If you've been laid off, please avoid this mistake in interviews

It's difficult to not act desperate when you actually are in a somewhat desperate situation (for example it's x weeks/months until you won't be able to pay your bills).

True, but it’s still irrelevant to attaining a new job. Ultimately it’s a conversation about adding value and distractions that detract from value are a net negative on both sides of the table.

It's more than just the value conversation. The best interviewees are relaxed and act like they have other good employment options (and they often do). If you've been laid off and don't know how to make next month's rent, acting like you have better options is both an act and a gamble on your part. It's understandably difficult to pull off.

Relaxed doesn’t mean hopelessly stringing along a bunch of equivocation nonsense fishing for sympathy. I understand that temporary financial pressures are stressful but that isn’t a concern of the hiring company. Attempts to make it a concern are distractions that end in failure. As unfair as this sounds it looks like weakness.

Instead, focus. Calm down. Think about writing software and building cool products. Redirect your energy into enthusiasm and try to have a conversation about adding value to your potential future employer.

I had the same problem when it came to “getting a girlfriend” (quoted because it might sound too trivial compared to this current issue, and also because I wanted one for the wrong reasons, which was to seem “normal” to others and stop being “forever alone”).

I was told I was acting too desperate and lacked confidence, to which I countered... how can I not act desperate when I’ve been lonely for so long? (Of course the answer to that is to enjoy being alone/single first, but I was getting huge FOMO and envy during college-age years when everyone else seemed to be in a relationship and I wasn’t). In hindsight, breaking out of a negative feedback loop requires a lot of conscious effort, or else reality becomes a nonstop fulfilling prophecy.

It's probably not advisable to discriminate against someone because of their lack of interest in getting you to sell the company to them. If they are really in need of the job, the last thing they want to do is appear as though the company is not interesting enough for them, or insufficient for some other reason, which could be something that comes with asking too many or even slightly too hard of questions.

You know an interview goes both ways, right?

As the interviewer, if a candidate goes on and on about something irrelevant, note that, interrupt them, and move on.

You're recognizing that these candidates are in a difficult situation, but you're not taking any steps yourself to support them.

As an interviewer you are also trying to figure out how the person will fit into the team, there are literally people that you can't get a word in. Learn how to pause and get feedback to see if you are on track.

I know. That's why I recommended that the interviewer notes that fact, but presses on.

If OPs hypothesis is correct that their rambling is a symptom of "just-got-laid-off-panic", then letting the candidate discredit herself due to that temporary condition is unhelpful for everyone.

What suggestions do you have for someone who may have been laid off months ago and is now facing the stigma of, let's just say "less than short term unemployment?" Those people often don't even make it to your phone screen.

As an interviewer I wouldn’t look on that badly either. The job market nosedived. Simple as that so it’s not inconceivable that many talented people have been out of work for a long time.

Companies don't fire talented people. They fire those, who, during the good times were just barely adequate for the job they did, and in the bad times they became liability.

Nonsense. If they don’t have the funds they don’t have the funds.

It's a grand pronouncement, and also pretty detached from reality to claim that companies never fire talented people. A few counterexamples: Steve Jobs, JK Rowling, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Isaac Newton, Jerry Seinfeld, Nikola Tesla... the list goes on.

Yes, there are exceptions to the rule:

1. Sometimes talent is hard to recognize, as in the people that you listed.

2. Sometimes the whole company is such a bad situation that they have to fire whole teams/branches indiscriminately.

But still, I think that parent comment about "a lot of talented people being out of work for a long time" is not true.

> Sometimes talent is hard to recognize

I would say that's most of the time. Companies often have to outsource their head-hunting because so many of them are so bad at it, and entire companies have been created (e.g. TripleByte) because other companies can't figure out how to properly measure talent.

And arguably, the main reason in the first place that managers hire so many people they are OK letting go later on is because their managers (one level up) aren't able to properly observe it happening, on account of the measurement being so poor. If the measurement is that poor, you're basically guaranteed to have hired lots of great people who won't have the opportunity to flourish.

I've had to lay off a lot of talented people in my day. Startups fail. Established companies pivot and dissolve business units. It sucks and it happens all the time.

In my experience, this isn't true. I worked at a company that fired a lot of the best people they had. The reason? Marketing people took over the leadership of the company and they thought skilled engineers who were making more money could be replaced by cheaper "resources".

This is one strategy, but it usually is only a small subset. More often the people left behind are the people that have some additional relationship going that keeps them safe. I've seen some very talented people that were not getting along with their manager or at least not buddies. In harder times like now I've seen it even more arbitrary.

Anyone let go right now - it sucks - but it isn't you that sucks. It is the monkeys that are managing the pandemic that suck.

Keep your chin up!

That's probably true for targeted layoffs -- with a giant codicil -- but when you see big chunks of an org laid off it's not. It means engineers or PMs or whatever accepted the wrong job.

The codicil is that I'm not sure you can separate someone's productivity from their fit in that role, with the given management and stage of the company.

I don't know about this crisis, but in the last crisis, 2008 or whatever, they fired everyone.

Where I worked, 200 people working on two products at a start up became 100 people working on 1 product at a startup all in the course of a single morning, and the people working on the product that got the axe were just as smart as the people working on the product that didn't.

Some of them didn't work for years - all smart capable developers, but no one was hiring. It's sort of surprising that didn't happen this year, but the next crisis is always right around the corner.

It's all fun and games until it happens to you.

That didn't stop HR gatekeepers from discriminating against the long term unemployed after the 2008 financial crisis.

Meh if I was laid off, had a good amount of savings, and got severance for 1-2 months. I'd honestly just take a sabatical haha. When else are you gonna be able to get a few months off possibly paid to just focus on your well being.

Pretty much. Though if you get an offer they are likely to want you to start right away.

In my experience "right away" has a significant amount of flex to it. I've started new jobs anywhere from 2-6 weeks after getting an offer, with no problems or pushback whatsoever.

But what if you DIDN’T have a good amount of savings, or you get no severance?

Use your time to learn some new skills or become more of an expert on existing skills. My best experiences when interviewing someone is when I learn something new. If you are a Java developer go through all the proposals to be added to the language so you can discuss. If you are a front end developer, try one of the new frameworks and be able to discuss pros and cons against react for example.

You can also make some open source contributions to show you are still gaining skills even if not getting paid.

I would chip in to the OPs feedback by repeating some advice that's somewhat commonplace but is very practical: for anyone in the shoes the OP has described, practice your speech, especially if you haven't found yourself in this situation before. Instead of feeling like you have to defend yourself, come up with a short spiel about your layoff situation that explains why you're back on the market.

Example: [John/Jane Smith] was a software engineer at Big Bill's Railroad working on a content management system. When Covid-19 hit, people suddenly stopped riding the trains on Bill's railroad, and Bill had no other recourse but to reduce his workforce: less ridership, less revenue. Unfortunately, [John/Jane Smith] was part of this RIF and [John/Jane Smith is] now back on the market.

If it comes up in a HR screen, substitute [John/Jane Smith] with the appropriate "I" during conversation and it's a Covid-themed template that everyone will get. The above is a crude example, but you should try to turn your experiences into paragraphs. Not everyone has the "leisure" of being in an impacted industry and it's more difficult to do if you've been fired rather than laid off, but it's important to package yourself for various audiences. Put your experiences into singular paragraphs, trim out all the cruft and fat, and you have good blurbs about yourself that are quick and informative.

> People who have been laid off talk at me so much more than other candidates.

Because for decades we've been systematically rejected and unable to apply our gifts due to momentary misunderstandings at interviews that just crush our lives like anvils again and again. If someone has enough to pay me enough to afford rent and expenses like internet / water / power andlemme know what I need to learn on top of all I already know and I'll deliver.

I been there. Laid off. Mortgage. Desperate. Accepted low ball arrogant offer from small startup company. That got me into more calm mood of not being that desperate. Got a call from another company offering me 3x.

Shown middle finger to startup and left in 2 days to way more exciting career.

It is your job to hire the best candidate, hire the most qualified, not the best at selling himself.

Remember the Dunning–Kruger effect. We are surrounded by confident and wrong people.

In practice, candidates who are best at selling themselves are also great at selling ideas to coworkers and maybe even clients.

Confident and wrong people are the ones who will try their ideas out and get it right eventually. Those who are not confident will keep passive learning and planning and get stuck in self-doubt, and hate others for succeeding by just doing things "wrongly".

I think there's a meta DK effect in light of DK effect: those who learn about DK effect and think that it is favorable to them are the ones to whom it doesn't apply favorably to.

Nobody wins with the Dunning Kruger effect, that is the beauty of it. If you rate yourself modestly, maybe you’re actually modest or maybe you’re advanced, there’s no way to know. If you rate yourself highly, you’re not very good at all. And if you rate yourself low, you’re probably being accurate.

> It is your job to hire the best candidate, hire the most qualified, not the best at selling himself.

What’s the practical difference? There isn’t an objective measure of competence in software. An interviewer has to make a decision on potential performance from very little information. Strong communications skills are a huge benefit to a candidate, which includes selling ones self. It is up to the interviewer to direct the conversation and determine if the candidate’s commentary is bullshit.

DK isn’t confidence, but more specifically is confidence contrary to performance.