> I honestly could tell that the interviewer giving me the fizzbuzz questions wasn't clicking with me personally. That's fine, and I completely respect that it's a valid reason not to hire someone.
No, it really isn't. You should have a set of hiring standards that you strive to make as objective and quantifiable as possible. The interviewer should also be doing everything he or she can do to minimize their own personal bias entering into the evaluation of you as a candidate.
Hiring people you get along with, i.e. people like you, is usually a quick path towards a homogeneous team of straight, white males from privileged backgrounds.
I recently redesigned our department's hiring process for software folks and one of the things I did was change our standard 2 person interview panels to be a larger group at once.
The primary reason is so that everyone is seeing the same thing, including these sorts of personality conflicts. If Bob thinks the candidate is horrible due to some weird hangup and they were interviewing solo, the team would have to believe Bob. But if everyone else saw the interaction, they'd know that Bob was just being a cantankerous coot.
A more scalable solution to this is pair interviews.
The first company I worked at for 4 years made use of this, in addition to meeting in person, at the end of the day, to make a decision.
Benefits of the pair interview: Two different opinions on the candidate for the same "experience". If either interviewer had poor tendencies, they'll be curtailed a bit because they know someone else is there to witness them.
If both interviewers are in agreement, that's a pretty strong data point.
When it came time for "review" at the end of the day, we started with an around the room "thumbs up/down". No hiding behind an anonymous email to the recruiter/manager. If it was unanimously up...offer. Unanimously down? Obvious no hire. If it was mixed, we'd go around to all of the thumbs down, and ask, "Are you on the fence, or are you 100% vehemently opposed to this candidate?" If they said, "NO WAY JOSE", we'd ask them to give their reasoning. Then, we'd ask if anyone had a positive enough experience to argue in favor of the candidate. If not? No hire. If yes, we'd then go around the room and ask all of the interviewers to give a full description of the interview. You'll note that this part gives the full data, but takes the most time, but could be avoided (an optimization) if it was going to be ultimately fruitless.
This was by far the best hiring decision making process I've been a part of. No process, is perfect, but I feel this was pretty fair.
Oh - lastly, if a candidate was particularly hard to decide on, and we went around the room, and some people were for them, and some were against, and it ended up in deadlock - we ended the meeting and it was up to the ranking members of the team to decide (i.e. managers.) This meant that after one round of debate, we wouldn't keep wasting the company's dime trying to force consensus, and instead moved the decision to the people who the company had already decided it wanted to make decisions. So, if democracy worked...great, but this was a business, and we had get shit done, so lacking clear consensus, the burden was reduced.
After typing this out, I really, really whole heartedly respect this process - compared to much of what I've seen in the Valley.
We do this at my current company. The tiebreaker stuff is slightly different, and every candidate that gets a vote of confidence actually ends up chatting briefly with our CEO as the very last bit, which is more of a cultural fit thing than anything else. I agree that it's good to have a potential counterpoint to odd personal interactions.
Interviews are clearly stressful situations for a majority of candidates, even if their technical chops are without question. This ends up manifesting in ways that can come off as personality defects / lack of fit. I can think of a few times where the person I went in with came out with a specific point in spacetime that was wrinkled for them - a comment they thought was off, something about their behavior - and more than half of the time I've noticed comments the candidate made, or compensating factors, that reasonably explained these wrinkles. A lot of the time, I'm trying to balance the things I care about asking with paying attention to my co-interviewer so I can provide objectiveness down the line.
I would have been working in a three person team (including me). This results in spending a TON of time with your teammates, usually more time than your family. Not liking someone is a reasonable filter in this case.
I happen to work on a three person team right now and I like my two colleagues. It does not conform at all to your forecast for (straight, white, privileged, men). Sorry. I think this is based on the assumption that people like others that are like themselves, which in fact is not very true. I prefer to be around people that are very different from me.
> I think this is based on the assumption that people like others that are like themselves, which in fact is not very true. I prefer to be around people that are very different from me.
Unfortunately, it is uncontroversial that most people show preferences for people similar to themselves when choosing friends, romantic partners, and employees. Nobody, that I've heard, is saying that this applies to every single person, so there's no reason to say that it can't be true because you don't follow it.
No, it really isn't. You should have a set of hiring standards that you strive to make as objective and quantifiable as possible. The interviewer should also be doing everything he or she can do to minimize their own personal bias entering into the evaluation of you as a candidate.
Hiring people you get along with, i.e. people like you, is usually a quick path towards a homogeneous team of straight, white males from privileged backgrounds.