I'd like to tell you a story!

I am a teenager applying for temp jobs. It's the late 1990s and the temp agency have asked me to take a Microsoft Office test. You know the sort, do some data entry, format a letter, maybe perform a mail-merge.

"No worries!" I think, as I sit in front of the wheezing 486 with a nicotine stained keyboard. "I know Word 2.0 and Word 6.0!"

The CRT monitor juddered into life, Microsoft Word swam into view. But it wasn't the MS Word I knew and loved. It was Word '97. Utterly unfamiliar to me. A letter to a client appeared on screen.

"Make the client's name BOLD" said the prompt.

"Too easy!" I thought. I selected the text and hit CTRL+B.

"BZZZT!" said the prompt, "Incorrect. You have 2 attempts left."

Whoever had programmed this test had a precise way they wanted me to complete the tasks. So, I hit the Bold icon and carried on.

I made things italic, added bullets, adjusted some indents, and then got stumped.

"Change the paper size to A4".

OK... Is that in the File menu or Edit? No! Format? I hovered my mouse over File, then chickened out and clicked Edit.

"BZZZT!"

Yeah, yeah. I burned another lifeline and eventually found the submenu they wanted me to find. This was infuriating! And so it went on. Every keyboard shortcut I knew was rejected. If I didn't immediately know the precise location of the option, I got dinged.

Never mind my 80WPM, I was being tested on how well I knew an unfamiliar bit of software. It was relentless, unfair, and annoying.

Then came the Excel test. I was doomed.

"Please create a PIVOT TABLE from this data."

GAH! In theory, I knew how to do this. But under pressure and on modern software...?

The timer in the corner - did I mention the timer? - counted down the minutes until the ordeal was over.

And then... a brainwave!

I hit F1.

The computer didn't buzz or chastise me. It pulled up the help pages! I quickly looked up Pivot Tables, read the examples, and completed the task. I did the same for VLOOKUP, calculating mortgage interest, and all the other esoteric questions.

The software gave me a 100% score. I was sure to get on the agency's books! I turned around triumphant to the invigilator.

"You failed," she sneared.

I was agog.

"You cheated!" she spat venomously. "You didn't know how to do any of those things, so you just cheated!"

I was ushered out of the office and wandered down the street in a daze until I reached the next temp agency.

So, here's the hiring test I'd like to run.

Put someone in front of a bit of software they've never seen before and ask them to complete a set of tasks.

It isn't a test of how much they know. It's a test of whether they know how to look for help.

• Are they able to read a manual?
• Can they formulate a search query?
• How do they assess whether the tutorial they found is suitable or reliable?
• What steps do they take to make sure they're finding - and learning - the right information?

I'd tell them that at the start, obviously. This isn't The Secret Rules For Getting Hired.

"I know you've never used Blender*," I'd say, "And this job doesn't require it. But we want to see how quickly and accurately you can learn to use something unfamiliar while under pressure."

* Or whatever.

Because this is what the modern world is like. Tomorrow, the UI to your computer or Word Processor or Twitter is going to radically change. An unwanted update is going to move all the icons and disrupt the order of menus. Is that going to stop you from doing your job?

None of us are born knowing how to use software. But we all need the curiosity to say "I don't know how this works - but I know how to find out."

Anyway, the second temp agency didn't bother with a computer test. They stuck me in a call centre where I was screamed at all day by people who swore blind that they had been mis-sold mobile phone contracts.

There's no moral to that part of the story. Sorry.

Never Tell The Candidates The Rules Of Success

I read an infuriating blog post recently: "If someone doesn't send a thank you email, don't hire them".

This is a great way to limit your talent pool. Personally, I've been hiring for a dozen years, and I've never received a thank-you email. So we can already show there is a cultural disparity here.

Did you tell the candidates that they needed to send a sycophantic email to succeed? If not, why not? Is it any different to telling them what the dress-code is? Or that they need to prepare a presentation for the interview?

Perhaps there are some things that you think everyone should just intuit? What biases and assumptions are you making about the people you want to hire?

If you have hidden rules for getting a job, you're deliberately ignoring candidates who don't share the same cultural background as you.

Make Up Justifications For Not Hiring People

These are all things I've heard interviewers say about their "unique" and "quirky" interview techniques.

• "Whenever I interview someone, I always mispronounce their name. I like to see how they react to that."
• "When interviewing, I go for lunch with the candidate. I ask the waiter to subtly get their order wrong. A great test of the interviewee's character!"
• "We always leave candidates waiting half an hour before calling them in. How do they cope with delays?"

OMG! No! Let's ignore the rudeness (and potential poisoning of someone on company time). Here's the problem with these "tests".

You haven't set the success criteria. Do you want the candidate to be deferential? To be confrontational? Do you want women to laugh it off, but men to silently seethe? What's the correct response.

Most often, the interviewer just wants a power trip. And because they didn't set the rules of the game in advance, they get to make arbitrary decisions. They hire the person they like best and then make up a post-hoc justification based on the candidates' reactions.

Side bar - names

If you mispronounce a name, you're immediately telling the candidate that people with their cultural background are rarely hired, or spoken about, in this company.

Why would people want to work in such a homogeneous culture? Why would they want to work for someone who couldn't even be bothered to search the web for "How to pronounce Nguyen"?

Be Inconsistent In Your Questions

A few years ago I went for a job I thought I was well qualified for. I didn't get it, so I politely asked for feedback.

"The whole team thought you were great. You were probably the strongest candidate overall, but we were looking for someone with experience in XYZ."

I paused for a moment. They continued. "So we hired someone with 6 months experience, because we needed to hit the ground running."

"Actually," I countered, "I have two years experience in XYZ and have taught several training courses on it."

"Oh!" They said shocked, "You never mentioned that."

"That's because you didn't ask me any questions about it!"

Now, maybe that's my fault for not guessing their secret desires (it isn't). Or perhaps I should have read the job spec more closely (it wasn't on there). Or maybe they could have asked the same questions to all candidates (they didn't).

It's tempting to treat job interviews as casual conversations and have a meandering and natural chat.

Don't do that. A job interview is a structured process designed to let you consistently evaluate multiple candidates. If you are asking each candidate different questions, that's not a fair test.

Bonus Rules

A job interview isn't a set of trick questions. You're working collaboratively to see if you can work in the future - not trying to prove your intellectual dominance. It shouldn't be a test to see if they've read the same interviewing books as you.

You aren't doing the candidate a favour by interviewing them. If you select for deference, don't be surprised if you only get obsequious underlings.

There's no point hiring on "cultural fit". If your culture isn't strong enough to handle a little change, or challenge, then it simply isn't sustainable.

What other people think

It's not just me who finds these hidden rules annoying!

Siân Thomas

@drsiant

Replying to @AngharadStone@AngharadStone @edent Ha - me too Angharad - generally answer to anything - including my alter ego Stan!

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Tim Hobbs

@timhobbs

Replying to @timhobbs@edent I hadn’t thought about it until now but I realise that when hiring we approach it with a mindset of “trying to find a great person to help us”, not “offering someone an opportunity”.

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James Wood

@laMudri

@ianwalkeruk @edent The good manners to not clog up people's inboxes with useless emails, perhaps

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Do you have any interview gotchas that you hate? Let me know in the comments!

But perhaps the biggest reason is Google's awful reputation when it comes to hiring.

Google's attitude seems to be similar to that of a top-flight university. It knows it only wants the best-of-breed and is acutely aware that there are thousands of qualified people vying for each job. So it feels like it can treat job applicants like shit.

Every time I've applied for a "normal" (i.e. non-Google) job, it has been a stressful experience. Booking half a day off work for an interview, waiting a few anxious weeks for confirmation, anguished discussions with friends and family. If you're lucky it all pays off and you get to have an uncomfortable conversation with your current boss, followed by three months of frosty relationships with your current colleagues before you leave.

Not the most pleasant process in the world. And that's with companies with great hiring policies.

Google's stature in the industry is legendary. Who wouldn't want all those free meals, funky offices, and awesome projects to work on? But the flip side is a downright hostile hiring process which - as the recruiter intimated to me - could last up to six months.

Things move quickly around here. At Internet speed. That means we have to be nimble, both in how we work and how we hire.

Anecdotally, I've had friends recently who've quit the interview process after the sixth interview failed to produce a conclusive result and they were asked to attend a seventh.

Can you imagine walking in to your office every day for six months knowing that today might be the day when Google recruiters unexpectedly stop returning your calls? Or that you'll have to suddenly have to take some annual leave to spend the whole day being interviewed by people you won't be working with?

How the does Google expect to be innovative if it takes them 6 months to hire someone on a 3 month notice period? How much does the industry change in the year it takes to hire someone and get them up to speed?

I know Google is changing how it hires (and has been pledging to do so for ages), and I think that's great. I'm sure there are plenty of smart people who would be an asset to Google - but feel that the long winded and overly bureaucratic hiring process is just too brutal to put themselves through.

Six months of stress and half a dozen interviews, all for the chance to fail fast? I don't feel lucky at all.