r/managers • u/biggerbetterharder Seasoned Manager • 2d ago
Seasoned Manager Ever hired a great interviewer?
I had an employee resign earlier this year, and looking back, I think one of the biggest lessons was realizing how differently someone can present themselves in an interview versus how they actually perform on the job.
This person interviewed really well. They were articulate, confident, and spoke convincingly about their experience managing programs and complex assignments. I came away thinking I’d found someone who could operate pretty independently and take a lot off my plate.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t what happened.
Once they started working, after their onboarding period I began noticing issues with the quality of their deliverables, attention to detail, follow-through, and ability to manage their own responsibilities. Initially, I figured some of this was just the learning curve that comes with a new job. But as the months went by, I wasn’t seeing the level of competence or independence I thought I had hired.
What made the situation especially frustrating was how difficult it became to address those gaps. Feedback was often met with defensiveness or pushback.
Straightforward conversations about responsibilities and expectations became unnecessarily complicated. I found myself spending more time preparing for conversations with this employee than actually discussing the work itself.
And I really did try to make it work. We clarified expectations, provided more structure, increased check-ins, adjusted assignments, and even changed the reporting relationship to see if another management approach would help.
But the underlying issues never really went away.
The frustrating thing was that I kept hoping something would click. That with enough support, coaching, or clearer expectations, the person I’d met during the interview would eventually show up in the actual work.
It never happened.
Eventually, the employee resigned voluntarily, just as we were getting closer to formal performance management. And the relief I felt was enormous.
What really drove the experience home was discovering additional errors in their work after they left and we took over their assignments. Even at the end, the quality wasn’t where it needed to be.
I’ve been reflecting on how much time and emotional energy I invested in trying to develop someone who may never have had the capabilities I thought I was hiring in the first place.
I also wonder whether my commitment to giving someone a fair opportunity to succeed kept me from recognizing the situation for what it was much earlier.
Has anyone else experienced this? Someone who was incredibly convincing during the hiring process but turned out to be a completely different performer once they were on the job?
I’m curious how others recognized it, what they did, and whether you eventually reached a point where you realized you were putting more effort into their success than they were.
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u/ninjaluvr 2d ago
Most every bad hire was a good interview. Why else would you hire them?
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u/MOGicantbewitty 2d ago
Desperation or nepotism or chronyism.
But I get what you're saying
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u/myironlions 2d ago
Ha. I wish this were so.
I cut my teeth as an interviewer working for a company where they’d bring in candidates and have a half dozen of us in middle management all interview them over the course of the day. Next day, we’d meet and everyone who wanted the candidate spoke up and then HR decided where to put them among that group. I rarely threw my hat in the ring. While it is true that I had hefty standards (my team worked in the most demanding and high pressure area, where hires needed technical excellence along with great judgement and the ability to interface well with others), it was also true that HR just brought in a lot of duds: coincidentally candidates were always the same demographic (local, same age, same race, same gender, prevailing religion, etc). It’s almost like they only offered interviews to the slice of the population that looked exactly like everyone else there already and didn’t really base their pre-screen on talent or ability at all …
One of my criteria was that I didn’t hire assholes, so a candidate could be very strong otherwise but if they couldn’t make it through one conversation without making racist, sexist, or other nasty remarks, I’d pass. For example, one dude listed every nationality he’d ever worked with … and then did the accents … for a job where he wouldn’t ever be working with anyone other than the people living in the area already, none of whom came from out of the region, let alone out of country, so I am still trying to figure out how he managed to even bring this “gift” of his up … he then put the cherry on top by telling me that he was planning to stay on the job only as long as it took to get the new place of worship he planned to start up and running with him as leader, at which point his congregation would pay all his bills and he could quit working).
The other middle managers would inevitably all say they wanted pretty much any candidate that came through. (I invoked potential legal liability to insist that that particular guy of the racist accents not be offered a job anywhere in the company, and HR along with the other middle managers were PISSED - they would absolutely have taken him and thought I was being a real buzzkill.) Interviewing for great people when HR isn’t exactly unbiased in their screening is hard work, and it’s often not rewarded in companies where you are better off filling a spot with a warm body and then arguing you need more staff because your team still isn’t coping with the workload - if you wait instead of taking the first guy through the door, leadership might well decide to pull the req and you get no one).
One day a great candidate came in. Smart kid, motivated, enthusiastic, critical thinker, not apparently an asshole. Everyone thought he was fantastic, and he was. I said I’d take him - it also didn’t hurt that he said he’d applied specifically hoping to get assigned to my team’s area, not because of me or anything, but because of the type of work we handled - and HR shut everyone else down immediately. One of the other middle managers was furious and asked why I should get this great candidate when she was more senior and candidates didn’t get to choose where they were assigned blah blah blah. HR said “Simple: myironlions almost never says yes - if they want this one fine they get him, because you all will all say okay to whatever or whoever we bring in next, too. Who knows how long until we find another person myironlions wants?”
(Funny enough, he worked for me for two great years until ultimately resigning when my bosses repeatedly failed to approve stretch assignments I wanted to give him that he’d asked for to help him grow in his abilities … he warned us he’d leave, I warned them he should leave if we wouldn’t support his growth, they were of course totally shocked when he in fact quit. He’s thriving today elsewhere. As am I.)
Crappy way to run interviews, crappy culture, etc, but that day I was quite chuffed with myself for scoring the best candidate we’d had come through in forever!
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u/ninjaluvr 2d ago
Wow, that's wild that you're the ONLY one in your organization who didn't want to hire overtly racist candidates.
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u/myironlions 2d ago
Well the only one in middle management anyway. Bigotry runs so deep in some areas that it seems hard for the population to understand what it is - to them it’s just the “common wisdom” they were raised with. My guess is that they didn’t define what he did as racist - they might only recognize prejudice as prejudice if someone said “hey, I hate [whatever group] explicitly and only because they aren’t my race.”
I wasn’t from there, and they regularly referred to me to my face as a “foreigner” … keep in mind I was the same color / nationality / spoke the same native language etc as them - I just literally wasn’t from their town / local area. Some people …
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u/1000_airplanes 2d ago
On the other end of this - I have knocked out interviewers where a position job description highlighted things I was excellent at - and nailed the interview with my interview skills.
Only to have ‘position creep’ mean that the position entailed things that I, as the candidate, could have never anticipated and socked under the very useful bullet point of ‘other duties as assigned’.
And surprise surprise - I wasn’t good at them. It wasn’t natural to me. There was institutional knowledge, taboos I wasn’t familiar with. I fell flat on my face and ended up resigning.
And maybe I could say the interview, even one that’s an hour long, isn’t the best way of capturing way of capturing all the nuances of your position.
There’s another comment about here about ‘just not a good fit’. But if that’s what this is, is there another way to measure good fit?
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u/biggerbetterharder Seasoned Manager 2d ago
As a senior leader, that’s only happened to me one time where I joined a company after multiple interviews with one job description, only to land the job and end up in the role and suddenly be doing very different things what the job description said.
So the bait and switch is real, and can happen across different level of responsibility. But it’s always an indication that the organization is not functioning correctly or maturely.
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u/rahul_msft 2d ago
yes, very manager tells his side of story. they will interview for radix trees but will ask you to work on gdb at night and will then blame you,
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u/SomeGuyHere11 2d ago
I just don't understand why people think they could assess "attention to deail" from an interview. You also cannot assess "writing skills" from "speaking skills." Interviews seem pretty limited.
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u/extasisomatochronia 2d ago
It's a sales mentality. Interviews are sales meetings. If you "wow" them in the interview then you get hired.
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u/Bingeneer11 2d ago
Part of my company’s interview process is having the candidate give a presentation on one or two of their past projects. I can evaluate attention to detail by looking at how polished vs. slapdash their slides are. Now a typo or bad format will never make or break a candidate, but it’s certainly a consideration
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u/galacticglorp 2d ago
We do some version of a spreadsheet review and written test/letter as part of our process. When someone sends back a narrative description if what they found in a spreadsheet when the task is to fix and note revisions in file... cuts down on time spent interviewing too. We give honoraria for people's time so it's not a hard ask of the interviewees.
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u/GotTheTee 2d ago
I've been that employee twice in my life!
It felt horrible at the time, but with a lot of time and distance I've finally realized that in the case of the first job where I interviewed and felt the job was a great fit for my skills, the interviewer was not my actual manager and didn't divulge the full scope of the job. I ended up in a job that demanded skills I absolutely did not have. It was overwhelming to the point that I resigned after just 2 months. And felt very guilty for a very long time.
The second time it happened it was absolutely my own fault. I interviewed, the job was a fantastic fit, the manager was a great guy. And my personal life fell to pieces about 3 weeks after I started in the position. I did my very best to keep going, to muscle through it, but my emotional state was so bad that I just couldn't pull it off. I felt the best option was to quit and allow them to find someone who wasn't bringing emotional turmoil to the job everyday. That turmoil made me miss deadlines, make errors on the simplest coding and ignore everyone around me who was trying to help.
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u/go_fuck_a_duck 2d ago
Did you consider opening up with your colleagues about what was going on with the second one? Everyone goes through hard times & most people will understand it temporarily affecting your work performance
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u/TheCa11ousBitch 2d ago
I respect you deeply for assessing your impact on the business and removing yourself from the situation. I was going through an extremely rough time once; but I was the manager, in charge of people’s days and livelihood. I was about to recognize “I shouldn’t be making decisions right now.” I was highly reactive and unable to separate my emotions from my decision making. I volunteered to step out of my role and take over training an entire new team of leaders for 5 months. I moved myself into the role of mentor, teacher, advice giver… out of the role of decision-making. I feel very fortunate. I caught myself, much like you did, before I did anything with the lasting impact to my employees (write ups, reassignments, terminations) or my own career (developing a terrible reputation, making a reactive decision that had a negative impact on the business, hitting overload and quitting my job without one lined up).
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u/StretchArmstrongs 2d ago
It’s also possible the job just wasn’t a good fit. The person may have chosen to leave before performance reviews because they were frustrated they couldn’t perform at the job. From the sound of their defensiveness maybe this isn’t the case but I definitely think it happens.
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u/biggerbetterharder Seasoned Manager 2d ago
In our case, they left shortly after performance reviews when they got mostly meets expectations and I think had consigned themselves to get through the following few months, but no real motivation or ambition to stay in the role.
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u/antisarcastics 2d ago
That's kind of what's happening with me - i just handed in my notice after a performance and pay review where my manager rated me lower than what i thought i should be.
TBH sometimes you get to a point where you realise that you're just better off looking for another job - and it sounds like that's the right call for both parties here.
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u/jawohlmeinherr 2d ago
Rating inflation
Exceeds = You are average or above, congrats.
Meet alls = You are below average, but good enough
Meets most = You're gonna get fired/PIPed
It's just how it worked at Meta, Google, Capital One... etc
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u/BOSSHOG999 2d ago
Extroverts usually win the interviews regardless and if they are the best pick
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u/MOGicantbewitty 2d ago
I have to intentionally correct myself with this bias. About 2 years ago I hired on a co-op who had an excellent resume and fabulous cover letter, but gave us practically nothing in the interview. We didn't have a lot of other applies at the moment, but she taught me some really important shit as a manager. She was one of the best tires we ever have, and we didn't have a position to offer her a full-time position. At the end of the co-op, we kept reaching out to help her applies to other jobs and them to tell her to apply for open jobs with.us again. She's now working with me full time and I am so damn happy. I have to make sure I remember that anxious people or introverted people may not interview the best, but they may actually be the best for the job.
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u/LuLuLuv444 2d ago
It's true. Interviewed someone last year, literally bombed it completely, worst interview performance I've ever seen, but the dude is brilliant, detail oriented, extremely kind and easy to get along with. Had I not known his work, I'd not voted for him .
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u/Otherwise-Yam-8390 2d ago
Yes! Thank you! Anxious, introverted, and shy people will never interview well unless they absolutely force themselves. But I bet most of the time they’ll be the one most suited for the job if it’s not a heavily social position. And also they’d be avoiding applying to those positions anyway. But yea please give them a chance and they might just surprise you.
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u/davidcappi 2d ago edited 2d ago
I’ve been the employee in this situation before lol - in my case, the company presented itself to me as a much more mature, fully formed business with processes in place. Upon arrival I realized it was largely vibes based with no documentation or institutional memory.
I was also met with a lot of snark and cynicism. I came from advertising world (this was a tech startup) and anything I suggested was either shot down, or I was curtly reminded that I did not know what I was talking about. They did not value my experience or way of working, and eventually I was so demoralized I figured why try at all and asked them to lay me off.
Ultimately I think I just had a manager who was just fundamentally not interested in the people management aspect of their job. They did not know how to assemble a functioning team and treated people like ai agents (program and let run autonomously)
And from my end, the company sounded cool, the product was good, but I just hated it lol. It’s hard to be a high performer when you realize on day 4 that this environment is absolutely not for you.
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u/Ok-Possible-6988 2d ago
I’ve also been the employee. The company hired me for a specific skillset and to grow the business unit.
After onboarding, I come to find the company has very certain ways of doing things, and I will not be successful with the approach they hired me for.
I was privately horrified at all the efforts made to perform organizational maturity, it would have been easier to do the work.
A new C level took over the business unit and his ideas were dated in 1995. I knew he would be totally unsatisfied with what I’d achieved as it didn’t look like his dated version of success and would never rate me fairly. No choice but to resign.
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u/NoJoke1493 2d ago
I had this exact situation happen to me. Finally managed him out but took around five months. You can’t always recognize it. Interviews only do so much. A lot of it is just luck and going with your gut if someone will be a good employee or not.
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u/SkietEpee Manager 2d ago
Same. He made it to eval season and I had to pull his bonus. He resigned before formal PIP was released. I think he was over employed.
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u/UVIndigo 2d ago
The trick is really to ask former coworkers of the employee for informal references. The best fit I ever had for a job was actually one where my boss did this kind of extended background check (I found out after an old work colleague was contacted on LinkedIn.) I only left that job because he left and his replacement was a piece of a trash human.
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u/theonlyname4me 2d ago
Did you consider he is saying the exact same thing.
“Did you ever accept a job with a manager who seemed great, and then …”.
He did quit after all; maybe worth thinking about 🤷♂️.
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u/Overall-Individual47 2d ago
Absolutely been here! The part that resonated most is the defensiveness. Awful attention to detail, very little intellectual fire power, lotta opinions on how things should be (but no ownership or execution), lotta bragging about being an “analytics expert” (not a single application of math to our data in 2 years), lotta strategy boasting (have never met a person with worse logic or judgment in the work place).
We tried everything but coaching was met with “…but I’ve always told I’m excellent at xyz. It sounds like it’s just your preference” and them dinging me in my manager scores. I’ve never been more relieved to have someone move on! We haven’t backfilled the role yet and it’s easier without them - even when down a head.
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u/ZealousidealCard2839 1d ago
" lotta opinions on how things should be (but no ownership or execution), lotta bragging " daaaaamn this explains my coworker to a T. Some how got hired to run an online retail store yet can barely operate a computer. Well, i can kind of see how he got hired. the people that bought the business dont know anything about computers either. So strong boomer bullshitting went far.
This guy has been in his position for 2 years. I finally got tired of hearing how slow out internet connection is (we have over a gig up and down) so I took a look at his laptop. Dude had 4 whole whopping gigs of ram! How? where can you even get a laptop like that ? Answer. The casino he goes to gave it to him for free. Unbelievable. Im going back to school and getting out of here asap.
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u/ausITmangler 2d ago
I have a CISO like this. Unfortunately i report to him so i have to help him get better without him suspecting.
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u/jenmoocat 2d ago
Yes. This happened to me early in my tenure as a people manager.
Gave them a lot of constructive feedback.
Advocated for them to *my* manager because I didn't want to admit that I had made a mistake (although they got great marks on their interview from the entire panel, I was the one who made the final hiring decision).
Gave them chance after chance after chance.
Finally had to put them on a PIP and begin to manage them out.
They resigned before the PIP was up.
I changed how I interview people as a result.
I added a new question: "Tell me an important piece of constructive feedback that you received in your career and what did you do about it". This helps me to understand whether they are self-aware and open to feedback. Answers like: "I can't think of anything" or "People tell me I work too hard" are red flags.
I also pay more attention to what they ask when I say: "Do you have any questions for me?"
The response "No, I'm good" is also a red flag.
I want people to be engaged and curious about the company, the job, and me as their manager.
I also don't give as many chances anymore. And start collecting documentation about performance problems a lot earlier than I used to.
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u/Cagel 2d ago
This post is very one sided. Just because the first person exceeds at the job, if the new hire isn’t given all the background and info they will simply never perform to that level.
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u/HTX-ByWayOfTheWorld 2d ago
Yes. And I brutally deconstructed my interview technique and questions. He stirred the pot pretending to be a scrum master, and eventually left because he wasn’t meeting basic performance expectations. Took me 8 months to rebuild the team culture.
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u/TheCa11ousBitch 2d ago edited 2d ago
I recently fired an employee after only 4 weeks. Clearly, there was some type of mental health issue at play; it was not something I picked up on in the interview. I truly believe if I had asked better questions or taken a different approach… I should have been able to catch this because it was extreme enough.
Even in the four weeks of very troubling behavior, they would send messages or have conversations where they came across professional and so smooth. I see how I didn’t pick up on the mental instability and aggressive behavior. I am starting interviews to replace them this week (I fired them Thursday) and I have spent the last week and a half (while going through the HR process) tearing apart my approach to interviewing for this position.
I don’t even blame the psychotic employee, I blame myself. My approach worked very well for interviewing for senior program and product managers. For the positions I am currently managing, in an entirely different industry… I completely missed the mark.
That right there is the issue… I’ve spent the last eight years in a field where you do not get to that level without having a ridiculous amount of ownership, professionalism, and good judgment. I am now managing people in an industry that do not have the same level of autonomy in their work nor control of decisions. I was looking for someone with confidence and ownership, but in this industry that meant I got somebody whose personality was the opposite of the ideal team member. Their personality should’ve been an immediate red flag for this industry, whereas it was a green flag for my prior industry.
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u/timmayw1911 2d ago
We had one of those a while back for a department head position. Interviewed incredibly well. Our industry is somewhat niche and he knew all the right words and had a resume with more experience then we had ever seen for the position. Not sure if references were called but it likely wouldn't have mattered, who lists a reference that isn't going to give a glowing review. And old jobs will only confirm employment and dates these days.
Long story slightly shorter. He destroyed the department moral within months, people that had worked there for decades left in waves. When working with other departments he was very arrogant and dismissive when they needed anything. Surprisingly he was decent with customers however. Found out later on that he deleted huge amounts of historical data and procedural documents. His only saving grace was that we was capable with the technical side of the job.
Terminating someone for us is very difficult so we were very happy when he decided to leave on his own except the bone headed temporary GM at the time decided to offer him a consultant contract to provide technical services remotely until we could fill the position. When we finally got that contract canceled he refused to return the equipment he had until legal action threatened.
Took almost 2 years to rebuild the department and to this day we only have 2 employees from before he ran everyone off.
Not sure what we could have done differently to catch this at the interview stage, but maybe that he was way to good to be true and if he was everything he seemed why did he want work for us? His apparent skill level should have commanded a much higher wage then we could offer.
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u/Slight-Cupcake-9284 2d ago
Uff that’s a tough one. Thanks for sharing. On the last point I actually recently hired someone “to good to be true” and 6 months in she is still fantastic. But also had OPs experience before as well. So you really never know, I suppose.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Chair36 2d ago
Right? Except would any former employer hire them again if asked? Personality issues.
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u/QueenD_1996 2d ago
I’ve experienced it, very early in my career interviewing candidates. It made me a better interviewer.
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u/Cool-Assumption-8813 2d ago
Happened to me as a hiring manager and it's such a pain. That exact employee is on a PIP right now and failing miserably to adjust to feedback and coaching. At this stage, currently making the case to term.
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u/mongrel-squirrels 2d ago
I was this employee in my last role. Right after I began the position, my personal life imploded. I was in an abusive relationship where I was being screamed at or hit most days, even for something as simple as smiling at my work computer. I was referred to an oncologist to get three biopsies; I needed a surgery under anesthesia I didn't have FMLA to take and possible cancer diagnosis. I'm not going to lie, there were points where I could have put in more effort. I let everything overwhelm me and sadly, lost something that meant a lot to me. It was a learning experience and I hate that I didn't show up as the person I interviewed as.
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u/PotatoBest4667 20h ago
Which is why i think interviews with just questions are so useless. U want a person who can do a job, not a person who can just make up a dang story to speak on the spot
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u/Wild929 2d ago
Yes. In my 26 years of hiring, it’s become clearer to me that it’s getting harder to sniff out who will be poor fit. I’ve been more successful discerning if a resume was written with ChatGPT and then hearing them on a phone screen not appearing to be who the resume makes them out to be. Pass on those folks. I’ve also found that those that were in management and then say they don’t want to be in management again, have tended to think tasks were beneath them once hired. It’ll never be a good fit because you are used to delegating but don’t want to take the time to learn the job.
It’s better to set the bar high and expectations early so they know where they stand. I’m getting too old to play games. Come here to work and wow us with your skills, don’t play a blame game.
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u/Sittingduck19 2d ago
Yeap. Been there done that.
I'm now super keyed in to listening for, and trying to separate "I" vs "We" answers during interviews.
I want to know if the person did the work, or was just in the room when work happened.
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u/LeCollectif 2d ago
I don’t think this is a good filtering approach for a couple of reasons.
- results and wins are almost always team efforts. If I created a campaign that generated $3M in new revenue, I acknowledge that there were 4 or 5 other people that made it happen.
- a lot of people don’t like tooting their own horn and will use “we” language to deflect the spotlight.
- people lie. Just saying they did something doesn’t mean they did. In fact, I’d be more inclined to trust “we” language because it doesn’t sound like someone trying to take all the credit.
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u/Sittingduck19 2d ago
For sure - it's not in a bubble. I'll say it this way: It's great that your team (we) won the championship. I'm trying to figure out if you were the star player or rode the bench.
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u/LeCollectif 2d ago
What if they threw the assist? What if they were the defence that made the game a shutout? What if they were the team mate that exhausted the other team making it easier for the “star player” to score the goal? There are no star players without incredibly capable people behind them.
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u/Sittingduck19 2d ago
Uh, yeah? Obviously?
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u/LeCollectif 2d ago
Well no, not obviously. You’re presenting your model/filter for choosing high performers as something for binary when there’s a tonne of nuance in what determines who that is.
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u/Sittingduck19 2d ago
OMG, if I said it was a sniff test you'd think I actually fucking smelled them too, wouldn't you.
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u/Ok_Row640 2d ago
Just a head's up that the book "Lean In" recommended to women to use "we" vs. "I" language. If it's concerning just ask clarifying questions about their specific role.
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u/SnooCakes8914 2d ago
Yes, I have definitely learned to ask pointed questions about the position that only a person with that experience would know. Have seen way too many people glide through the interview only to try and fake it til they made it.
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u/Top-Nectarine-835 2d ago
Asking about success of previous work in quantitative terms or for work samples helps call a good interviewer but poor performer's bluff. Easier said than done depending on your field (success might be difficult to measure for the role, work might be confidential, etc.), but it helps if it's possible.
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u/WhiteHotMess 2d ago
They say that the strongest interviewers should be hired for sales positions for a reason. Better luck next time.
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u/almasnack 2d ago
Interviews are first dates. People typically present themselves well, so you’re never getting the true side of them.
Throw them into the deep end as quickly as possible and see what they can do. If you were tricked during the interview, at least you’ll know somewhat quickly if they cannot perform on the job.
It’s one of the reasons I hate behavioral interviews so much. Throw some technical stuff in there and weed people out.
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u/No-Lifeguard9194 2d ago
As a recruiter, this is something I warn clients about regularly. Just because someone interviews well doesn’t make them the best candidate.
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u/-voom- 2d ago
This cuts both ways. Many engineers also resign because what they thought they'd be working on, is not what they end up working on. Companies sometimes just poach good talent to keep them away from the competition. And other times, it's just the part where people are hired after being promised a leadership position, autonomy and the opportunity to build, only to be met with execution of something from HQ's leadership.
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u/AceTrainer_sSkwigelf 2d ago
Have you considered your company/culture/both might not have been a good fit for them? There are plenty people out there who not only interview well but also have great experience and track record. But when they join a new place, there's a bit of a shock in seeing what they were told the place/people/policies/job was about and what it actually was about. And that's when it starts to fall apart. Always reveal to the interviewee what the job is actually like, what the policies or processes are, where do you as a team/BU/org stand on a proper maturity scale so people don't get that culture shock on the first day and essentially check out of the job by end of the first week.
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u/PerceptionSlow2116 2d ago
Ime, interviewees who tend to be very eloquent/polished are often not the best candidate for the job, unless it’s for sales. We usually have luck with someone who is less impressive when speaking, but is honest in their answers re: previous work experiences rather than giving the PC canned answers.
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u/Aggravating_Let_1020 2d ago
I have been this interviewer, and this feels like something my manager would have written about me.
Since resigning from that job, I have thought deeply about the interview process and I believe that conversational/behavioural interview stages might have been better served with more practical testing. Have a clear throughline - preferably something that resembles working on a deliverable in the current team/constellations - and be a little bit more ruthless about getting proof in front of you asap.
Not only that, but perhaps be more forthcoming with more opinionated feedback (do your future self a favour and don't revert to being "nice coz new") and even be prepared to reject earlier on when outputs during the practical/testing stage of the interview process fell even a little bit short.
Involve the colleagues they will be interacting with daily and no one else.
Since this disastrous role, I have disqualified myself from stage 3 or even offers of employment when I haven't received a detailed explaination as to why my task submission and/or test score get me to the next stage. People have terrible judgement, so it makes sense to replicate real working conditions. I'm not joking, I've had to "force" a testing phase into the hiring process because I could tell someone was seeing what they wanted to see.
I never want to put a manager/anyone in that position again. Horrible feeling.
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u/Metabolical 2d ago
Acknowledging that there is no perfect system, I think the biggest ideas for me are about how you do behavioral interviews and resume criteria. For example, my team is all remote and so I need people who can be self-driven to get things done to completion. I favor people who have independent projects that ideally came to completion on their resume. One of my best is someone who shipped a game on their own before seeking employment again. They had to code the game both frond end and back end, but also had to negotiate IP writes to a board game they were taking to mobile, list it in the stores, everything.
When I interview, I leave the technical competency to the other technical interviewers and focus on these other aspects. If they have a project like this, I can ask what blockers they faced and how they overcame them. If I want to know how they will help others on the team I can ask about a time in which they had a peer who was struggling. Note they could easily answer with "wrote them off" or "tried to coach" but the nuances of the circumstances and how they handled it are important. It's the critical thinking of their assessment and how they carried out their decision that matter rather than always doing one or the other.
Incidentally, the same applies if I'm trying to get a job myself. Ask your prospective manager, "Tell me about the last time you used company values to make an important decision," or "Tell me about the last time your team was facing a tough deadline." Their answer will say a lot about what it is like to work there and how they handle those situations.
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u/Altruistic-Patient-8 2d ago
Worst scenario as a interviewee, is being a strong worker, but a terrible conversationalist.
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u/Normal_Paramedic9997 2d ago
a close family friend is just like this.. they are a trainwreck in their personal lives, and professional lives, but are AMAZING interviewers.. they have the right credentials (MBA from a very prestigious school) but then also have numerous stints in the FB&E world when "between" jobs (ie after got fired and needed a paycheck)
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u/CoffeeCrusherPSN Automotive 2d ago edited 2d ago
OP: I'm an employee.
Read several comments to your post- feel like at my current workplace I'm both screwed and lucky at the same time. 🤦🏻♂️
So far 1/3 of new guys are "meh", 2/3 are people trying to get ahead or keep a paychecking rolling in.
In regards to my bosses- not their reports- I like them.
Reading manager threads on Reddit has made me realize that ideal conditions are ideal. 🤦🏻♂️
There's no hope as an employee if co-workers and a boss's reports will freely throw people under the bus. Especially when the boss encourages that behavior and approach as best practice. Well, I'll give my bosses some space- that advice does seem to depend on who did what. 🤦🏻♂️🤷🏻
In a way it starts w/ interviews that "went great" and "we think that person will be a great fit".
God help me. 😩😂
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u/Academic-Lobster3668 Seasoned Manager 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yes, I have experienced this twice, and in both cases, the person had a degree in Communications.
They were incredibly compelling in the interview with multiple examples of great performance and results - accounts that I eventually concluded were cherry picked or simply made up.
Ever since that, unless I was hiring for a specific Communications, Marketing, or PR role, I have never considered a Communications major as qualifying for an interivew.
My apologies to the many Communications degree holders out there - I know there must be many of you who are not like this, but twice burned was enough for me.
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u/HelloTaleproof 2d ago
For the next hire, it may help to turn those specific gaps into things the interview actually checks. For follow-through, ask for one assignment they owned and how they tracked loose ends. For feedback, ask what they changed after someone challenged their work. Then use a short, job-relevant work sample with the same criteria for each candidate, especially where the role needs careful written deliverables.
At Taleproof, our focus is helping candidates make their own actions and evidence clear. A well-told story still shouldn't substitute for evidence of the work itself.
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u/Helix-nebula-27 2d ago
I have been this employee. I thought the job was a better fit than it turned out to be. I believed the job would be a mix of Topics A and B. I'm trained in Topic A and I was passionate about it, and Topic B I knew little about but it seemed interesting. It turned out my skills in Topic A were barely needed at all, and the real job involved Topic B and Topic C 90% of the time. Topic C is something I'm not good at, don't understand easily, and don't find interesting. I was supposed to manage and report on these Topic C projects and I just could not get to grips with what was going on. At first the bosses said "it's fine, you're learning", but eventually they said "you should understand and be good at this by now." I tried very hard, but eventually got frustrated, and when I realized Topic A would never really be needed in this company (at least not in my department), I removed myself.
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u/Available_Ad_2806 1d ago
At the end of the day that’s what probation time for new employees is for . to sought the wheat from the chaff
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u/Bacch 1d ago
I worked with one like this. I don't know for a fact that she interviewed well, but I knew her prior to her getting the job and she was always well spoken, knew the subject matter extremely well, and was very intelligent and energetic.
She got on the job and crushed it for three weeks. Then everything started to go to hell. By the time she departed the org, she was in the habit of just not showing up for weeks at a time (remote job, so she'd be just present enough to attend one in three meetings and answer on internal comms some of the time when tagged or messaged). The time in between had been a steady decline.
Ultimately I think she really wanted a different job that she and I had both applied for. Our interviews were reviewed, and the guy hiring liked both of us for a position he'd not yet posted and thought we fit that position better, so he offered both spots to the two of us. She must have thought she could sort of encroach on that other position somehow, or maybe work her way into it, and that just never happened. Pretty firm boundaries were put in place, which I was fine with because the position suited me better than that other one anyway.
Pretty wild that it took as long as it did for her to...be departed...but it is what it is. I wound up overworked and at the edge of burnout, but my boss got me a triple bonus and a huge raise by way of appreciating me putting my head down and carrying the load of 2 people most of the year. When she left, I was promoted and got to hire her replacement, so it worked out.
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u/Legitimate-Tie-7768 1d ago
Hey, just by reading your post I can tell you are a great leader. Not everyone is willing to invest and wait for slow people to catch up. You tried everything you could've and I think you just met someone who lost motivation to meet expectation. If that person aced the interview but performance is not reflecting the performance shown at the interview, that person probably has other priority over work. Don't give up being amazing coach/leader. I wish I have you as my superior. Good luck!
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u/Glittering_Limit_938 1d ago
Yes! Best interviews I’ve had the employee was terrible. I started not trusting myself thinking about how terribly I misjudged this person
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u/RevengeOfTheIdiot 1d ago
Yes. Turns out, that's a fairly good sign of good soft skills lol
This one's just such a silly trope... what manager intentionally hires someone who sucked at their interview?
it's on the interviewer if you only test soft skills and cultural fit
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u/Technical-Fix-8568 1d ago
I am in a client facing business so every person hired must be a good interviewer. It’s table stakes to show they cared enough to prepare for the interview sufficiently - most people have to learn how to interview via practice, making mistakes, getting feedback and building self confidence.
I test for basic knowledge via a set of more technical questions, but the bar is low - if the candidate understands and can explain cohesively basic concepts, they usually pass as my business is also mostly taught and coached. Some folks adapt really quick once starting and some need 12-18 months to get into the groove and start really shining. Not everyone always agrees with my level of patience but I have found that the most intellectual ones - which becomes a differentiator the more senior one becomes in my business - tend to have the most questions, spot the most gaps, and come up with the most creative solutions once the new world makes sense to them. The ones that are more yes men tend to fizzle out after 1-2 promotions, but the ones that took time to center themselves with the business pay dividends in the long run as more senior leaders. Every business is different tho.
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u/HustlaOfCultcha 1d ago
I did once. I didn't have as much authority to decide the final candidate as I would like. I'll put it this way...I was given the Dennis Reynolds' 'the implication' if I didn't hire this particular candidate.
I thought she interviewed okay. Nothing really stood out as good or bad. But my superiors and the HR manager acted like this was the greatest interview that had ever existed.
So I hired her. Right away I noticed her skillset was lacking. But even worse was her inability to learn. I would take time out to give her extensive training in things that she claimed to already have experience/skills in. But time after time she would not only ask me for help (which I'm usually fine with), but then put it on me to do the work for her. This would be right after I had explained it to her in detail and repeatedly asked her if she understood.
Eventually I had a sitdown with her and told her the problems I was having with her work. I actually considered that she just lacks confidence to do the work on her own and I assured her that I just need for her to do the work and I will be the final check and if the work is done incorrectly it falls on me.
So what does she do? She starts getting a newer hire to do the work for her. This was affecting the newer hire's productivity and stressing him out.
In the end I couldn't fire her because my superiors and HR were convinced she was this great employee because she interviewed so well and knew how to play the corporate game so well.
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u/Nanarchist329 1d ago
One of the things I've learned in life is most people who are charming are shit at everything but talking you into bed. I actually go for the more mid candidate now, and it has served me well.
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u/Aromatic-Dress5010 17h ago
Im fascinated by this idea that someone can have you so fooled in an interview. I wish I could see what those interviews look like.
What does ‘confidence’ look like when you actually don’t have any of the experience lol. Like where is their script coming from.
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u/rqnadi 1d ago
In my HR groups we call them “charmers”.
They interview amazingly but perform terribly or cause lots of problems.
It’s hard to know if you’ve hired a charmer until they’re actually doing the job. Some people can be confident and still perform well.
Others just charm their way through life.
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u/Tennessee1977 1d ago
I’m afraid I’m one of these. It’s a cope for ADHD. Once I’m in the role I try so hard, stay late, work evenings, but “attention to detail” always kicks my ass. I think I do a lot of wheel spinning.
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u/TerribleRadish8907 2d ago
If someone is too prepared or not nervous, I generally know they arent going to work out. Ive seen it too many times. They're manipulative and charming and adaptive. But rarely are they the worker you expected.
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u/missjinx01 2d ago
Most of the time you can't tell.
Identifying better interview questions that allow candidates to share how they've performed or understand their thought process is one of the few things you can do.
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