Interviews - the problems and a solution
Published: 2022-07-29 12:27:44

---
title: Interviews - the problems and a solution
series: How to do interviews
published: true
description: How to do interviews part 3 - why interviews suck
tags: 
cover_image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fc/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Tower_of_Babel_%28Vienna%29_-_Google_Art_Project_-_edited.jpg/800px-Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Tower_of_Babel_%28Vienna%29_-_Google_Art_Project_-_edited.jpg
# Use a ratio of 100:42 for best results.
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## What was the point in all that?
Does the process CV + interviews = a suitable happy person working?
Clearly in the imperfect world we live in, no
Here are some random thoughts about it.  Enjoy

## Problem 1: Sell yourself
It makes the process into a sales process.  There is an incentive from the employee side to exaggerate the CV skills.  There is an incentive to reduce risk by just walking away from the employer side
Treating potential employees as commodities to be bought is not a great way to get engagement from those employees

## Problem 2: First impressions
First impressions are often wrong but everyone uses them
All those studies that show assessments of people are made from literally first impressions are true https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/am-i-right/201302/the-power-first-impressions#:~:text=First%20impressions%20matter%2C%20for%20good,The%20halo%20effect%20distorts%20reality.
People in HR are not immune.  Having a checklist is not a vaccine against it
Making a meeting with first impressions part of the process means that this is going to be a problem

## Problem 3: Experience is difficult to assess
Technical skills assessments are not for what you actually know from your experience.  They are “can you do the puzzle”.  In a sense they assess your willingness to jump through hoops.  Famously the creator of the Mac “homebrew” system - used by Google internally and countless others couldn’t get a job at Google as he didn’t pass the merry go round of interviews.  Here’s a link to the story 
https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejecting-Max-Howell-the-author-of-Homebrew-for-not-being-able-to-invert-a-binary-tree

## Problem 4: Put on an act
It’s too easy to put on an act of being a nice person
Culture tests are either psychometric multiple choice tests or informal assessments.  I won’t discuss psychometric tests and their issues but clearly informal assessments are prone to “give them what they want”
As I discussed in the previous articles in the series the "values" that companies have can be easy to claim for your own in words only.  Real values are based on actions

## Problem 5: Money vs. work
The fundamental employer employee power relation problem is: they want the most work for the least amount of wage.  You want the highest wages for the moderate amount of work.
This doesn’t just apply to time/money.  You might want to work on the latest technology but the fact is with most companies the $$$ is in legacy systems.  In many areas the employer and the employee are at odds on what the aims are.  I won’t go into the wider social / economic reasons why this is the case, but it is

## Problem 6: Who are the hiring people? 
Another problem is that many of the people you meet on your hiring journey are not the people who will be directly shaping your working environment.  The head of Cloud or the HR person will not be your peer or line manager
Those people you clicked with in the interview, they are not your manager or co workers


## A Solution:
Many people I know seem to agree that the best way to get a job is:
  * Someone you know and trust works there, they explain the ups and downs
  * You agree that on balance it might be fun
  * Your inside contact helps you get the role, often bypassing the normal cv/interview thing


[image credit: Pieter Brueghel the Elder: The Tower of Babel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Tower_of_Babel_(Vienna)_-_Google_Art_Project_-_edited.jpg)