Skills
The first time you are on the other side of an interview
Being asked to help assess a candidate exposes how crude hiring decisions really are, and it changes how you read every interview you sit in afterwards.
By Marta Kowalska3 min read
You will be asked sooner than you expect
Early in a career you get pulled into hiring, usually to meet a candidate for half an hour and give a view. Almost nobody is trained for this, and the instructions are frequently limited to a request for your impression afterwards, which is precisely the least reliable thing you have to offer.
The first useful realisation is how little information the process actually produces. You will be asked to form a view of somebody’s working life from a short conversation conducted under conditions that resemble no part of the job. That is not a criticism of your employer specifically; it is the ordinary condition of hiring, and it explains a great deal about how the decisions turn out.
Impressions arrive early and then look for support
The uncomfortable thing to notice in yourself is how quickly a judgement forms and how the rest of the conversation gets used to confirm it. A candidate who is nervous in the first two minutes is heard differently for the remaining twenty-eight, and the questions you choose will unconsciously test the impression you already have.
The main defence is structure. Deciding your questions in advance and asking the same ones of every candidate feels mechanical and it is what makes comparison possible at all. Without it you are comparing four different conversations, and the one you enjoyed most will win, which is a measure of rapport rather than of anything the job requires.
Ask about what happened, not what they would do
Hypothetical questions produce prepared answers and reward fluency. Asking what somebody would do in a difficult situation tells you how well they can describe good practice, which is a real skill and is not the one you are hiring for.
Questions about specific past work are harder to prepare for and much more revealing. What the situation was, what they personally did as opposed to what the team did, what went wrong, and what they would change. The follow-up matters more than the question, because the difference between having done something and having watched it happen shows up two levels down in the detail and almost never at the surface.
Write down evidence, not adjectives
When you report back, the temptation is to summarise: strong, a bit quiet, seemed keen. Those words carry your impression without the material that produced it, and they are almost impossible for anyone else to evaluate or to weigh against another interviewer’s equally vague summary.
Note what the candidate actually said instead, particularly the specific examples, and separate that from your conclusion. Then whoever makes the decision can disagree with your interpretation while still having the facts. This is also the moment where a career’s worth of habit is set, since the same discipline is what makes your assessments of anything trusted later.
You are being assessed by them too
A candidate is deciding whether to join, and in a short conversation you are most of what they learn about what working there is like. Being late, obviously unprepared, or dismissive costs the organisation good people, and it costs them quietly, because nobody declines an offer and explains that the third interviewer had clearly not read anything.
Answering questions honestly is part of this. The temptation to oversell is strong and it produces a new joiner who discovers the truth in month two, which is worse for everyone than a candidate who declined. A plain account of what is difficult about the place, alongside what is good, is both fairer and more persuasive to the kind of person worth hiring.
The parts that are not yours to improvise
Hiring is an area with real legal constraints, and they vary by country. Questions about age, family plans, health, religion or other protected characteristics can be unlawful or can create serious problems for an employer even when asked innocently in the course of friendly conversation.
The safe rule is to stay on the work and let the organisation’s guidance govern the rest, and to ask your HR or legal function rather than guessing if you are unsure. If you are being asked to interview with no briefing at all, requesting one is entirely reasonable, and the answer will tell you something about how seriously the process is being taken.
Common questions
What should I ask if nobody tells me what to look for?
Ask the hiring manager what the person will actually be doing in the first six months, then build two or three questions about comparable past work. Without that briefing you are assessing against your own idea of the role, which may not match the one being filled.
Is it fair to reject someone for being nervous?
Rarely, unless composure under pressure is genuinely part of the job. Nerves in an interview predict very little about performance in work, and treating them as a signal mostly selects for people who interview often rather than people who do the work well.
How honest should I be about problems in the team?
Honest, within reason and without breaching anything confidential. Overselling produces a disillusioned joiner within a couple of months, which costs more than a declined offer, and candidates generally trust a balanced account far more than an entirely positive one.
Features writer, After the First Job
Marta writes about first months, managing up, money at work, mostly the parts other people skip and would rather show the working than assert the conclusion.
