Most interesting interview experiences

Job interviews fascinate me. It is one of the few situations where it is socially acceptable to judge one another 😉 I have plenty of interesting interview experiences as a candidate – both good and bad. I am writing this post to share the impact these experiences had on me. No company names will be mentioned 🙂

1. The One with The “Urgent” Issue

This interview was supposed to be a screening round and was conducted over the phone. The interviewer introduced themselves and mentioned that the interview would last 45 minutes. We started off with a simple question that lasted around 5 minutes. I felt very good about how this was going! We then moved on to some question around SQL. This is where the trouble started. I struggled so much on this question but I was still making progress slowly. At this point, we were only 10-15 minutes into the interview and I could sense that my interviewer wasn’t pleased. Suddenly, they told me that they had to attend to something urgent that just came up. I felt disappointed about the way the interview ended because deep down I knew that it was a lie 🙁

I had a similar experience years later when the interviewer just walked away leaving me all alone. Exact same lie. Hard to decide which was worse. Now that I am an interviewer, I can understand the interviewer’s perspective. They don’t want to waste their time on candidates who do not have the skills they are looking for. But as a candidate, I was demoralized by their reaction to end the interview early more than my own poor interview performance. This is something that I try to keep in mind when I am conducting interviews. A couple of things I try to do in these situations as an interviewer:

• Help the candidate solve small part of the problem (goal: morale)
• Give the candidate the solution and help them understand how it works (goal: learning)

The goal of an interviewer is to evaluate the candidate but also provide a positive experience. You never know, your paths may cross at some point in the future 🙂

2. The One with The Survey

This next one has to be the most unique interview experience by far. This was also a screening round focusing more on discussion than solving any technical problem. Prior to the interview, I was asked to fill out a skills survey with a bunch of questions under different areas like “Leadership”, “Systems thinking”, “Delivery” etc. During the interview, the interviewers just took my responses and asked follow-up questions to dive deep into the specifics for each response. I was able to share a lot of experiences and perspectives that demonstrated my skills in ways that a conventional interview wouldn’t have. Needless to say I had a very positive experience and really enjoyed answering the questions!

I know some of you maybe wondering that behavioral interviews aren’t particularly new. So what made this so great? There are a couple of differences:

• I had to time to think and share my responses before the interview. Usually, in interviews like this, candidates come up with their answers on the spot. Unless the candidates have prepared really well for these questions, it is hard to expect a lot of truthful and insightful answers. It also disproportionately rewards those who spend time preparing for interviews which I see as a bad thing.
• The interview was a two-way conversation. The credit for this goes to the thoughtful questions in the pre-interview skills survey. It allowed my interviewers to ask good questions which demonstrated what they care about. It was very meaningful since all of this was grounded in our experiences of building software and not some made up constraints in a contrived interview problem.

Even though I didn’t end up clearing the interview, I still have a fond recollection of the experience. Kudos to the company and the interviewers for making that happen 🙂

3. The One with the 2-hour Coding Session

I know what you are thinking after reading the title. “Wow, a 2-hour coding session sounds scary!” I had the exact same reaction before the interview. (SPOILER: This turned out to be an incredibly positive experience!)

Here’s how the interview worked:

• The interviewer gave me a doc with detailed instructions on the coding problem – what to build, the constraints, what cases to test etc.
• After spending some time initially explaining the problem and answering any questions, the interviewer would leave me completely alone.
• I had to work on the task independently over the next 1.5 hours with a check-in with me every 30 min in case I had any questions for them.
• The last 30 min were reserved for running through test cases and for code review.

Here’s what I LOVED about this interview:

• I could think freely. Personally, I can’t think clearly when someone is watching me (See Hawthorne Effect). I know interviewers need to be able to see my thought process and watch me work but it really affects how I normally act. Since I could work alone in this interview, I was comfortable taking time to think.
• I could work at my own pace. In hindsight, the problem was designed to be completed in 1 hour. I suspect the extra 30 mins was there for debugging/refactoring. Thanks to this buffer, I was’t concerned about making mistakes.

Overall, the whole interview experience was designed very thoughtfully. It told me a lot about the culture of the company that created a process like this!

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These interview experiences are a great reminder of how important it is for companies and interviewers to think about the candidate experience. A well-designed interview process can definitely be a strong selling point for candidates. Good luck 🙂