// HACKER NEWS — CYBERSECURITY
Real-time feedback: My closing move in every interview
As a candidate, I’ve had some interesting (and some stupid) questions come my way. Like:
How would you work out how many glass windows there are in the city?
What is the volume of water that flows through a cylinder with a radius of x, and the water is y high (asked, oddly, of someone interviewing to manage software engineers, not pipes).
What these have in common isn’t just that they are stupid questions, it’s that they are one-directional. The candidate performs, the interviewer judges, and that judgment never makes it back to the candidate.
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To be fair, I’ve probably asked my share of bad questions as an interviewer. But over time (and I’ve probably interviewed more than a thousand people), I’ve settled on this as my favourite and most valuable question to ask at the end of an interview:
“I’d like to give you some feedback. First, so you can get some feedback on the interview, but also so you have the chance to correct anything that I have misinterpreted. Is that ok with you?”
Ok. It’s not really a question. The ‘is that ok’ isn’t really seeking permission; it’s giving the candidate a few seconds to prepare for what’s coming. As in, “I’m about to shift from interview mode to feedback mode, here’s a moment to reset.” The valuable bit isn’t asking that question; it’s what happens next that’s valuable. From there, I go into depth with feedback (also inviting the other interviewers to do the same).
So, regardless of what else you ask in the interview, this question makes the interview two-way instead of one-way.
The feedback I give is then highly opinionated, direct and transparent about what I’m thinking. I will talk about both what was positive and my concerns.