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11.27.07
Avoiding Hostility Towards The Interviewer
 By
Dan Morrill
While hostility during an interview is not all that
advised, sometimes people do the strangest things in the middle of an interview.
If you bring in your own code to show off, make sure it works, make sure it is
complete, and make sure you are willing to discuss it openly.
The last thing you really want to do is get hostile towards the interviewer at
any time during the interview. Even if you are showing off your own code, which
you slaved over and made whole, the interviewer is going to want to talk about
it, and they will talk about it in the manner that is normal for that office
culture. It is ok to walk out the door, walk out the building, get into the car
and throw a fit, but not in the middle of an interview.
What brings this around is a friend of mine was recently interviewing a person
who really wanted to show off some neat stuff they were working on. The flash
object was on a USB stick, and my friend did not want to plug it into his computer.
This got the person doing the interview a bit surprised, that the interviewer
did not want to see the program. Balked, the person being interviewed cajoled
my friend into taking a look at the flash program anyways by getting a flat being
rebuilt laptop off the desk and using that to take a look at the program.
The only problem was that the program was not finished, and once all the loading
problems were resolved, the program still did not work in places, and was incomplete
in other places. It really was not something that should have been shown off,
as it was incomplete and buggy.
Now here is where the interviewer made the mistake of calling
the bugs, and having the interviewee explain the bugs, and why they were being
caused. Unfortunately, the interviewee took that very wrong, and got more and
more defensive about the code that did not work, rather than try to work through
the debug with the person that they were interviewing with.
As the interview got more and more polite, with subtle nuances being exchanged
in the form of language and how it was being interpreted, the person being interviewed
started getting a bit angrier as time went on. Rather than seeing it as a collaborative
environment where coding practices are discussed, the interviewee took it personal,
and took the conversation very badly.
By the end of the interview, both parties were agreed that this was not going
to work out as a job, which is good. However on the way out the door, the person
walking them out of the building caught some disparaging remarks about parenthood,
family trees, and your basic threats against someone who didn't
know any better. This lead to a whole series of events including escorts for
a week to and from the parking lot to make sure that nothing bad was going to
happen. Fortunately nothing did, but showing any form of instability or not willing
to work in teams during an interview is really something that should not be done.
Making threats against someone should not be done either as this concept spills
across the working environment and interpersonal social networks very quickly.
The person is quickly identified as someone who should not be hired by anyone
who wants to keep office stress and strife down.
Comments
About the Author:
Dan Morrill has been in the information security field for 18 years, both civilian and military, and is currently working on his Doctor of Management. Dan shares his insights on the important security issues of today through his blog, Managing
Intellectual Property & IT Security, and is an active participant in the ITtoolbox
blogging community.
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