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Comment by mistercow | Hacker News Reader

> It’s easy for the candidate to self-assess their own progress.⊕ When the candidate isn’t doing well on it, they probably already knew it without needing to be told as much by the recruiter. This is a much better candidate experience than the whiplash of thinking you solved a question perfectly only to realize that the interviewer was looking for something else entirely.

Not to say that I think this is a bad type of question overall, but IMO, this is an anti-feature. The candidate does not need to accurately self-assess their performance on the day. They need to have their confidence preserved so they don’t tilt and tank the signal for the entire interview round.

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I don't know, i think the best questions are the ones where candidates fully understand what is being asked about them. If they aren't able to self-assess did they really understand the question?

Candidates walking away pissed is itself also a problem. A significant percentage of candidates avoid buying from companies they're rejected from [1]. They also love sharing their poor interview experience with future potential applicants.

[1] https://www.wayup.com/employers/blog/how-a-positive-candidat...

> A significant percentage of candidates avoid buying from companies they're rejected from [1].

When rejected, or from an otherwise negative experience.

It's not necessarily negative emotional associations. Usually it's that I picked up on signal that the company has serious problems -- either overall, or with a key person -- which suggests I shouldn't depend on the company as a vendor.

What you want is to prevent floundering death spirals. They need to understand the criteria, but if you need to hint and nudge them, they need to not feel like that means they’re bombing. Of course, you can absolutely do that in a bug squash interview, but my point is that it defeats this claimed advantage.

"We don't want you to know you've already failed so we can waste your time for a month in the off-chance nobody better shows up."

What an incredibly bad faith reply. Candidates should always be given an answer within a few days of finishing the interview. But it’s not good for a candidate to think they’ve bombed during the interview.

If someone fails my interview, it is completely possible that they’ll still get an offer. I have one data point, and my colleagues are going to collect more. I’ve changed my vote from no to yes in debriefs many times once I saw other feedback. But that’s a lot less likely to happen if my interview wrecks their confidence.

Nope, this is as straight forward as it gets. There are only two ways not to know if you're failing or acing an interview:

1. You don't know what metrics you're being judged on.

2. You do know but you either can't assess your abilities in said metrics or you can't tell how well you've presented them.

The second one is up to the candidate, not much you can do about that, but if during an interview you have no idea what the interviewer is looking for, that's a terrible interview.

There is a vast distance between “accurate self-assessment” and “no idea what the interviewer is looking for”.

I’ve already explained why I think obscuring poor performance to preserve candidate confidence is crucial. If you think that’s a “terrible interview”, maybe you could elaborate on why, rather than just asserting it.

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