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Interview: how would you say no?

" ... and let no one leave offended ... "
or let them go, but
" ... the truth is easy and pleasant to say ... "


Actually the problem


Everyone wants everything to be as he wants. Therefore, applicants and employers are actively exchanging, to put it mildly, “tips” on hiring procedures in the hope of bringing this controversial world closer to harmony, persuading the opposite side to move and change the rules of the game called “hiring an IT specialist” to their advantage.

As everyone knows, the interview - this is the main stage of this game. The applicant does not come for an interview, of course, not for refusal, but in order to successfully pass it and get a job offer on suitable conditions, even if he does not intend to work in this company for a single day. The company, for its part, conducts interviews, most often in order to find an employee, again on terms that are suitable for the company now. Although, mutual honesty does not allow to deny that not only the applicant can come to the interview a priori realizing that this company is not interesting to him, but companies can also conduct interviews without meaning to make a job offer, for example, taking care of the personnel reserve or for some reason. Something else complex reasons. But in any case, starting the interview process, it is necessary to somehow finish.

The company knows that it is always necessary to communicate the reasons for refusal, otherwise "the company's karma will fall, and irreparable damage will be inflicted on the business." By itself, this thesis is clearly controversial, but of course, elementary ethics requires to put all the dots on “i” and correctly complete communication with the applicant. Therefore, we will respond to everyone and always.
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Formulating waivers is not so simple. It is good if there is a clear objective reason in which “nothing personal is just business”. Well, for example:


It is more difficult if it is necessary to assess the whole situation in the complex, to rank more or less suitable applicants, delaying the decision, in the hope that tomorrow it will come - that same “ideal applicant” . The applicant in this case expects certainty longer, which does not contribute to raising his mood and increasing love for the employer. The refusal in this case has to be formulated more streamlined with the key phrase “we generally liked you, but another candidate was accepted.”

It is even worse when it is obvious that voicing the real reason for the refusal will cause frustration and even resentment of the applicant. Here is a description of the problem situations, which are based on the experience of conducting technical interviews for C ++ and .NET developers, as well as testers at a medium-sized company that has been successfully working on the outsourcing market for more than 10 years. All these situations are almost real, but they are specially made so that they are not completely projected onto specific people for all the described circumstances. All these people are interesting, but in the future or when some circumstances change, they may simply be necessary. All of them were communicating, interviews were conducted, they are all quite nice people. But right now the company is not ready to employ any of them.

Try to put yourself in the employer's place and decide what in this case is the lesser evil: to voice the true reason, to sweeten the refusal with invented arguments or to keep silent?


Actually the situation


1) Young mother
The young lady from the state of "young mother with two young children" in the state of "back to work." The first technical interview was forced to endure three times, since the child had caught a cold, then he had no one to leave.

What the interviewer thinks. And as I understand it - she went through it herself. But let the children grow up.

How the waiver will be formulated. At this point, who will decide what, even do not undertake to comment ...

2) A student without experience
He vaguely told why he broke up with one of the "market leaders" after two months of work. It is acceptable, but not “wow”, the theory responds, demonstrates good wit, but still simply does not know much. The test task is operational, but the overall level is lower than the standard pass-through, as there are many small “student” blunders - modifiers are missing somewhere, not the most optimal container is selected, the necessary checks are forgotten somewhere, a memory leak is somewhere. For the interviewer, the situation is difficult, rather “no” than “yes”, but ask about what you did - maybe it will flash? The interview continues, and word for word, the applicant gives something in the spirit of "well, GUI development does not appeal to me - only juniors are thrown at it. And I don’t want to parse XML - I didn’t like it. I am interested in highly loaded systems and distributed processes. ”

What the interviewer thinks. It is likely that there will be a good sense of it, but now the applicant has some reappraisal of the level of his skills and his potential usefulness for the company as an employee.

How the waiver will be formulated. In the detailed story about the project it will be emphasized that the development of interfaces for this vacancy is a very important component. Working with XML will also have to. It is ideal to bring the applicant to the fact that he himself will express doubts about the desire to get into the described project. Then you can pick up his mood and give an answer “unfortunately, at the moment we cannot offer you a vacancy that would exclude those types of work for which you don’t have a soul. If we need such specialization, we will contact you, because we hope that your experience will grow over time, and we will have new interesting proposals. ”

3) Senior developer
The resume of the applicant from the category “23-year-old senior”, who, as it quickly turned out, corresponds to this position, and works in the “market leader” on a similar project with the same technologies. Suddenly, he made me happy by sending a resume, indicated adequate salary. He is very good at the interview, he understands well, talks enthusiastically about the work, it is clearly visible that he did a lot himself and with pleasure. Everything is great, and the further, the better, but the growing doubt - why did he come to us? After all, the level of its present company and the conditions there are known. We decide to ask a direct question - what does not suit him at the current place of work? And the man turns sour. He still doesn’t know how to lie, and, stumbling and stammering, honestly informs that he needs our job offer in order to ask for salary increases at the current place — he is not going to leave from there if he is offered the salary requested by him.

What the interviewer thinks. We are not ready to conduct unpromising bargaining with a competitor, and if we win it, hire a person who currently does not want to work with us.

How the waiver will be formulated. It is possible that it is best to answer the truth with the truth, saying that from a technical point of view the interview was completed and emphasizing that the honest answer of the applicant to the extremely inconvenient question for him appeals to us. If over time the circumstances of the applicant change and he really wants to change the company - we will be open to continue the dialogue.

4) Change of activity
A candidate with a non-core education and work experience in another field, where he achieved something and, accordingly, achieved a salary higher than the initial level of a programmer. I decided to retrain myself and study C ++ on my own in my spare time. Completed test task. Works. But the code is written in such an unusual way, starting from the formatting and variable names, and ending with the general design of classes, that everyone who watches it has to make considerable mental efforts to understand and appreciate it. Maybe this solution is quite viable, but it is done perfectly across the generally accepted practices and programming style in the project where the applicant is planning to include.

What the interviewer thinks. Everything is very unusual and it is not known how it will end, but we are not ready to experiment for the wage level voiced by the applicant.

How the waiver will be formulated. We'll have to work hard and explain what exactly is wrong in our test task from our point of view. Most likely, there will be counter objections and discussion, in which you will have to participate constructively and which will have to be quickly turned down. You may have to play a little dogma and say that the solution we expected should have such and such an architecture, and we are interested in the applicants who proposed it.

5) Lead developer
An applicant for the Lead / Architect position in a project for a new direction, which in the future he will lead and for which the team will be recruited. Resume and experience are quite consistent, excellent knowledge, extensive technical knowledge is demonstrated, in general, everything is wonderful. The final touch - we say that you naturally have to work with the code, so we ask you to write a simple student task, well, almost a formality, we still want to see how you write the code. No problem - the applicant tells three ways to solve using different frameworks and asks which one is most preferable. They will receive the answer: “yes any, at your discretion, here is a computer, here is the Internet, do as you see fit.” As a result, we have non-compiled code, which has been spent three times more on writing than it is necessary to solve the problem.

What the interviewer thinks. What was it - obsession, eclipse, or the candidate really does not know how to program?

How the waiver will be formulated. It’s hardly worth discussing that the code didn’t grow together. A person of this level, in principle, must understand everything himself. The wording is sufficiently brief: “based on the results of the interview, we are forced to proceed to the consideration of other candidates. Thank you for your time. ”


Actually questions


How does it seem to anyone, is it possible to formulate a refusal for any of the situations described, better than we thought up? Where should I add something? What formulations do you think are not suitable at all? At the same time, it is important that the parties “preserve the face” and do not provoke pointless discussions. It is also desirable that the applicant, on the one hand, would understand what is the matter, and, on the other hand, the refusal would be constructive and not cut all the ends.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/150277/

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