3 Appearance and Arrogance Errors Tech Interviewers Should Avoid

After reading a recent article about appearance and arrogance issues that a candidate makes in a technical interview. I was inspired to write an article about appearance and arrogance during a tech interview. Here are 3 things to keep in mind for any tech interviewer.

1. Appearance issues

The candidate is not dressed for the interview.

Most tech jobs I have had, there has been no interaction with the actual customer. You can wear jeans, flip-flops, t-shirts, shorts, whatever you want. Why force someone to dress up just for the interview? What is the point in this? If it is known the dress code is casual, then I think the interviewee should be allowed to dress casual so that he/she is comfortable during the interview. PLUS this can be part of the things to evaluate for the interviewer. If you tell the interviewee to dress casual and they can wear whatever they want and they come to the interview in their underwear then the interviewer will know something they wouldn't have known had they forced the interviewee to dress up for the interview. What if this had happened AFTER they got hired?

Interviewing should not require such a formality, especially for a position which has a casual dress code. It feels very superficial and simply doesn't make any sense.

2. Arrogance issues

The candidate talks in an arrogant manner.

Sorry if it hurts your feeling but some people do end up researching before going to the interview and realize they have to "act confident". Maybe by nature the person is not someone that puts on an act for the world that they have confidence. Maybe they have a more of a humble personality. Similar to how they dress up because they are required to, they might force themselves to act confident (which is not something they normally do) for the interview because that, once again, is the customary thing to do. Because of that, it comes off as arrogance because they simply don't know how a confident person, in your view, should act.

The point is, you cannot tell the personality of a person, or whether they are arrogant or how well they get along with co-workers just from talking to them a few times. Some people act differently in an interview than they would after they get the offer and start working and feel more comfortable in the non-interview environment. To say someone is arrogant because of the way they appear to be acting during an interview is foolish. You can't know that without having worked with them for an extended period of time.

3. Overemphasizing Skills

The candidate seems to overemphasize their skills.

If you ask an interviewee a question about their skills and they seem to talk about it too much, it is probably because they think it is an important thing to get across and don't want to risk not sharing every skill they have that would make them a good candidate for this position.

It is true that the candidate is there to serve the organization, but this is a given. I mean I could write up a page worth of writing on how I would talk about how I would be good at serving the organization, memorize it, and then make it a point to regurgitate what I memorized. But this is no different than what the candidate is doing when they are talking about their skills.

The point is, the idea that you have a candidate applying for a position is enough to know that they would serve the organization. The candidate can come up with examples of how they have served for the organization at a previous job and satisfy this criteria for a good job interview. The responsibility lies on the interviewer to let the candidate know before the interview the importance of their skills and the importance of how well the candidate can serve the organization as it relates to the chances of the candidate getting an offer.

I know of interviewers that will discontinue the interview if they feel the skills are not up to par, so talking about the skills the candidate has would seem like a logical thing to talk about in an interview. If a candidate seems to be overemphasizing skills, it is possible they feel very passionate about it and about this position. So much, they end up, what you feel, overemphasizing their skills.