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Comment by UncleOxidant | Hacker News Reader

> If you're amazing at interviews... Accomplish that special human ability

"It's easy, you just..."

Most of us are not amazing at interviews so telling people to be amazing at interviews isn't too helpful. Interview feedback tends to be pretty sparse. Often you don't hear anything back unless you got the job. Even if you do get a "no" response it will be light on details (and it's usually this way due to legal concerns). It's difficult to improve a skill when there's little or no feedback and what feedback you do get is vague.

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For sure.

And I also am not sure I want to work at a place where being really good at interview skills is what gets people jobs. The correlation between "interviews well" and "collaborative, productive coworker" isn't very strong.

Are you implying there is a negative correlation or no correlation?

Unfortunately “being good at interviews” is generally what gets people jobs everywhere, so I’m not sure what point you’re making to begin with.

Definitely has not been my experience. People who interview well are generally excellent communicators and communication is of utmost importance when working with a team.

This was my thought as well.

Also, generally being likeable makes a positive impact on people. Teams would much rather someone they feel they can work well with than someone who is going to be a total stick in the mud and drag everyone down.

How are you determining your lack of correlation ? Is there data on this somewhere?

Because I would assume that people who study and prepare for the interview are more likely to be studious and prepared in other aspects of life, including their workplace.

I have worked with a number of people who are really good at interviewing and then continue to focus on impressing important people and climbing ladders, but without being particularly skilled and/or particularly collaborative.

I have also worked with a number of people who are quite bad at interviewing but were excellent colleagues: highly collaborative and technically excellent.

When I create hiring processes, it's the latter people I try to select for. So assorted coworkers aside, the data I have come from those hiring processes. The glibbest and most charming people often do poorly in the pair programming portion; the most awkward often settle down into doing excellent work once you get them in a familiar context.

Some people are great at both, of course, and some people are bad at both. Which should be unsurprising given the number of people recommending a focus on developing interview skills. The whole idea requires that job skill and interview skill are not well correlated.

If you wanted to learn to play the piano, how would you do it? You'd get lessons, or watch videos, or read a book. You'd definitely practice. Treat interviewing the same way.

I agree, practice is key. Interviewing is a skill, sure some people are good at it, and that's great for them.

I am not good at interviewing. I have very little confidence when interviewing, and I get super nervous. I get better when I warm up, towards the end of the interview. The only way I do better is when I practice a lot, keep a schedule, exercise before the interview, and usually I need a job-support group to help. It's an effort.

Millions of people do exactly that and are not 'amazing' at playing the piano.

IME anyone who is willing to put in the time and effort can get to a level where they're "amazing" from the perspective of regular people - of course there's a huge gap between that and being celebrated as top of the world or something.

So put a lot of effort into something that you hopefully won't have to do very often. I think that's the objection that a lot of us have and why there's a feeling that there's too much emphasis on the interview. I can practice interviewing or I can spend that time learning more about algorithms, math, programming languages, machine learning, etc. It seems like the latter is ultimately time better spent.

You might have missed him starting off his comment with actionable advice.

> getting and applying professional feedback for one's interview skills has a better ROI in my opinion

Their actionable advice is in the sentence before that. You're quoting a supporting motivation and treating it like the thesis.

They're actionable advice was:

"getting and applying professional feedback for one's interview skills has a better ROI in my opinion."

And I specifically addressed that: it's difficult to get any actionable interview feedback because companies tend not to supply much (if any) useful interview feedback probably due to legal concerns.

I don't think he was suggesting getting professional feedback from the place that just rejected you.

I think he was suggesting getting feedback from doing mock interviews with friends or interview specialists.

This was my read, also.

Yes, I meant to get professional feedback from a good resource, to help one's interview skills. This can also be extended to improving one's communications skills at work.

For resources of people who might be able to help, I would include people like a mentor, hired professional, or trusted friends who are good communicators.

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