Bender's Blog

For those of you who don't know, I do a lot of interviews. Not just for my current company. It seems that every company that I've worked for has decided at some point that I'm good at gauging a potential employee's technical chops as well as determining if their personality is a fit for the group. I've lost count of how many interviews I've done, but it has to easily be in the hundreds.

Recently Steve Harman, a co-worker of mine appeared on an episode of Deep Fried Bytes. Steve recounted (third person) a story about an "incident" that occurred during an interview I conducted YEARS ago.

Basically, halfway through the interview, the candidate started to cry.

It started off as any normal phone interview; introduced myself, talked about his resume a little, than started settling into some technical questions to find his skill level. As the discussion started turning to more advanced topics, I noticed a distinct pause between when I asked the question and when I got the answer. I also noticed the sound of pages in a book being turned (this was in the days before Google). I asked him if he was looking up the information in a book. That's when he basically started to cry.

He explained to me that he had been out of work for sometime, and was starting to get desperate. His mother was sick and he was worried about how he was going to take care of her. I felt very bad for the guy. At the end of the interview I thanked him for his time. I reported back to my employer that he was not a good candidate for the lead developer position we were looking to fill, but if something a little lower on the ladder came around we should talk to him again.

I've actually only told this story to a VERY few people, but because it is one of the "great interview war stories" it seems to have developed some legs, not to mention a life of it's own! To this day I have people asking me about it who I KNOW I never told the story too. Not that it's a big secret, I'm just surprised how many people seem to think it is a great story. And maybe it is.

But the reality was not great. Just to be clear, it is NOT (nor should it EVER BE) the goal of an interview to make someone uncomfortable enough to cry. Yes, I want to ask "hard" questions and have the person not only be able to prove their technical prowess, but I also want to find out a little bit about their character and personality. But the truth is that making a person cry during an interview is NOT something I'm proud of or something I ever want to experience again. Fact is, I was probably almost as uncomfortable as the potential candidate that I speak of, and I'm not at all eager to go through that again!

Anyway, I just wanted to clear this up a little since many people seem to be getting the wrong idea about the event. Challenging interview == good. Candidate having a "breakdown" == bad.