I've given perhaps 50-100 interviews and I'm not sure how many I've been on the other end of. I still believe interviewing is hard.
One of the things I typically told my employees and coworkers to do was to avoid psycho-analyzing someone based on small wordings and behaviors in responses.
Really, hiring is imperfect - I did try to hire people who were high energy, friendly, and not likely trying to suck up or B.S. through an interview - but there's a lot of things you can't really tell.
Many interview questions - such as targetted selection - can find negatives to not hire someone, but are easy to bypass if someone knows how those questions work (always give answers that cast you in a favorable light, etc) and are good at interviewing.
I agree that a lot of places do screen too much on cultural fit, but on the other hand, people want to work with people that will be good to work with - and they will have a LOT of time to spend with these people.
In days where we so closely identify with our work, I can see wanting people who could possibly become friends.
This becomes dangerous when it trends into ageism, or reduces the ability of very well qualified people to get a shot, and I've seen firsthand this result in some places hiring a lot of young folks that THOUGHT they knew a lot, but were really at a sophomoric level of experience.
Really good products come out of a diversity of experience and technical backgrounds. However, if someone is going to clash with the team, it's somewhat also better for them to not be working with that team - sometimes - but sometimes it may also work out great.
There's really not a good answer here, only tradeoffs.
People are squishy and complicated.
I tried to limit psycho-analysis and culture fit to "are these good, honest, and mostly friendly people".
I also believe smart people can learn almost anything, and often technical criteria or even small tech preferences that are not clear-cut can be used as code for really not hiring someone for culture fit.
Sometimes I feel a greater danger in interviewing is not allowing the interviewee a good enough picture of what is wrong about the company they are joining - often, interviews feel like sales pitches at the candidate, or focus primarily on the candidate's abilities and background, not hitting most of the things that will really say "will they be happy here".
One of the things I typically told my employees and coworkers to do was to avoid psycho-analyzing someone based on small wordings and behaviors in responses.
Really, hiring is imperfect - I did try to hire people who were high energy, friendly, and not likely trying to suck up or B.S. through an interview - but there's a lot of things you can't really tell.
Many interview questions - such as targetted selection - can find negatives to not hire someone, but are easy to bypass if someone knows how those questions work (always give answers that cast you in a favorable light, etc) and are good at interviewing.
I agree that a lot of places do screen too much on cultural fit, but on the other hand, people want to work with people that will be good to work with - and they will have a LOT of time to spend with these people.
In days where we so closely identify with our work, I can see wanting people who could possibly become friends.
This becomes dangerous when it trends into ageism, or reduces the ability of very well qualified people to get a shot, and I've seen firsthand this result in some places hiring a lot of young folks that THOUGHT they knew a lot, but were really at a sophomoric level of experience.
Really good products come out of a diversity of experience and technical backgrounds. However, if someone is going to clash with the team, it's somewhat also better for them to not be working with that team - sometimes - but sometimes it may also work out great.
There's really not a good answer here, only tradeoffs.
People are squishy and complicated.
I tried to limit psycho-analysis and culture fit to "are these good, honest, and mostly friendly people".
I also believe smart people can learn almost anything, and often technical criteria or even small tech preferences that are not clear-cut can be used as code for really not hiring someone for culture fit.
Sometimes I feel a greater danger in interviewing is not allowing the interviewee a good enough picture of what is wrong about the company they are joining - often, interviews feel like sales pitches at the candidate, or focus primarily on the candidate's abilities and background, not hitting most of the things that will really say "will they be happy here".