Thread by @moritheil

High stakes means people are on the lookout for anything bad.

And honestly, if you get vetoed by one interviewer, you probably didn't vibe with them. That may or may not be "your fault" but you CAN work on being positive and high-energy.

Let me do a quick thread on #interviews.

https://twitter.com/jenistyping/status/1312972611253485568

I've done hundreds of interviews, both as interviewer and interviewee, and most people grossly misunderstand how #interviews work.

First off, an interview is human interaction.

This seems obvious but the point is, it's not a neutral infodump. It's a vibe check.

What that means is a little more complicated, because people are complicated.

If you are awesome and they can pick up on it, great! Unless they're insecure, in which case it goes against you.

And to expand on this, everyone has their own agenda that could be orthogonal to, or even against, their stated aims!

(This is why #mindset is even more important in leadership, as self-sabotage can come into play here.)

The job *itself* has certain requirements.

But none of your interviewers ARE the job. Your interviewers are people.

People have their own symbolic logic.

#socialskills

The CEO sitting in on an interview might consider the position non-essential, and so his priorities might be: look like a leader, spend a minimum of mental energy on this.

The middle manager might be embattled, so her priority might be: get someone I can trust to follow my lead.

Priorities can be negative, too.

The team lead might have a position of: please not another tech bro, anything but a techbro!

People might not want gingers, disabled people, or white men.

They might want to find someone they can bully into accepting minimal pay.

There's no way for you to know these things in advance, and unless they're idiots, most people will not explicitly state their irrational preferences. They may not even recognize them!

But the more skills you have, the more you can react to the initial data you get.

#mindset

Were you a frat bro? Try to see early on if an interviewer was as well.

Do you have a southern accent, along with the interviewer, in a company where most don't? Don't downplay it, then!

Are you a veteran? Look for the vets on the team!

Anything that lets you break the ice can also give you a chance to break the rigid structure of the interview and turn it into a normal conversation between humans. You want that. That's called building rapport.

#socialskills

Your job at the interview is not to convince the team you are technically skilled. Your resume does that. Your job is to convince them that you're a great person to work with.

If you can get them to visualize working with you and succeeding, you've done well.

There's an old joke that standardized tests don't test you on anything but how good you are at taking tests.

In effect, this means test-taking skill is a specialized art, deadly within one singular application and useless outside of it.

Well, the interview is a place where social skills are supreme. You may need a resume to get through the door, but once you're in, high social skills can substitute for technical skill, experience, and connections.

Hone this power!