never ever do in an interview.
Don’t be a jerk
It sounds rather obvious, doesn't it? Surprisingly, not everyone agrees. In one interview where a candidate who had their own startup prior to looking for a job, made it quite clear that this interview, and position, are beneath them. I insisted on following through with the interview to its bitter end (in retrospect, I should have cut it short. Clearly that person is wasting my time and theirs).
Everybody makes mistakes, including your interviewer. If a candidate acts annoyed or impatient, that sends me a clear signal: either this person is immature, or they are plain mean. Or both.
Don’t get hammered
Until I met that one candidate, I couldn’t even imagine someone doing this. This person took the entire interview with a glass of white wine in their hand. After about an hour of wine-sipping, they were quite drunk. The red-faced tipsy kind. The more the interview progressed the more this person became aggressive, and to top it off — failed the interview. Unrelated to being drunk they were not qualified for the position, but the drinking made it spectacularly blatant that they couldn’t care less. Why bother taking the interview then?
Don’t be cocky
This one is less bizarre and more common. There’s a difference between a candidate that knows their worth and a candidate that explains how with zero experience in the field, they rescued an entire company from certain doom and became the one and only focal point for that product. Surely you’ve done some good stuff in your last role, but no one likes a showoff.
Don’t blame others
With some candidates, the things that went wrong in their previous role are always someone else’s fault. Management was terrible, other developers were less than capable, the team leader made the wrong choices, the product people didn’t know where they were going, the design team did a poor job, the seating arrangement was a personal attack on them (yes, that is from a real interview).
Don’t blast me with information
Some candidates misunderstand the purpose of the interview. An interview is meant for me to know the candidate well enough to make an informed decision; instead, they believe I want to know all there is to know about the product they had been working on prior to accepting this interview.
Two or three sentences are enough; I don’t need a walkthrough of all the features, the dashboard structure, and what colors you chose. They waste what little time I have to decide if you are a good fit for the company. If I haven’t seen enough evidence to point me to a resounding YES, then that answer is most likely going to be a NO.
Don’t argue
You can disagree with what one says without arguing; there are great ways to present a different opinion even in an interview. If an interviewer asks that you stop and move on to the next question, you can passionately ask to complete your well-thought-out speech; you can comply; but you cannot argue. That makes you look like someone who is disagreeable and uncoachable, and we can’t have that person on our team.
If you’ve read this and smiled, I’d love to hear about your experiences.
If you’ve read this and saw yourself in one of these, I hope this helps in changing behaviors that put you in an inferior position when interviewing.
