So, you’re bad at interviewing? You freak out when you have to code in front of a recruiter? The latest episode tells you about a young man with just that problem, and seven techniques you can use to deal with performance crushing stress.
Episode Outline
Being Bad At Interviewing
So there I was interviewing this young man for the second time in nine months.
- Did great chatting.
- Did terribly coding.
- Same as last time.
- He prepared, but only by coding.
Interview! If you’re bad at interviewing, you need to interview more often!
- Be honestly open to the interview.
- Don’t limit yourself to your dream position at your dream company.
- Being your only desire won’t change my bar for hiring.
Practice! Simulated and real.
Learn routines to handle stress.
- Take a breath and pause.
- Slow… down!
- Affirmations: “I’m doing fine.” I can do this.
- Push hard on your palms. (Proprioceptive input)
- Ask a touchstone question: what am I after? What’s next?
- Do the easy part first.
- Restate what you know and what is needed.
Give me what I need to hire you.
Photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile from Pexels
Transcript
2020-02-07 s2e1 Bad At Interviewing.mp3
[00:00:00] Welcome to Manager JS for Friday, February 7th, 2020. Today we’re talking about being bad at interviewing.
[00:00:24] So there I was interviewing this young man for the second time in nine months and… It wasn’t going very well. And let me tell you why That was just so disappointing for me.
[00:00:38] You see, he did really well on talking about the job. Talking about programming.
[00:00:44] And from all of his answers to my questions, many of them very technical, I expected that he would know what he’s doing and be able to program with me. But when it came time to do the programming, he just couldn’t do it. you know, that’s not so unusual. But the thing that made it really tough is that I had interviewed him the previous February (This was October.) and had almost the exact same experience. I gave him some coaching and said, hey, you know, I can tell that you know, a good amount and that you could do this. You probably can do this. You just need some practice. I want you to go practice coding, prepare yourself for the interview. I want to see you again in October when I come back.
[00:01:36] So here he is. He’s come back and on top of that, he’s graduating in December.
[00:01:44] I’m hiring interns. But that is the number one way that we find the people that we keep is internships. They often turn into a long term engagement. Full time employment where I work. This is my number one way of acquiring talent: through the internship. it matters a lot to me that I hire really good interns. And this was his last shot. And the same thing was playing out again. He could talk about the problem. He could talk about how he would approach it at a high level.
[00:02:15] But when it came time to do the coding, he just couldn’t do the simplest things. like he couldn’t remember how to declare a variable. You know, that’s that’s what it felt like. He couldn’t remember how to do a loop.
[00:02:33] And, you know, I’ve had people brag to me, you know, I haven’t used a for loop in years, you know, because I do the functional programming thing for loops are garbage. OK. But you should know how to do one. Right. I mean, I understand that you think that it’s passé and it’s not cool anymore.
[00:02:50] But really, if you were interviewing somebody that couldn’t setup a for loop, would that make you wonder if maybe they weren’t a great fit for the job?
[00:03:01] I’ve had people say things as silly as well if if they could solve it functionally using like dot for each or dot map. And they used a for loop. Well then that’s the wrong kind of person to have around here. I think that’s just bananas. That’s silly because that’s saying guess what I like. You know, instead of saying can you do basic coding?
[00:03:21]
[00:03:24] This was really disappointing and because he had freaked out last time and not done well. I had even stepped out of a recruiting event just to work with him because that’s how we met up. This time it wasn’t a regular interview. It was at a time of his choosing. I normally only have a half hour. We spent well over an hour together because I sat and chatted with him for quite a while in the beginning just to try and get him comfortable, because I don’t want people to fail.
[00:03:53] I want them to do well, because that’s how you find good people. They do well. I don’t understand the people that enjoy freaking out their interviewee, although I can understand when I first started interviewing, there’s a temptation there to be like I have made it and I’m the interviewer. Hahaha, it’s isn’t it nice to be on this side of the table, but that’s not how you get great people on your team. So I had sat and I talked with him and we talk through the problem and he just couldn’t code in front of me and he said, you know, and he was being really, really cool about it. He wasn’t freaking out, although I could tell it meant a lot to him. He wasn’t freaking out because he could tell it was it was going poorly. And I just sat and talked to him.
[00:04:37] You know, this is important. You should be able to program in front of me. We talked about this last time. Did you did you practice? Yes, I practiced. I practiced. I’ve been preparing for this interview. Did you practice programming with other people? Yes. I’ve been programming with other people. Did you practice interviews? Yes, I did a lot of mock interviews. But when I sit down with you, my mind just goes blank. When I have to start coding
[00:05:06]
[00:05:08] And I said, well, I’ve got to make a decision based on what you can demonstrate. And I believe you. But this is the process.
[00:05:18] And, you know, you’re very tempted sometimes as an interviewer to follow your gut and say, I know that I sat down and I made this plan. But obviously this is a diamond in the rough or some strange situation that I just couldn’t have anticipated. And so I’m going to change my process to get this person in. And I’ve had to do that in small ways from time to time. Ya know when people didn’t quite fit what I was expecting. But in the moment, I decided, you know. I’m going to take a chance and an internship isn’t that big of a chance. But seeing as how it’s my primary method of acquiring talent, it is still an opportunity cost problem because I can’t have infinite interns. I only have so many of them.
[00:06:02] While I was sitting there working with this young man, I just I just couldn’t bring myself to say it didn’t matter that he couldn’t code in front of me. And one of the problems was he had practiced, but he hadn’t practiced interviewing with real interviewers. He had only prepared by either coding by himself or with a teammate or doing mock interviews. And his problem was he was bad at interviewing. He he just freaked out when it came to the real deal. So if that’s you. You have to interview. You have to get out and interview and it and it should be an interview you care about so that you can experience that stress and practice working through it.
[00:06:48] Now, the stress of an interview of having somebody judge you on such a short amount of time. Yeah, that’s not representative of the real job most of the time. Most of the time you’re in a long term relationship with the people at work. You have a lot of opportunities to demonstrate your value, your capability. So that part of the interview process is completely artificial, but it’s also very difficult to overcome. It’s it’s unlikely that you’re going to be able to get where you want to go without having to deal with that compressed timeframe to demonstrate skill. So you need to be good enough at that to get to the next level, to get to the next stage in the interview process. So if you if you freak out and your mind goes blank when when you interview, then you have to do it more.
[00:07:40] We practice continuous delivery at my job. And one of the tenants of continuous delivery is if it hurts, do it more. that’s counterintuitive. Normally people say this hurts. Let’s find a way to do it less often, like integrating hurts, running full, a full battery of acceptance tests hurts because they’re difficult and error prone. So let’s just do them. You know, every three months when we’re gonna release or let’s, you know, let’s do them less often. But the continuous delivery Bible says if it hurts, do it more often because then you’ll get good enough at it that it won’t hurt. You’ll do it well, you’ll do it more efficiently, do it often and do it in small pieces.
[00:08:21] that’s how you’re going to get better at interviewing. You have to do it more often. If it hurts, you’ve got to do it more often.
[00:08:29] sense you’re doing this, since you’re going to go out and interview. I would encourage you. I would ask you, please don’t. Don’t. Interview with no intention of accepting the job, with no intention of even taking the job offer seriously. For one thing, it’s not going to really be that great of practice for you because practice makes permanent. Right. And if you’re not taking it seriously, you’re really not going to be engaging that skill that you’re lacking, which is doing well when it matters. for your own sake, be honestly open to the interview and just for the sake of being a good person and not burning someone else. Don’t go and interview with somebody with no intention of ever taking that job seriously, because I know that I’ve felt like that’s what happened to me. I interviewed somebody and they really just had no intention of ever taking the job. They’re just doing it because somebody told them to do it. Please don’t do that.
[00:09:30] Please don’t just go interview without any intention. Be honestly open. even if you have only one place that you want to work. This was one of the things the young man said to me. He said, well, I didn’t interview a lot because yours is the job I wanted. I want to work for your organization. And you would think that that would be a big plus. Well, it’s a plus that somebody really wants to work for me.
[00:09:56] But on the other hand, being your only desire isn’t going to change my bar. I’m not going to lower my criteria, my need to see you demonstrate skill. I’m not going to lower that just because I’m the only place you want to work. So if you freak out in in interviews and you have one dream job at some technology company or whatever. you’re probably not going to succeed. You shouldn’t just have that one job if you’re not good at interviewing. You might need to to have other options too, if only so that when you get that interview, you will do well. Right. be honestly open to the interview.
[00:10:41] It’s probably premature to say I could only ever be happy working one place. You don’t really know what it’s like to work there. Plenty of people get their dream job and then walk away within a couple of years because they didn’t know what they really wanted and they didn’t know what it was really like to work there or to live where they had to move to work there. So practice don’t have a single dream job. You need to practice. Simulated is good. But if you find that it doesn’t freak you out, if it doesn’t get some of that anxiety coming up, then you need to do real interviews, too.
[00:11:17] if you still are having this, if just practicing isn’t enough, then maybe you need to learn some routines for handling stress.
[00:11:25] here’s some ideas. a lot of them you’ve heard. But you need to to do them. You don’t just need to have heard about them. You need to practice doing them.
[00:11:39] I when I was a young father, my daughter got really sick and she was standing in the way of my other daughter.
[00:11:47] the younger one is standing in for the older one. The older one got impatient with her. And I think slapped her on the back or something to get her to move out of the way so she could see the TV. Well, my younger daughter was so ill that she was nearly unconscious at that moment. that slap on the back, she just fell flat on her face.
[00:12:09] I heard her fall. I wasn’t in the room. I was in another room. I came in and I saw her on the ground.
[00:12:16] I ran over and of course, said some choice words to my oldest daughter to ask what was going on.
[00:12:24] When I got to my young daughter, she wasn’t breathing and she was turning gray. And, you know. I knew what I should do. I mean, it was in my head. I’ve been in enough emergency trainings. I was a Boy Scout, a scout master. And I’ve had CPR training. I’ve had all sorts of training. But I have to say, in that moment when I saw my daughter’s face gray and her body not moving and not breathing, I became the stupidest person ever. I just I couldn’t even remember 9-1-1. All I could do was pull her up into my arms and start screaming my wife’s name because I knew she was in the house. And I just started screaming my wife’s name and I. I couldn’t even say the words she’s not breathing. Right. Or Abbie’s in trouble.
[00:13:22] Knowing isn’t enough. You need to practice and you need to practice in a way that really triggers really simulates that you need to take that practice seriously. real interviews are a great way to do that.
[00:13:36] Here’s some techniques you can use:.
[00:13:39] Take a breath and pause. Just take a breath. Slow down. Pause. If you’re freaking out to the point where you’re getting tunnel vision and you can’t think of more than one thing. And you’re starting to get really worried. Like you would be if your life were in danger. You need to slow down. You need to take breath. You need to pause.
[00:14:01] Maybe you should practice affirmations of some kind. Just thinking to yourself. I’m doing fine. I can do this. It’s gonna be OK. Slow down. Right.
[00:14:14] They did a study about stress, about stage fright and one group, they told them to do calming things before the activity. Like what I’ve been saying. Taking a breath, slowing themselves down.
[00:14:32] The other group, they said, OK, I want you to acknowledge that you are getting nervous and say to yourself, this is good, because those nerves are going to help elevate my performance. I’m going to do better because of it. I just need to focus and allow myself to be nervous.
[00:14:50] They found that second group did better, the group that allowed themselves to be nervous. So you might try calming yourself down, especially if you’ve gotten so worked up. You can tell you’ve gone around the bend. it’s starting to dim out, get tunnel vision. You’re starting not be able to hear other people when they talk to you. You might need to slow down.
[00:15:15] Or you might need to say, hey, this is nerves. This means it’s important to me and I’m going to harness these nerves. I’m gonna do better because I know this matters. Okay.
[00:15:26] One thing that you might try is some sort of proprioceptive input. it’s something that gets you out of your head and back rooted in your in your physical space, like taking your thumb and pushing very hard on the palm of your hand, maybe finding a pressure point that you can just squeeze on that will you will give you a sensation that might even be unpleasant. In normal situation. But it will help get you reconnected to your body and environment. Maybe squeezing your fingers together, maybe interlocking your fingers, pushing them hard together, stretching them out in between, as if you were getting ready to play the piano, for example, just jamming those fingers together, get you out of your head and back grounded in the in the environment that you’re in.
[00:16:16] You can ask yourself touchstone questions. Sometimes when I find that my mind has gone blank, I’ve got just a number of questions that I know will help trigger and jog my memory. like, what am I after? What am I trying to accomplish? What’s next is one of my favorite touchstone questions. things just come to a lull and you’re like, what’s next? That’ll help get your brain thinking, OK, this is what’s next. This is what I have to do next.
[00:16:44] Do the easy part first. If there’s an easy part of the problem, do that part first because it will get you going. And once you get going. You’ll probably find that the next part and the next part and the next part come naturally. If you will just completely, do that easy part first.
[00:17:02] Obviously think out loud, especially if your interviewer has asked you to. Think out loud and that will help engage all of the parts of your mind. And the speech center is the part that synthesizes all of that together. I think that this is part of the reason why this young man did so well when he was talking to me. But when he had to do the coding, he couldn’t because he just would go quiet. Even if I prompted him, hey, treat me like a teammate. Tell me what you’re thinking. What would you do first? What what do we have to do?
[00:17:29] If you go quiet, if you get stuck in your head, you’re actually turning down the input. You’re opting out of parts of your brain from helping you. OK. think out loud, restate what you know and what is needed. These are just some ideas of how you can deal with that kind of stress.
[00:17:52] And obviously, if you learn how to do these things in an interview, there’s gonna be times other than that that this is going to come in handy. When you’re in a meeting and you find yourself suddenly emotionally engaged, emotionally charged, rather than being cool and and calm about ideas. These are all things that’ll come in handy then, too.
[00:18:12] Just remember that you have to give me what I need to hire you. Don’t be creative about what you think I need because I don’t need to know I’m the only job you want and I don’t need to know that we share a hobby or what’s your favorite color is. Those aren’t the things I need to know. And you wouldn’t like it if the world was filled with managers that hired based on that anyway. You want managers to hire based on skill. That’s what makes this world fair, as fair as we can make it. So you have to give me what I need. You need to give me a demonstration of that skill. Give me what I need. You need to be able to do that in the interview.
[00:18:59] I hope that that helps and I hope that you’re able to get that job.
[00:19:05] I hope you’re enjoying what you’re learning. You’re gonna be able to make that transition into the workplace. I would look forward to working with you someday. I’ll see you later.
