To be surprised that people conducting job interviews dislike them too?

[WryJadeWren]

I was talking to a colleague who is involved in recruitment and she mentioned that she hates conducting interviews. She also said that the people interviewing candidates often don’t particularly want to be there either.

I was quite surprised by this. I completely understand why candidates dislike interviews, given that they’re the ones being assessed, scrutinised and having to prove themselves.

But why would someone sitting on the interview panel actively dislike the experience when they’re not the ones under scrutiny?

I did ask her why but she just said “I just don’t like it.”

I’m genuinely curious. For those of you who conduct interviews, do you dislike them too? And if so, why?

It's a part of my job which I like. To find the right person for a certain position is a great challenge.

I bet they hear the same statements over and over.

I hate interviewing people. Listening to person after person waffle on about how good they are.

I don’t know if I actively dislike them, but I certainly don’t love them. Umm be recruited a few times and they can be very samely and many are awkward. I feel I can often tell very quickly whether a candidate will be a good fit or not, but even if you realise that 10 mins into the interview you have to carry out the rest of the interview professionally and in a way that gives the candidate a good experience (IMO). It can also be very very repetitive if you are interviewing many people.

I hate interviewing people. Want to be fair to everyone and not give false hope to everyone. It's also quite awkward and hard to concentrate on each answer.

I've conducted interviews and I also hate it as much as being interviewed. It's a false scenario questioning someone on their skills, asking for examples, give me an example of this and this, etc. And in my experience someone can interview really well and it still not work out, and then feeling like so much time has been wasted in the process. I wish there was another way to recruit that wasn't interview based!

Interviewing is a part of my job, but definitely the one I least enjoy. After interviewing 9 candidates, you hear the same type of answers and it gets a little boring.

I’ve done it and didn’t really enjoy it. It was quite draining trying to take in all of the information and make sure the scoring sheet was done etc. Also I’m probably overly empathetic and didn’t really like to see people very nervous etc. I tried to put them at ease but it’s always going to be a stressful situation for some people. The worst part was teams calling good internal candidates to say they weren’t successful I felt absolutely awful. Was glad when the whole thing was over with.

Interviewers can feel shy and awkward around people they don’t know well just as candidates can, and if they’ve interviewed several people in a day are often pretty drained by the end of it all, with the added weight of knowing they have the responsibility of selecting the right candidate based on really quite limited information. I don’t hate being a hiring manager giving the interview, exactly, but I’m probably not always the best person for the job of it!

I am Director level and interview a lot of Department Head roles. You can only tell so much from an application/CV/covering letter and invariably there are candidates who behave like they are on The Apprentice - a lot of bluster and meaningless corporate speak to try and cut through. I know within minutes if they are a contender for the role but obviously have to carry out the full interview. It feels like a colossal waste of time and is insufferable to listen to.

I don’t enjoy them either. Not sure why, I just do.

Because they're really boring. Most of the candidates are woefully under prepared and even those who have prepared, almost all give the same answers, but you still have to listen and look interested

I hate pretty much anything boardroom related. I find it stiff, false and nerve wracking

You are often interviewing with a colleague - if you are more junior, you may be worried about feedback on your interviewing technique. If you are the senior one, you are often juggling interviewing the candidate and assessing the junior colleague doing the interview too

Plus there might be internal conflict over what skills or experience they need to prioritise, or the level they are hiring at or whether the team needs to expand or not. There may be a lot of politics.

Plus they can be quite dull, almost everyone says the same things (unavoidably). And you might have been asked to help interview candidates when you have a pressing deadline with their work.

So all sorts of reasons really. I don't know anyone who really enjoys interviewing.

I like interviewing but it is time consuming and it can be really frustrating when candidates really don't live up to the knowledge / experience claimed in their application.

Yes I don't love it, particularly if there are internal colleagues being interviewed and in competition against one another it's just quite awkward. I do it and do it professionally to the best of my ability of course but it's never going to be my favourite thing. Combination of quite high stakes, lot of adverse consequences for both me, the team, the organisation and of course the candidates both successful and unsuccessful if we get it wrong. It's kind of a two edged sword, if there's more than one good candidate we have a difficult choice to make and are going to have to let someone who potentially would be great in the job down, but then there's nothing more disheartening than an interviewing a stream of poor or mediocre people one after the other. Plus it does demand a lot of focus and energy trying to put people at ease, draw them out, calm any nerves, ask the right follow ups to help them answer as best as possible, at the end of a full day of it I'm exhausted plus very aware of the limitations of interviewing as a way of selecting the best people, yet knowing it's the best we've got. And even if I'm really confident and happy with our selection, I then usually still have to go and make maybe 3 or 4 sad/you didn't get it phone calls compared to 1 nice yay we'd like to offer you a job call (I think it's easy to forget as a candidate that we always tend to interview more people than we have positions for so it's a lot more common to give out nos than yeses).

And, I'm sorry to say, in my general experience the standard of interview prep and general quality of people's answers is quite poor, not universally of course but a lot of the time. And for relatively senior positions too, I'm not talking entry level/grad jobs where there's some excuse. People knowing literally nothing about the organisation they're applying to work for (sometimes not even what it's called), being totally unable to structure an answer, not giving any examples or evidence of their achievements despite prompts etc etc. I make a broad allowance for nerves but I do also think sometimes people just don't prepare at all. And that is very frustrating to sit and listen to...

They’re boring
theyre draining
i hate assessing people like that

i did do some”fit check” interviews which were more fun

we don’t get to choose the questions or scoring

After you’ve done it a few times, it becomes very boring

I used to hate it . It’s so boring 9 times of out 10. People give such similar answers as a rule and also I pretty much know within 5 minutes if I’m going to give them a job but of course have to pay them the respect of doing the rest of the interview.

I don’t find it boring but I hate the post interview feedback stage. Having to tell good people they didn’t get the job is really hard especially when they put everything into it

Recruiting can involve reading literally hundreds of applications to shortlist, then organising interviews for maybe 8 people (some are bound to drop out). Then when you actually interview you have to listen really closely and not zone out, while also trying to ask sensible questions to help the people answer as well as they can. It’s awful listening to people bomb. Then the panel may well disagree about the best candidate(s). Then you have to phone people to let them down…

Good interviews are the ones that don’t bore you!

I was a manager and always part of the interview panel when people left/retired etc from the team. I was often doing the job of 2 or 3 people at once whilst waiting to fill the roles.

Pre AI, I'd have to read through and sift CV's, provide dates/times I could interview, check the other panel could also do the same times then do the actual interviews. These were often over at least 2 days. Its not just the interview time, but then discussion with the panel afterwards, completing paperwork, feedback to HR and then feedback if the candidate asked for it. I didn't hate interviewing, but I knew I'd return to an even bigger back log of work after the interviews. I'd then often have at least another 3mth wait before someone would even start.

I love interviewing but it can be quite intense if you have back to back days.

Depends on the interview.
I don’t really enjoy recruiting resident doctors for standalone posts, so much scoring and shortlisting can be tedious and also very little to choose between candidates often

However I really enjoy recruiting med students. They come from all walks of life and are still fresh and not that cynical yet 😀

It’s also quite hard to really assess someone’s competency without asking hard questions, which sometimes feel like your are trying to catch people out. Which isn’t pleasant to do. Especially if they then really struggle.