I interview regularly. If I wanted to give some tips to candidates:
1. Audio, audio, audio... It doesn't matter how good or good looking you are if I can't understand any of your eloquence. Using microphone on your phone or webcam may or may not be adequate, you should test this. There is test call functionality in almost every web conferencing software.
In general having microphone close to your mouth and distant from any noises is safest choice. Headsets are cheap and effective.
Also turn off any feature that changes volume dynamically, this can cause volume to change suddenly to painful levels. For example zoom can pick up distant voice and increase volume suddenly. As an interviewer I am already setting the volume as high as I can before it becomes uncomfortable because I don't want to miss anything you say, having the volume change suddenly makes my life this much more difficult.
2. Just because it is remote interview doesn't mean savoir vivre is out the window. Be on time. Don't interrupt. Don't insult the interviewer (yes, I had this happen to me recently).
3. Don't be obvious looking up answers to my technical questions on the internet. And if you need to google something, try to put it in your words rather than read word by word, because maybe I can do the search myself, too. Yes, this also happened to me recently.
4. Make sure you have peace and quiet for the duration of the interview, before the interview and also some margin after. Set the time aside and remove any distractions. Try not to create perception you have something more important to do. It doesn't look good if are jumping from one meeting to the interview to another meeting.
If you are the type of person who insults others at work, please...please insult me in the interview. It's so much better to find out this type of thing earlier rather than later.
> Audio, audio, audio... It doesn't matter how good or good looking you are if I can't understand any of your eloquence. Using microphone on your phone or webcam may or may not be adequate, you should test this. There is test call functionality in almost every web conferencing software.
If you’re going to be permanently remote, consider buying a low end podcasting or streaming setup. The quality will be fantastic comparative to cheaper options, and it won’t be that expensive to buy.
> It doesn't look good if are jumping from one meeting to the interview to another meeting.
My day is full of other responsibilities. If you don’t like that I don’t think we’ll be a match regardless.
That said, I’d like to add.
Nr 5: Do not use a custom zoom video background, seriously, I do not want to see you sitting in the middle of a city with people walking by, repeating the same pattern every 10s.
Eventually I end up paying more attention to that guy with the hat than you.
I think I’m ok, when some life trickles through, while I’m interviewing others. With people not always having the comfort of a separate room to hide in. A remote setup with 2 toddlers running around is sometimes a necessity. And I wouldn’t want to reject someone solely on that basis.
Yes. Even in television broadcasting, they consider audio the most important element. You can got a few seconds without the picture as long as there's audio.
For an interview... we're over a year into the pandemic, if you don't have your audio quality figured out by now then you are not getting the job. I tell the person right away at the start of the interview if their audio is not good, giving them the benefit of the doubt to fix it.
Good audio is really important. It's hard to be taken seriously when they can't understand you. And good audio quality definitely gives you more presence and relatability. I feel like it's the modern equivalent of being well spoken.
I got an XLR microphone with a boom arm during the pandemic, and I've also gone full OBS for zoom meetings. It's nice to be able to draw on the screen, share my screen or a picture during a meeting, without having to share screen.
A great thing to set up for yourself is audio feedback. Hearing yourself back with the levels as they are in the outgoing mix basically eliminates half of the talking-over-each-other problems. It's quite amazing how much it improves communications.
I bought an expensive microphone just for work, and then people complained that it was taking up all their bandwidth, they asked me to go back to using the phone.
I interview a lot of candidates over zoom for remote positions. For me, few to none of the specific details matter. What's important is if the candidate demonstrates that they've had the empathy and self awareness to consider how their call setup affects others' ability to communicate with them. All the suggestions in the linked article seem painfully obvious for anyone working in 2021.
I actually prefer when the candidate has some sort of uncontrollable distraction that comes up during the interview. It provides a good opportunity to see how they handle the real world challenges of remote work. For anyone not sure how to handle this, interrupting with "excuse me, I'm going to mute for 20 seconds while garbage truck passes" is completely reasonable, even in a fairly formal situation.
Yeah, every so often I'll encounter someone who somehow still hasn't figured out basic conference call courtesy, and it boggles my mind especially given how we've all been remote for over a year. That should have been plenty of time to smooth over any rough habits...
But still there's the odd meeting where, with 30 people attending, one person shows up and blasts everyone with heavy breathing, dog barks, screaming kids and forces the presenter to say "hey, we've got some background noise, can everyone make sure they're muted?"
In my mind this kind of thing is akin to failing at basic hygiene, and it probably infuriates me more than it should.
I had an in-person interview for a job a couple of years ago, and I'd turned up with my two year old son.
I later heard that the way I dealt with him helped enormously in getting a good impression of me.
(Not the first time I've taken a child to an interview; people generally seem to take it in their stride here in Finland, which is a little odd to me as a Brit.)
> the candidate demonstrates that they've had the empathy and self awareness to consider how their call setup affects others' ability to communicate with them
This, a hundred times. It your software mutes mikes when someone else is talking, you need to notice and adapt with an awkward silence to let others speak. This is good.
The most blatant example of this to me and somehow invisible to others was my previous boss. He had a lot of remote calls that he would take in the open office. Because of the isolation from his head phone, he spent six hours per day berating people, yelling in the open office. That, everyone noticed. But there generally was signal issue, lag, etc. and he would always say “There’s a problem on your side.” The assumption that the other side had to fix something, that presumption… It hurt me more than him trying to address a wifi issue by yelling louder for the following 55 minutes.
> how they handle the real world challenges of remote work
But an interview is not normal work, if I'm in a meeting with my colleagues and my kids start screaming it's ok to mute myself and tell them off, possibly drop from the call.
During an interview I could do the same but that would also stress me out a lot at a time where I'm already stressed out. I've interviewed people who freaked out because of a bad connection.
Your mention of “uncontrollable distraction” reminds me:
When I was interviewing for my current job, my son was 4 at the time and we were both at home. About 10 minutes into the 30 minute interview he came into my office and proceeded to climb over and around my back for the remaining 20 minutes of the interview.
The fact that my interviewer handled this with total calm impressed the heck out of me, and she later relayed that my ability to continue interviewing while this was going on impressed her as well
Yesterday I had a candidate late for her interview (senior tech recruiter position). What happened next was absurd: she joined from her phone, in her bra. A moment later her partner was running in the background naked. She realized the situation and in panic turned off the video and then (like in comedy movies) faked her wifi was breaking and was faking her voice as if she was in a tunnel. Then she just quit the call and I haven’t heard back, no response to my email request to reschedule.
Not my weirdest experience, but the lack of professionalism for such a serious role just caught me off guard.
Maybe it joined video automatically or accidentally? I normally wait until I'm ready to hit that join button, but most meetings at least make you do the extra step to turn on video. Either way not a good look for a job which requires lots of video calls!
I'd add that it helps to imagine that the audio is a mostly one-way thing.
Let the other person speak when they are speaking, and make it clear when you're finished speaking. Doing this can avoid those annoying block-outs that occur when sound from speaker "A" is interrupted for a half second, because listener "B" is making "hm" sounds or inserting affirmative or I-hear-you words like "yup" or "right" after every phrase.
Try to develop a habit of waiting for pauses, and providing pauses when you are speaking.
Demonstrate that you understand and value communication. Because, if you don't show this during an interview, you're providing evidence that you won't do it in the job.
PS. this applies to all interviews. Some reporters are so bad at this that their interviews are unlistenable.
> If you must use your phone, set it steady and level, in portrait orientation.
This may be good advice for Zoom, but is bad advice for Microsoft Teams.
When Teams displays your portrait-shaped video in on a computer, it crops the top and bottom to make it fit in the grid view, which has landscape rectangles. So what you're left with is a zoomed-in picture of your nose (or thereabouts).
> Video and audio quality need only be adequate...microphone in your laptop are sufficient
This one's questionable. I've got an external microphone and that the difference is huge. I would suggest people try to record themselves using a voice recorder app (there are websites that do this) and play it back just to test.
Good audio is probably more important than anything else IMO. Sure, some interviewers will have hangups about whether your home is tidy or whether you're dressed well, and these biases might unfairly change their assessment of your skills. But being unintelligible causes actual misunderstandings and slows communication.
Just like being late to a physical interview is a bad signal (sure there was traffic but what does it say about your planning skills?) I feel totally justified "reading" into how people are on their zoom interviews.
Recently I interviewed someone and kept hearing another conversation at the same time. I finally asked him about it and he said "oh yeah that's my wife doing a meeting, let me go to another room." It's hard for me to imagine someone's throught process that led them to think it's fine to have the conversation with another meeting in the room when there was another option easily available, but it was a quick "tell" that this person has bad judgement, low empathy or simply doesn't care - none of which made me want to hire him.
To a smaller degree I judge people's technology. I am interviewing for technical roles and if you are a year+ into WFH and you are still having silly wifi issues or haven't figured out how to sound clear on your mike, it's a bad sign about your ability to troubleshoot and solve problems (or again, low empathy - if you care that your video constantly stutters and your colleagues can't make you out, you'd figure out a wired solution or upgrade your router or whatever)
An interview is an assessment of your capabilities and there's such a thing as basic competence. If you can't nail Zooming after so much time, the whole thing is a little suspect.
I'd take a very different attitude if I was hiring for a non technical roles where solving tech problems is far remote from the job.
Except that this "silly wifi issues" might be unexpectable temporary, but in short time unfix-able issues of your ISP which just popped up recently.
> can't nail Zooming
You kinda imply people use Zoom all the time but they don't, they might use video-conference systems all the time but not necessary Zoom, and Zoom is kinda well known to sometimes have arbitrary issues as long as you are not on a Mac with the native Zoom client.
When doing interviews recently Zoom was the only Video Conference software which sometimes had arbitrary issues which where far beyond "it's selected a non-existing microphone" or similar, i.e. short term unfixable issues. Worse they sometimes popped up out of nowhere even after doing other calls where it worked... (Other conference software which had been used included MS Teams, Google Hangouts, Jitsi Meets. All in the end providing a better interview experience then Zoom, even through zoom might be better if it works...).
I would encourage you to be a bit more open-minded when judging people with technical issues. Debugging WiFi or microphone might seem intuitive to you, but there’s a good amount of people out there that are experts at coding or data science, who haven’t had to deal with any of the scrappiness. Of course, if you’re hiring for a startup and that level of scrappiness is part of the job, by all means, continue to extract signal.
I get where you’re coming from, but I personally can’t do anything about my bad wifi, because I rent a room in a shared flat and don’t have control over it. The router is in another room and I can’t run a cable there either.
There’s also going to be noise I don’t have full control over, because there are three other people here (who you can sometimes hear despite us being in different rooms), and it’s summer so I either need the window open (my room is on the ground floor near a noisy road) or a fan on.
I’d urge a bit more empathy before coming to the conclusion that people are lazy/incompetent.
> Just like being late to a physical interview is a bad signal (sure there was traffic but what does it say about your planning skills?) I feel totally justified "reading" into how people are on their zoom interviews.
Fun fact: depending on your cultural background, one person's "late" is another person's "giving you time to prepare".
It is my understanding that Anglo-Saxon and German education insist on starting a meeting at the time written on the calendar, while some other countries understand the time written on the calendar as the moment the main presenter (or interviewer, in that case) is getting ready, so if you arrive then, you embarrass them and/or prevent them from doing their work.
Coming from a Latin country, it took me some time to understand the unspoken rules for working in a US company. After ~10 years, I'm not sure I still know them all. All along the way, I have been judged for compliance with these rules that culturally make no sense to me and nobody cared to explain. There are dozens of examples I could quote, including different meanings of "Yes" and "No" or "I" or "responsibility".
Where I'm coming at is: please don't be too fast to judge people on unspoken rules, especially across cultures.
You should type this up in an email and send it to candidates before interviews so they can judge whether or being judged like this themselves is worth their time. It would be the empathetic thing to do with respect to their time and money, after all.
I live on a houseboat in Seattle. I’m a software developer that’s been working remote even before the pandemic.
It’s great generally, but the worst thing about houseboat life is the crappy internet. I somewhat recently upgraded to 40mbps down, but that isn’t super consistent.
Internet problems don’t always have easy or reasonable solutions. I’m wired in but still sometimes have to drop from calls because it lags and stutters.
Judging someone for their internet problems doesn’t make any sense to me.
Here’s my anecdote: I have been interviewing before the pandemic for what seemed like 5 years. Rejection after rejection, I really didn’t know how I could improve- my nerves would always take over and sabotage my ability to answer even the most basic of questions.
During my latest bout of interviews, I noticed I was getting a huge % converted to final rounds, and landed 3 offers. I ultimately attributed my better than normal performance in interviews to 2 things:
1. I had to gain the biggest advantage possible among other candidates, so I set up studio lights + dslr as a webcam.
2. I’ve always treated it as a rule to look the interviewer in the eye. So, I didn’t look at my screen during the interviews, but rather directly at my camera lens. I absolutely HATE looking people in the eye when speaking and I think removing this pressure to do so helped immensely.
>2. I’ve always treated it as a rule to look the interviewer in the eye.//
Eye-contact is extremely nuanced. The difference between 'gives and maintains eye-contact', which is usually a sub-conscious positive in conversations, and 'is freaking me out with the staring' is tiny in person. Over webcam it's quite different, you can stare down the camera but you're not looking anyone in the eye.
This leads me to wonder if those with ASD have more success in interviews if the interviewer is appraised of their ASD ahead of time, or if they keep it private (I'd assume the former).
Also, eye-tracking comparisons between in-person and video chat might be interesting.
If you want clear and good communication, the internal mic in your laptop is insufficient. Get a wired headset with a boom mic. Audio is waaaay more important than video.
He also lists a bunch of stuff (grooming? really?) that is standard interview/business stuff and has nothing to do with video calling.
Good video conferencing is simple: good light on your face, wired ethernet connection (wifi off), wired headset with boom mic close to your mouth. Avoid sources of background noise.
If you need to be told to shower and brush your hair/teeth, you probably shouldn't be giving interviews in the first place.
I've done a couple, and they suck - no way around it.
But maybe my biggest advise is that IF you're going to ask _any_ technical questions, do this:
Make a document / powerpoint / etc. with your question and any needed information, share that screen with your interviewee.
A month ago I had a technical interview, where the interviewer (with a poor microphone and room) had a bunch of steps and commands he wanted me to do, and it was a total nightmare. He had to re-iterate almost everything, multiple times. Some questions he just skipped or canceled, due to the poor communication.
I'm the OP, and this is my first time making the HN front page. It's been great fun. Thanks all for the great discussion, and especially for the additional tips listed here!
Several times I've opened a white page full screen on my monitor while doing an interview via Phone or Laptop. That plus the over head light being on but not being in the view helped quite a bit.
The best tip I can give, try to answer specific questions in 2-3 sentences. 1-2 sentences to actually answer the question, then 1-2 sentences on your experience with that topic.
If it's an open ended question, answer as concisely as possible, then ask if you've answered their question.
Also, when they ask you to tell them about yourself, don't go on for 5 minutes about your hobby. Tell them a couple of person details if you wish, and then tell them about your career and only touch on the things that are relevant to the job you're applying for.
Wow, a lot of people power-tripping on interviews in the comments here. Though I guess everyone being “rejected” is dodging some bullets; if someone is an awful person when interviewing then imagine having to work with them every day.
As someone who has conducted several online interviews now using Zoom, I think there’s a lot of value in these comments.
All these things that have happened that we’ve chosen to prejudice against our candidates are things we all need to learn to look past.
I actively try to work around voice issues, I don’t judge people’s backgrounds or personal hygiene, if someone’s really mumbly due to sound issues, it will be brought up to give them the best possible situation.
Sure, active nakedness should be dealt with quickly and might be an instant barring; but, as someone else said, the current financial situation of a candidate is absolutely not a blocker for hire and never should be for a regular software engineer job. Everyone could have been that guy or gal stuck in a 4-person, 2 bedroom apartment on a junky Chromebook. This doesn’t make them bad developers.
If videoconferencing has so many drawbacks and hassles, and adds nothing to the interaction while clearly detracting from it significantly, consider using an appropriate voice-only comms alternative.
This will not only satisfy the needs of the session, but also level virtually all of the differences between those in areas of good or poor Internet service, with long latency, or with different access to technology and equipment based on wealth or circumstances.
Please, please, please do what you can, before starting the interview, to 1) reduce room reverb on both ends. And 2) compare audio levels carefully beforehand so they're close to equal (in headphones monitoring what's going to the recorder).
Reverb : Many interviews I've looked forward to hearing (with those who are living or gone, native speakers or not) have so much reverb (echo) on one end that many words are lost in mud. Tragic. (And have people talk across the mike, not into their mike. 'Plosives'.
Levels : When the two partys' audio levels are very different, the overall volume has to be pushed up to hear the weaker party. Then the other party is too loud! (Software can fix this on the production end ... best IF you record to separate tracks!)
Tip from me I keep forgetting: if you've got bad lighting you can't fix and you're using a laptop, turn your screen brightness up to full and it'll help a lot by illuminating your face.
Assuming it's legal in your jurisdiction, consider recording the interview. Mostly so you can go back, cringe, and hopefully note where you could do better next time. But it never hurts to have some documentation of the hiring stage if you need it in the future, either.
If you have a RealSense D455, I made a virtual camera for Linux that does bokeh based on the actual depth instead of the fake segmentation-based stuff.
I'd recommend some sort of headset over the internal mic and speakers, otherwise you end up fighting the echo cancelling when you're trying to get a word into a conversation or interrupt someone.
In general I feel that zoom convos don't flow as naturally as IRL, but they're even worse when a counterpart doesn't have a headset with a good mic.
[+] [-] lmilcin|4 years ago|reply
1. Audio, audio, audio... It doesn't matter how good or good looking you are if I can't understand any of your eloquence. Using microphone on your phone or webcam may or may not be adequate, you should test this. There is test call functionality in almost every web conferencing software.
In general having microphone close to your mouth and distant from any noises is safest choice. Headsets are cheap and effective.
Also turn off any feature that changes volume dynamically, this can cause volume to change suddenly to painful levels. For example zoom can pick up distant voice and increase volume suddenly. As an interviewer I am already setting the volume as high as I can before it becomes uncomfortable because I don't want to miss anything you say, having the volume change suddenly makes my life this much more difficult.
2. Just because it is remote interview doesn't mean savoir vivre is out the window. Be on time. Don't interrupt. Don't insult the interviewer (yes, I had this happen to me recently).
3. Don't be obvious looking up answers to my technical questions on the internet. And if you need to google something, try to put it in your words rather than read word by word, because maybe I can do the search myself, too. Yes, this also happened to me recently.
4. Make sure you have peace and quiet for the duration of the interview, before the interview and also some margin after. Set the time aside and remove any distractions. Try not to create perception you have something more important to do. It doesn't look good if are jumping from one meeting to the interview to another meeting.
[+] [-] rsyring|4 years ago|reply
If you are the type of person who insults others at work, please...please insult me in the interview. It's so much better to find out this type of thing earlier rather than later.
[+] [-] ashtonkem|4 years ago|reply
If you’re going to be permanently remote, consider buying a low end podcasting or streaming setup. The quality will be fantastic comparative to cheaper options, and it won’t be that expensive to buy.
[+] [-] Aeolun|4 years ago|reply
My day is full of other responsibilities. If you don’t like that I don’t think we’ll be a match regardless.
That said, I’d like to add.
Nr 5: Do not use a custom zoom video background, seriously, I do not want to see you sitting in the middle of a city with people walking by, repeating the same pattern every 10s.
Eventually I end up paying more attention to that guy with the hat than you.
[+] [-] skatanski|4 years ago|reply
I think I’m ok, when some life trickles through, while I’m interviewing others. With people not always having the comfort of a separate room to hide in. A remote setup with 2 toddlers running around is sometimes a necessity. And I wouldn’t want to reject someone solely on that basis.
[+] [-] bonestamp2|4 years ago|reply
Yes. Even in television broadcasting, they consider audio the most important element. You can got a few seconds without the picture as long as there's audio.
For an interview... we're over a year into the pandemic, if you don't have your audio quality figured out by now then you are not getting the job. I tell the person right away at the start of the interview if their audio is not good, giving them the benefit of the doubt to fix it.
[+] [-] cbanek|4 years ago|reply
I got an XLR microphone with a boom arm during the pandemic, and I've also gone full OBS for zoom meetings. It's nice to be able to draw on the screen, share my screen or a picture during a meeting, without having to share screen.
[+] [-] Doxin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philjackson|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rufus_foreman|4 years ago|reply
No simple answers.
[+] [-] mmartinson|4 years ago|reply
I actually prefer when the candidate has some sort of uncontrollable distraction that comes up during the interview. It provides a good opportunity to see how they handle the real world challenges of remote work. For anyone not sure how to handle this, interrupting with "excuse me, I'm going to mute for 20 seconds while garbage truck passes" is completely reasonable, even in a fairly formal situation.
[+] [-] nyx|4 years ago|reply
But still there's the odd meeting where, with 30 people attending, one person shows up and blasts everyone with heavy breathing, dog barks, screaming kids and forces the presenter to say "hey, we've got some background noise, can everyone make sure they're muted?"
In my mind this kind of thing is akin to failing at basic hygiene, and it probably infuriates me more than it should.
[+] [-] stevekemp|4 years ago|reply
I later heard that the way I dealt with him helped enormously in getting a good impression of me.
(Not the first time I've taken a child to an interview; people generally seem to take it in their stride here in Finland, which is a little odd to me as a Brit.)
[+] [-] bertil|4 years ago|reply
This, a hundred times. It your software mutes mikes when someone else is talking, you need to notice and adapt with an awkward silence to let others speak. This is good.
The most blatant example of this to me and somehow invisible to others was my previous boss. He had a lot of remote calls that he would take in the open office. Because of the isolation from his head phone, he spent six hours per day berating people, yelling in the open office. That, everyone noticed. But there generally was signal issue, lag, etc. and he would always say “There’s a problem on your side.” The assumption that the other side had to fix something, that presumption… It hurt me more than him trying to address a wifi issue by yelling louder for the following 55 minutes.
[+] [-] riffraff|4 years ago|reply
But an interview is not normal work, if I'm in a meeting with my colleagues and my kids start screaming it's ok to mute myself and tell them off, possibly drop from the call.
During an interview I could do the same but that would also stress me out a lot at a time where I'm already stressed out. I've interviewed people who freaked out because of a bad connection.
Of course, Your Candidates May Vary.
[+] [-] jacobkg|4 years ago|reply
When I was interviewing for my current job, my son was 4 at the time and we were both at home. About 10 minutes into the 30 minute interview he came into my office and proceeded to climb over and around my back for the remaining 20 minutes of the interview.
The fact that my interviewer handled this with total calm impressed the heck out of me, and she later relayed that my ability to continue interviewing while this was going on impressed her as well
[+] [-] bnt|4 years ago|reply
Not my weirdest experience, but the lack of professionalism for such a serious role just caught me off guard.
[+] [-] IsopropylMalbec|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roland35|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Keyframe|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluenose69|4 years ago|reply
Let the other person speak when they are speaking, and make it clear when you're finished speaking. Doing this can avoid those annoying block-outs that occur when sound from speaker "A" is interrupted for a half second, because listener "B" is making "hm" sounds or inserting affirmative or I-hear-you words like "yup" or "right" after every phrase.
Try to develop a habit of waiting for pauses, and providing pauses when you are speaking.
Demonstrate that you understand and value communication. Because, if you don't show this during an interview, you're providing evidence that you won't do it in the job.
PS. this applies to all interviews. Some reporters are so bad at this that their interviews are unlistenable.
[+] [-] quicklime|4 years ago|reply
This may be good advice for Zoom, but is bad advice for Microsoft Teams.
When Teams displays your portrait-shaped video in on a computer, it crops the top and bottom to make it fit in the grid view, which has landscape rectangles. So what you're left with is a zoomed-in picture of your nose (or thereabouts).
> Video and audio quality need only be adequate...microphone in your laptop are sufficient
This one's questionable. I've got an external microphone and that the difference is huge. I would suggest people try to record themselves using a voice recorder app (there are websites that do this) and play it back just to test.
Good audio is probably more important than anything else IMO. Sure, some interviewers will have hangups about whether your home is tidy or whether you're dressed well, and these biases might unfairly change their assessment of your skills. But being unintelligible causes actual misunderstandings and slows communication.
[+] [-] xyzelement|4 years ago|reply
Recently I interviewed someone and kept hearing another conversation at the same time. I finally asked him about it and he said "oh yeah that's my wife doing a meeting, let me go to another room." It's hard for me to imagine someone's throught process that led them to think it's fine to have the conversation with another meeting in the room when there was another option easily available, but it was a quick "tell" that this person has bad judgement, low empathy or simply doesn't care - none of which made me want to hire him.
To a smaller degree I judge people's technology. I am interviewing for technical roles and if you are a year+ into WFH and you are still having silly wifi issues or haven't figured out how to sound clear on your mike, it's a bad sign about your ability to troubleshoot and solve problems (or again, low empathy - if you care that your video constantly stutters and your colleagues can't make you out, you'd figure out a wired solution or upgrade your router or whatever)
An interview is an assessment of your capabilities and there's such a thing as basic competence. If you can't nail Zooming after so much time, the whole thing is a little suspect.
I'd take a very different attitude if I was hiring for a non technical roles where solving tech problems is far remote from the job.
[+] [-] dathinab|4 years ago|reply
Except that this "silly wifi issues" might be unexpectable temporary, but in short time unfix-able issues of your ISP which just popped up recently.
> can't nail Zooming
You kinda imply people use Zoom all the time but they don't, they might use video-conference systems all the time but not necessary Zoom, and Zoom is kinda well known to sometimes have arbitrary issues as long as you are not on a Mac with the native Zoom client.
When doing interviews recently Zoom was the only Video Conference software which sometimes had arbitrary issues which where far beyond "it's selected a non-existing microphone" or similar, i.e. short term unfixable issues. Worse they sometimes popped up out of nowhere even after doing other calls where it worked... (Other conference software which had been used included MS Teams, Google Hangouts, Jitsi Meets. All in the end providing a better interview experience then Zoom, even through zoom might be better if it works...).
[+] [-] rokobobo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkdbejwi383|4 years ago|reply
There’s also going to be noise I don’t have full control over, because there are three other people here (who you can sometimes hear despite us being in different rooms), and it’s summer so I either need the window open (my room is on the ground floor near a noisy road) or a fan on.
I’d urge a bit more empathy before coming to the conclusion that people are lazy/incompetent.
[+] [-] Yoric|4 years ago|reply
Fun fact: depending on your cultural background, one person's "late" is another person's "giving you time to prepare".
It is my understanding that Anglo-Saxon and German education insist on starting a meeting at the time written on the calendar, while some other countries understand the time written on the calendar as the moment the main presenter (or interviewer, in that case) is getting ready, so if you arrive then, you embarrass them and/or prevent them from doing their work.
Coming from a Latin country, it took me some time to understand the unspoken rules for working in a US company. After ~10 years, I'm not sure I still know them all. All along the way, I have been judged for compliance with these rules that culturally make no sense to me and nobody cared to explain. There are dozens of examples I could quote, including different meanings of "Yes" and "No" or "I" or "responsibility".
Where I'm coming at is: please don't be too fast to judge people on unspoken rules, especially across cultures.
[+] [-] heavyset_go|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hawaiianbrah|4 years ago|reply
It’s great generally, but the worst thing about houseboat life is the crappy internet. I somewhat recently upgraded to 40mbps down, but that isn’t super consistent.
Internet problems don’t always have easy or reasonable solutions. I’m wired in but still sometimes have to drop from calls because it lags and stutters.
Judging someone for their internet problems doesn’t make any sense to me.
[+] [-] thih9|4 years ago|reply
This assumes they spent a lot of time Zooming already, which seems a bit risky. E.g. some workplaces focus more on text chats, emails, etc.
[+] [-] Nimitz14|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] treyfitty|4 years ago|reply
During my latest bout of interviews, I noticed I was getting a huge % converted to final rounds, and landed 3 offers. I ultimately attributed my better than normal performance in interviews to 2 things:
1. I had to gain the biggest advantage possible among other candidates, so I set up studio lights + dslr as a webcam.
2. I’ve always treated it as a rule to look the interviewer in the eye. So, I didn’t look at my screen during the interviews, but rather directly at my camera lens. I absolutely HATE looking people in the eye when speaking and I think removing this pressure to do so helped immensely.
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|4 years ago|reply
Eye-contact is extremely nuanced. The difference between 'gives and maintains eye-contact', which is usually a sub-conscious positive in conversations, and 'is freaking me out with the staring' is tiny in person. Over webcam it's quite different, you can stare down the camera but you're not looking anyone in the eye.
This leads me to wonder if those with ASD have more success in interviews if the interviewer is appraised of their ASD ahead of time, or if they keep it private (I'd assume the former).
Also, eye-tracking comparisons between in-person and video chat might be interesting.
[+] [-] sneak|4 years ago|reply
If you want clear and good communication, the internal mic in your laptop is insufficient. Get a wired headset with a boom mic. Audio is waaaay more important than video.
He also lists a bunch of stuff (grooming? really?) that is standard interview/business stuff and has nothing to do with video calling.
Good video conferencing is simple: good light on your face, wired ethernet connection (wifi off), wired headset with boom mic close to your mouth. Avoid sources of background noise.
If you need to be told to shower and brush your hair/teeth, you probably shouldn't be giving interviews in the first place.
[+] [-] TrackerFF|4 years ago|reply
But maybe my biggest advise is that IF you're going to ask _any_ technical questions, do this:
Make a document / powerpoint / etc. with your question and any needed information, share that screen with your interviewee.
A month ago I had a technical interview, where the interviewer (with a poor microphone and room) had a bunch of steps and commands he wanted me to do, and it was a total nightmare. He had to re-iterate almost everything, multiple times. Some questions he just skipped or canceled, due to the poor communication.
[+] [-] mobilene|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] majormjr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minimaxir|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maaneeack|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bonestamp2|4 years ago|reply
If it's an open ended question, answer as concisely as possible, then ask if you've answered their question.
Also, when they ask you to tell them about yourself, don't go on for 5 minutes about your hobby. Tell them a couple of person details if you wish, and then tell them about your career and only touch on the things that are relevant to the job you're applying for.
[+] [-] acheron|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] t-writescode|4 years ago|reply
All these things that have happened that we’ve chosen to prejudice against our candidates are things we all need to learn to look past.
I actively try to work around voice issues, I don’t judge people’s backgrounds or personal hygiene, if someone’s really mumbly due to sound issues, it will be brought up to give them the best possible situation.
Sure, active nakedness should be dealt with quickly and might be an instant barring; but, as someone else said, the current financial situation of a candidate is absolutely not a blocker for hire and never should be for a regular software engineer job. Everyone could have been that guy or gal stuck in a 4-person, 2 bedroom apartment on a junky Chromebook. This doesn’t make them bad developers.
[+] [-] alisonkisk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|4 years ago|reply
This will not only satisfy the needs of the session, but also level virtually all of the differences between those in areas of good or poor Internet service, with long latency, or with different access to technology and equipment based on wealth or circumstances.
[+] [-] 8bitsrule|4 years ago|reply
Reverb : Many interviews I've looked forward to hearing (with those who are living or gone, native speakers or not) have so much reverb (echo) on one end that many words are lost in mud. Tragic. (And have people talk across the mike, not into their mike. 'Plosives'.
Levels : When the two partys' audio levels are very different, the overall volume has to be pushed up to hear the weaker party. Then the other party is too loud! (Software can fix this on the production end ... best IF you record to separate tracks!)
[+] [-] seanwilson|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] retrac|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dheera|4 years ago|reply
https://github.com/dheera/bokeh-camera
It could be edited to work on a D435 or L515 but those have pretty narrow RGB cameras and may not look as good.
[+] [-] lflux|4 years ago|reply
In general I feel that zoom convos don't flow as naturally as IRL, but they're even worse when a counterpart doesn't have a headset with a good mic.