
The Secret Rules For Getting Hired - edent
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2019/04/the-secret-rules-for-getting-hired/
======
axle334
These "rules" miss the big picture. People react in certain ways for entirely
different reasons.

Example: Recruiter mispronounces my name. I don't say anything. This can be
because:

1) I'm a coward. 2) I don't care. 3) I care and am not a coward, but think it
would be petty to interrupt the conversation to point this out. 4) I'm overly
practical and don't care about this kind of details. 5) I think the other
person may feel bad if I correct them. 6) I accept that people make sometimes
mistakes. Maybe I'll point it out if they do it 3 times or more. Etc.

Which is it? You'd have to know the person better to know.

Even if the person is just a coward, this could be based on specific traumatic
experiences other persons didn't have and which affect only minimally the rest
of the personality.

Same applies to thank you emails, coming late to the interview etc. With such
subtle situations, you need to know _why_ somebody act the way they did, and
without knowing the person, which you usually don't, when interviewing, you
just can't.

These are just BS rules with which recruiters try to make their work easier.
Similar to Codility & co. tests for software developers. Well, bad news,
recruiting is hard. You'll have to take the time to listen to and think about
your candidates.

~~~
kovrik
Agree.

People often 'mispronounce' my first name (can't even pronounce last name).
Honestly, I don't care. I don't blame them because they pronounce it from
English point of view which is obvious as they are native speakers.

Some people ask me how would I say my name (I am Russian, but live in NZ), I
tell them. Some people then try to say it that way, sometimes they 'forget'
and fallback to English pronunciation. What's the big deal?

I can't even imagine myself being offeneded by that (Is author a child or
what?). Same goes the other way: NZ is a diverse country, we have people from
all around the globe here, and I bet I mispronounce every second name/last
name.

~~~
msla
> I can't even imagine myself being offeneded by that (Is author a child or
> what?).

"Offended" as in perceiving the speaker to be giving offense; that is,
perceiving the speaker to be intentionally not respecting the listener. Being
able to pick up on that is quite adult, and the exact opposite of childish.

------
brandonmenc
>"If someone doesn't send a thank you email, don't hire them".

I recently went through a short job search for programming work in Austin. I
made it all the way to the final, on-site interview at three places before
landing an offer.

Every time I did not get an offer, I would get an email saying "thank you so
much for your time, please reply with your concerns or questions!"

And so, each time, I sent and email asking "what did I do wrong, and what
could I improve?" making it very clear I was just looking for a quick, single
sentence answer like "more github projects" or "you smell."

I didn't get a single reply. Not one.

After that, I quit playing the ultra polite send-a-thank-you for every single
phone call or meeting I was graced with, and sure enough, I got a couple job
offers after that.

If anything, the whole experience convinced me that no one maybe outside of
sales or filling an executive position really cares about this kind of
business etiquette - either in giving it or receiving it.

~~~
rhizome
_After that, I quit playing the ultra polite send-a-thank-you for every single
phone call or meeting I was graced with, and sure enough, I got a couple job
offers after that._

I wouldn't be surprised if deciding not to worry about details with unknowable
significance and inconsistent response allowed you to relax a bit more in
future interviews.

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
Same trick worked for young me when I started dating...

------
partisan
At my last job, my manager “tricked” me during the interview. Apparently, he
wanted to see how I dealt with criticism. At least that is how the recruiter
justified it when I expressed my dissatisfaction with the experience and my
hesitation about working for that person.

That manager ended up being all about power trips and it made for a very toxic
culture in his team and in interactions with others outside of the team. I
left after less than a year despite not having a job lined up.

The only bright side is having found a position at a place that is the
complete opposite.

------
jayalpha
There are very few rules in getting hired. A few are:

1\. First class people hire first class people.

2\. Second class people hire third class people.

3\. People like to hire people similar to themselves.

4\. Not getting a job does not really say anything about you, but the guy they
hired says a lot about the company.

PS:

5\. Most companies, when offered unexperienced talent and an experienced
idiot, will hire the experienced idiot. Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM
and he had the experience on his resume.

~~~
paulcole
6\. People overestimate which category they fall in and everyone thinks
they're an "A player."

~~~
tsukikage
It goes both ways: people may feel they have to say that in public, but
impostor syndrome is also a thing.

------
chiefalchemist
From what I've seen and experienced most people doing the hiring are clueless.
What's worse is most of them are insane. That is, they keep doing the same but
expect different results.

Personally, I still shocked - and am mindful of the red flag - when they don't
realize I'm interviewing them as much as they are interviewing me.

~~~
max76
I'm a software engineer that's been involved in hiring decisions in the past.

When we make a bad hire we do a post-mortem just like we would for a critical
production bug. We adjust the interview process or evaluation criteria every
time a bad hire is made.

We also give the same interview for every role. We spend 80% of the time
asking the same questions, and leave 20% of the time for the free flow
conversation and interviewee questions.

~~~
koonsolo
Aren't you afraid that you focus too much on avoiding the bad ones, and not on
trying to hire the top ones?

You cannot do a postmortem for failing to hire top talent, because you will
never know.

What I want to say is that a bad hire is probably less important than missing
out on a top candidate. Because you can always fire as soon as you find out.
The other error cannot be corrected.

~~~
max76
The problem is that there is no feedback for when we fail to hire top talent.

How would I know that during a round of interviews I failed to give an offer
to Top Talent? What can I do if someone I think is Top Talent gets another
offer we cannot match?

Sure, I can try my best to work against those very costly situations, but I
never know how good someone is going to be until they are hired, so I don't
have enough data to determine if I'm failing to hire the best.

I can, and we do, determine which candidates we hired that we really like and
talk to them about why they choose the company and try to appeal to and find
more candidates like them.

------
curuinor
This is all expressions of power. It won't be overcome until interviewees get
leverage and express it. By the structure of the thing they never get
leverage, so it will continue because it can.

~~~
vegetablepotpie
The leverage interviewers have is that they know if the candidate can't find a
job, that at some point the candidate won't be able to afford rent/mortgage,
food, clothing etc. That's a desperate position for a candidate to be in and
it puts employers in a position of absolute power. With that type of game it's
inevitable that you will see anti-social interview techniques. It would be a
sign of high character if an interviewer didn't power trip over a candidate.
The changes that would alter that dynamic is either that society should find
it acceptable for people to live out of a tent and ask for donations from
strangers or guarantee basic needs to all its members. Both of which are
socially and politically untenable because it would disrupt the power
structure of those well regarded and politically connected business that
benefit. So I expect zero change on this issue in perpetuity.

~~~
blfr
The third option is a tight job market. This is undermined by mass
immigration, criticism of which is fought by the establishment even harder
than basic income.

------
danso
FWIW, the author (exec managing editor of Insider) of the "thank you email"
blog post shared it on Twitter, and has received a large and largely negative
response:

[https://twitter.com/jessicaliebman/status/111416052358150144...](https://twitter.com/jessicaliebman/status/1114160523581501440)

~~~
dentemple
When the highest reply is a firm rebuttal from Scott Hanselman, you're
probably on the wrong side of the argument.

------
reallydontask
I totally agree that these rules are absolute BS.

The goal of a job interview for me used to be twofold:

Can the candidate do the job?

Would I want to work with the candidate?

Unfortunately, I have got the second one wrong as often as not in the past, so
now I just try to find anything that would mean that I wouldn't want to work
with the candidate, in other words, are there any red flags?

If there aren't then that's good enough.

~~~
vlehto
Could you share some typical red flags?

~~~
reallydontask
I can't say they are typical, but we've had two candidates become somewhat
agitated when challenged about their experience, e.g. you said you were a
developer for 2 years at company X but it seems that you mostly did support.
This resulted in a tirade about job titles.

Another red flag for me is when candidates are asked about their level of
expertise on a scale of 1 to 10 on a technology and they reply with anything
above 7.

Statistically there are people that are going to be able to claim 8 or above
out 10 on any technology, they just probably can command a higher salary that
the company I work wishes to offer (we put salary ranges on our job ads),
which means that they are exaggerating, can't judge their skills (either
because of self delusion or because they just think the technology doesn't
have that much more to offer) or worse lying.

The thing is we were asking this to be able to tailor the questions that we
would ask. No point in asking somebody who says their skill level in sql is 2
about pivot tables.

~~~
alexeiz
The expertise scale level question is bogus. You'll get people with low
expertise who believe their level is high because they think that's all there
is to know about a technology (advanced beginners), while experienced people
would rate themselves lower because they realize how much they don't know yet.
And also there will be those who correctly estimate their level as average.
Everybody's scale is different. You can't reliably distinguish those groups.

------
ilaksh
This type of thing is a red flag and allows you to weed out companies that
would be bad places to work.

Of course its a problem if you are actually running low on money and need to
find a job soon because that might tempt you to try to work there even though
you can tell some of them may be jerks.

------
dannykwells
While in general I agree, I understand the motivation behind these questions.
Most jobs require more than just technical skills. They require and ability to
think laterally, be independent, work on a team, etc. etc. Questions such as
"tell me about a time when" are a reasonable way to assess some of these
traits but also are not direct and have their own issues.

As long as interviews are consistent and polite I think it's reasonable to
push candidates in non traditional ways to understand if they have the soft
skills required for a role.

------
open-source-ux
_" A job interview isn't a set of trick questions"_

This reminds me of this old BBC comedy sketch:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHy06FMsezI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHy06FMsezI)

~~~
kolanos
John Cleese had a sketch in a similar vein [0].

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4iFzweRf3E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4iFzweRf3E)

Eddit: Another comment beat me to it, but provided link for posterity.

------
wallflower
And then you have the famous Liar’s Poker interview question:

> Investment bankers had a technique known as the stress interview. If you
> were invited to Lehman’s New York offices, your first interview might begin
> with the interviewer asking you to open the window. You were on the forty-
> third floor overlooking Water Street. The window was sealed shut. That was,
> of course, the point. The interviewer just wanted to see whether your
> inability to comply with his request led you to yank, pull, and sweat until
> finally you melted into a puddle of foiled ambition. Or, as one sad
> applicant was rumored to have done, threw a chair through the window.

~~~
0db532a0
Did he get the job?

~~~
koonsolo
Of course, he gets the job done no matter what.

------
cgriswald
> Why would people want to work in such a homogeneous culture? Why would they
> want to work for someone who couldn't even be bothered to search the web for
> "How to pronounce Nguyen"?

Hilariously, I did a search for "How to pronounce $my_last_name" and each
result I checked mispronounced it the same way English speakers always
mispronounce it.

~~~
mnm1
Yeah seriously. Almost every single American mispronounces my name even after
I say it multiple times. Hell, they mispronounce common, one syllable American
names like "Lou" more than half the time. When I tell them my name is like
another name they can pronounce except without the "o" at the end, they still
can't pronounce it despite being able to pronounce my name with an "o" at the
end. After three decades of this, I've given up trying to correct people,
trying to go with the Americanized pronunciation, or even using my full name
at all. It's pointless. Americans are simply incapable of pronouncing anything
even remotely foreign even if I enunciate it for them. I don't even bother
with my last name. However they say it is fine because it's always wrong. I
would recommend people adopt very simple American nicknames if they move here
like many Chinese do, even if the name seems like it would be easy to
pronounce. There's just no hope in getting people to pronounce your name
right. Or accept the American wrong pronunciation and go with that. I've used
all these strategies at some point in my life so now I have three names.

~~~
kitten_mittens_
Germans pronouncing my American first name is the same way. It's a boring
common Old Testament name. German has all the phonemes they need to say it
too, even if the vowel is off a bit.

It's just something that happens, and I don't blame them for it after so long.
I get the feeling that Anglicizing or Deutchifying names is universal.

~~~
mnm1
British people usually have no problem with my name. I guess my issue is that
people don't even make an effort. It's one thing to Americanize the name when
you've never heard it pronounced correctly, it's another to continue
pronouncing it that way after you've heard the correct pronunciation. But
yeah, I've given up on this long ago.

------
aboutruby
The "thank you" emails seems to be a tradition/expectation of the classic
corporate culture where the employer has a extreme amount of candidates for
each opening and each candidate must please the interviewer at all cost. (e.g.
a extreme imbalance in power between employer/candidate).

Quite contrary to the "startup" culture where there is a limited amount of
candidates for each opening and where it's acknowledged that candidates might
get multiple offers (e.g. a more balanced employer/candidate power)

------
sunseb
I don't want to work for someone that tries to trick me!

And if I had to hire a developer, I would want someone with great coding
skills, not someone that makes a good impression at an interview.

~~~
Carpetsmoker
Some people have great coding skills, but are right assholes or otherwise
seriously toxic. You definitely need to look for more than just "great coding
skills" if you want to hire great employees.

~~~
cgriswald
Sure, but I don't think "making a good impression in an interview" has a very
strong correlation with whether someone is a "right asshole or otherwise
seriously toxic." Plenty of decent people don't interview well, and plenty of
assholes can put on 'interview face' to get a job.

~~~
borski
Most assholes are thinly veiled in an interview. Decent people are nervous,
and that’s okay - it’s usually pretty clear. Assholes are trying /hard/ not to
come off as such, so when the interviewer inevitably challenges them on a
piece of code or their background, they usually end up showing their true
colors, at least in my experience.

~~~
autotune
That’s funny because the last bit of feedback I received on an interview that
was supposed to be a “preemptive yes” is that I was “a bit nervous” and they
wanted to interview more candidates before making a decision. Sometimes you
just can’t win.

------
gumby
> "The whole team thought you were great. You were probably the strongest
> candidate overall, but we were looking for someone with experience in XYZ."

Wow, my GF just related this to me literally last week. She liked the team she
interviewed with as well.

(I'm relieved actually as she got a job offer in hand for a place much closer
to home).

~~~
jimmydddd
I think sometimes the HR person just makes up a reason. It's counter-
productive to read too much into it.

One time I was told I was great, but they needed someone with XYZ experience.
It was very important.

They ended up hiring my friend, who had even less XYZ experience than I did.

~~~
itronitron
Yeah, I could see the HR person just reaching the conclusion on their own that
the candidate must not have XYZ since the team chose not to hire them.

------
overgard
It's almost not worth complaining about because of the ubiquitous of it, but I
absolutely hate and make a point of never doing this if I'm interviewing
someone:

1) Puzzle questions not related to the work they'd be doing. It's ok to have a
somewhat puzzling geometry puzzle if they're doing, say, 3d work, but for a
web dev? Etc. etc.

2) Coding on a white board. Can't you just setup a laptop in a conference
room? Or have them bring in a laptop and show some of their work? Nobody ever
codes on a white board!! Plus seeing them use a computer tells me way more.
Can they type? That's important. I know some really good coders that can't
type well, but it's more the exception than the rule. Do they know their tools
well? Those things are all actually relevant to the work.

Also here's the other thing: there's essentially no cost or barrier to writing
code (IE, you're not using up precious materials or something), so I don't
understand why employers want to PROJECT how someone MIGHT write code via
puzzles and white board writing when they can literally just pair up and watch
the person solve an actual real world problem on an actual computer, with
google and stack overflow like they'd actually have access to, and then they
don't need to project _anything_ , because they know what it looks like when
the person actually writes real world code! Spending a grand on a cheap laptop
for this with a few software/IDE licenses is a lot cheaper than making a bad
hire.

~~~
IshKebab
I write code on a whiteboard, when discussing how to solve a problem with
colleagues. Almost exactly like in an interview. Do people really not do this?

~~~
overgard
I have literally never done this in a job outside of interviews, and I haven't
had anyone else do it either. They might draw class diagrams or concepts, but
writing code by hand is error prone and pretty pointless.

Regardless, most modern offices have a projector or a TV in conference rooms.
I just don't understand why you'd use a white board when you can easily
project a text editor. The problem with writing code in handwriting is you
can't move it, so you have to do it all linearly. If you need to introduce a
variable or a new scope it gets messy incredibly quickly. When I code I almost
am never thinking linearly, and I'm constantly adding things above and below,
and doing that on a white board is a NIGHTMARE.

------
elamje
One must learn that there are very few "rules" to anything in life. You must
be skeptical that a person sharing their "rules" has a major experiential,
interest driven ruleset they are trying to project onto every other domain.

------
fopen64
I flip a bird every time I read about this subject. How did we allow the
hiring process get such bizarre when we are the scarce resource?

~~~
mistrial9
super trendy SF "hot" company with increasing investment.. word is that they
are going through engineers left and right.. they do all the recruitment, get
super-high octane output from the hires, and then dump them at the first error
or problem.. no end of candidates for this company, is the second part, due to
positioning and mission.. The ones that stay tend to be "pleasers" who will
take this kind of treatment and perform.. rumors only ymmv

------
alkonaut
What’s this thing about the thank you emails? Thank who? When?

Do people send thank you emails after going to an interview but before they
are offered/not offered the job? Or when is it? And why?

------
ezoe
> "When interviewing, I go for lunch with the candidate. I ask the waiter to
> subtly get their order wrong. A great test of the interviewee's character!"

I'll silently pass such a company because I cannot stand working with
psychopass.

> "We always leave candidates waiting half an hour before calling them in. How
> do they cope with delays?"

That is a traditional technique for fraud. Getting them tired and lose the
decision making ability. If not, the company are horrible at time-keeping. Not
worth it.

------
MaulingMonkey
I'm more than happy to send a thank you email... in response to one.
Responding in kind is reasonable enough - social pleasantries exchanged
between those who want them, skipped for the busy who would rather get down to
business.

If that disqualifies me from some jobs, that's a feature. Uneven expectations
here comes across as demanding respect while showing none, which speaks poorly
of the work environment. Hard pass.

------
esotericn
I don't think that this sort of rant is useful.

In everyday life people understand that there are individuals they won't get
on with. Not everyone is going to be your friend. You don't want to be
everyone's friend (if you do, that's an ephemeral state that will likely bite
you eventually).

When it comes to careers I often see expressed on here the attitude that
somehow if the interview process were better; if the interviewer were
different; etc; then it'd all be different, they'd get the job and live
happily ever after.

Realistically? You'd end up working with a bunch of people who at best make
questionable business decisions; at worst are completely opposed to your
personality and make work a hellish place to be.

Maybe I'm missing something entirely and this is intended to be some bizarre
sort of humour.

~~~
pm90
> When it comes to careers I often see expressed on here the attitude that
> somehow if the interview process were better; if the interviewer were
> different; etc; then it'd all be different, they'd get the job and live
> happily ever after.

I agree that you shouldn't hire people who may not be the right fit and whom
you have reason to believe may not succeed or thrive on your team. However, it
seems apparent that most people (and I would include myself) may not really be
good judges of that. There may be things that are "Red Flags" or "something's
off" to us, simply because of the way we were brought up (cultural
differences), the way we speak etc. I guess what I'm saying is that in an
increasingly diverse world, the markers of success that we look for (or
conversely the markers of failure) may not be accurate and we thus miss out on
candidates who might actually be a great fit.

Personally, I used to judge interviewees pretty hard on the things I thought
weren't appropriate, or things I considered unprofessional. But then I
realized that isn't really my job as a technical interviewer. As long as the
folks demonstrate the technical skills and a thirst for learning, that's good
enough for me.

Which isn't to say there aren't red flags. Lying for instance; pathological
liars will totally wreck your organization.

------
alexeiz
> "The whole team thought you were great. You were probably the strongest
> candidate overall, but we were looking for someone with experience in XYZ."

That happened to me. I suspect the experience requirement somehow changed
during the interview process. So at the end of the multi-week interview
process they realized they were looking for something different than what was
listed on the position requirements. I'm not very upset about it. The time was
wasted, sure. But I made some connections that may help later.

------
test6554
I always send a thank you letter to anyone who interviews me. This includes
the person from HR, their hiring manager, and anybody else who was in the room
whose email I can get.

------
Madmallard
It is definitely about attitude and if you can convey yourself from the
perspective that they'd be lucky to have you, only serious issues needing
fixing will do you in.

------
sametmax
I think one mistake from the author is the believe that somehow, an interview
process is supposed to be fair.

It's not. Nature is not fair. School is not fair. Dating is not fair. And so
on. We try to build fair societies, but right now, they are not.

And interview processes are really, really unfair. Being disappointed they are
not and writing a rant about how to them more fair is very naive.

Interviews are most of the time social evaluations packed with negotiation.
Very often, even the ones that pretend to be technical interviews.

Why ? Because humans are imperfect and limited. Most interviewers are just not
capable of an effective recruitment process, no matter how they believe they
are, not to mention a fair one.

So the advice to send here is not "make your recruitment process better".
People that are able to will, and don't need this article to do so. People
that can won't, and the article won't change their mind.

No, the advice is to the people looking for a job: don't take it personally,
randomness takes big role in the process. But if you want to maximize your
chances, you need to work on your social skills. Especially the ones that make
them feel good about the interview, and value you.

You need technical skills to be good at your job. To be able to apply at high
skill ones, to network with people with alike skills, to have fun, to
negociate money.

But to nail the interview, you need more.

~~~
simondedalus
"Don't do that. A job interview is a structured process designed to let you
consistently evaluate multiple candidates. If you are asking each candidate
different questions, that's not a fair test."

if this is the thing you're responding to, you're misunderstanding the post
entirely. "fair test" here is not about morals, it's about results. if i want
to evaluate 2 candidates, i want the test to be as "fair" as possible _so that
i have the most relevant, fine grained information as possible_. i want to
render the candidates commensurable so i can make a better decision for my own
purposes.

"life's not fair" in this context sounds like some kind of systems pessimism.
it sounds like you're saying "stuff doesn't work." but of course it does. of
course asking this question and not that question gives me more relevant
hiring information. it's totally insane to think otherwise.

------
chaseha
There are lots of issues with traditional hiring approaches - would recommend
looking into Performance-Based Hiring if you are a hiring manager looking to
improve your process and outcomes

------
pascalxus
At first I thought this article was for job seekers but actually it's for
those hungering. These are some great tips for companies highering

------
Grustaf
Maybe it's just me but I don't understand this article, it doesn't seem to be
related to getting a job, seems more like some random musings on hiring?

As to saying thank you, that's not sycophantic, it's common courtesy. It's not
that hard.

Anyway, what's with the hangup on names lately in the "tech" community? Every
other podcast I listen to people keep excusing themselves for "mispronouncing"
peoples' names. Newsflash: unless your name is English, people are guaranteed
to mispronounce your name. You know they don't speak your language, so how
could you expect them to pronounce your name in your language? I have never
ever had a foreigner pronounce my name correctly in my language, and it
doesn't bother me at all. I would be extremely surprised if they did, and my
name is just outside of the comfort-zone of English orthography.

Could someone from the easily offended camp please explain your reasoning to
me?

~~~
dentemple
The polite thing to do, I think, is to _ask_ how to pronounce their name at
the start of the conversation.

Or ask how they would prefer to be referred to. (Many of my asian relatives
have an anglo pronounciation they'd be willing to offer).

~~~
Grustaf
Exactly, if you care about how people with other native languages pronounce
your name, I feel that it's up to you to help them do that. Either by coming
up with a more reasonable version of it or choosing some local name, like many
Chinese do.

When I lived in China I certainly didn't expect anyone to even come close to
pronouncing my name in proper Swedish. That would have been absurd. My name is
Gustaf and that simply can't be rendered in Chinese, so how would they be able
to do it, even if they wanted to? Most people at my school ended up calling me
Difdif.

~~~
dentemple
Yeah, but if others are just bulldozing through a pronunciation, they haven't
actually _given_ you the chance to help them with it.

When exchanging the usual pleasantries, it's often the interviewer who is the
first one to attempt the name, not the interviewee.

If I were to answer my phone every time, "Hi, this Nguyen, my last name is
pronounced pronounced S-- E--- O--- whatever", it would come off as a little
odd. And possibly as annoyance or haughtiness on my part.

All this goes to show that the "rules of politeness", themselves, are part of
the secret hiring process.

~~~
Grustaf
It would come off as odd because it IS odd. The normal thing is to expect
foreigners to butcher your name and don’t give it another thought. What does
it actually matter?

And even if they ask, how would an interviewer be able to actually pronounce
all these names? They would have to be polyglot geniuses.

Interviewer: So hello Mr Bezwzględny, how do you pronounce your name?
Interviewee: Bezwzględny Interviewer in perfect Polish: Ok Mr Bezwzględny, can
you tell me a bit about your background?

~~~
dentemple
Just because it's expected, doesn't mean it reflects well on the butcher-er.

I can be polite enough to ask for a pronunciation (and apologize if I get it
wrong).

When an interviewer doesn't even attempt that, it reflects poorly on their
ability to view a candidate on their own worth.

