Ask HN: Is it common for interviewers to know nothing about you? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is it common for interviewers to know nothing about you?

4 pointsdaenz5 comments

I've been doing the software interview circuit lately, lots of phone screens and 1st and 2nd stage interviews. What I am finding is that the people who are screening/interviewing me know nothing about me, despite many of them reaching out to me directly. Why does this seem to be common?

I've made an extra effort to make sure my online portfolio documents things that I've built in a clear and concise way, but the traffic analytics on my portfolio tells the same story: nobody is investigating things I've worked on before they interview me.

In the interviews themselves, very few people have mentioned anything I've worked on, even when immediately relevant to the conversation. I'll ask if they saw "X", which shows my experience around the thing we're talking about, to which the response is always "no". The silver lining is, yes, it's an opportunity to talk about it now.

Am I being too self-centered to want this? I feel like my successes/failures in the interviews come from my ability to sum up my professional experience in 60 seconds, which is why I've gone through the efforts to have a strong online portfolio in the first place. I can understand that people are busy at work, and so they probably put minimal effort into the interview preparation, but to base their decisions about me on only an hour's worth of programming puzzles—without considering the body of software I have produced and made easy to review—feels dismissive to what I offer as a candidate.

Same here. I recently had an interview where I was 100% qualified for the Job, it went swimmingly good most of the interview, but I realized afterward there was a discrepancy in terminology that made me look like I didn't have experience in what they were asking for.

The problem was that, with my experience and resume listing those things clearly, and the company in site need to fill this position, why didn't the interviewer ask a single question, even challenging my resume based on my answers.

I get it could've been a thousand other things, but this single exchange really stood out to me as something I would've delved deeper into in the interviews I've conducted.

In my opinion, as douchy as it sounds, the company lost out on not hiring me. They still have the posting up 3 weeks later, and wanted to spin someone up in 30 days because of a 4 month work backlog. Had the person asked maybe test more questions, they would've had someone in that spot.

I get pulled in to do interviews and while I'm provided a resume/portfolio I'm never allocated time to review it in a through manner. I'll have a normal days workload scheduled and required to be completed then an interview meeting will be dropped on my calendar. If I'm lucky it will be a day or two out but usually it's the same day.

None of this is your fault as a candidate, and I only have the reference point of two places I've worked at where I was part of the interview process but both of the HR departments functioned this way.

While I wish there was more time to prepare the recommendation for hire or no hire really comes down to how well you can answer the trivia questions and how honest and genuine the candidate comes across.

This usually works out well but not always. Very much not ideal.

I want to address your direct question: no you are not being self centered; that someone meant to be assessing you has a passing familiarity with your resume is an extremely reasonable expectation.

It might not be the interviewers fault if they aren’t given adequate preparation time but that just means the place isn’t taking hiring particularly seriously, or that they interview tons of people.

I realize it’s not always possible to do so, but you and everyone else deserve to work at a place that treats them with respect, don’t feel bad for desiring this most basic thing.

Some people dont interview well. Some people are not a good fit for the current team etc. Try again and move on.

It's worse when it's your doctor.

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