I stopped an interview because I couldn't solve some difficult problems involving technology I haven't used in years. What could I have done instead?

Question

I've been on both sides of the interview process many times, as a job seeker and as a hiring manager, and I'm confident in my technical abilities. This week, I began looking for a new job and found a company I've always dreamed of working for.

Unfortunately, the interview did not go well. The hiring manager presented some difficult problems involving technology I haven't used in years and expected detailed analysis. After about 40 minutes, I had to stop the interview, apologize, and explain that I wasn't the right fit for the position before ending it. I was honestly embarrassed.

I sensed that he was unhappy with my decision to stop the interview. He mentioned that he was impressed with my background and suggested we could skip the assessment to discuss my experiences instead. However, I felt this was merely to fill time, so I chose to end the interview.

Could I have salvaged the interview? Was there a better way to handle the situation? If I want to request another interview in the future to see if they would use a different assessment, what should I say beforehand?

Answer 1

suggested we could skip the assessment to discuss my experiences instead.

Could I have salvaged the interview? Was there a better way to handle the situation?

Apparently, you could have skipped the assessment and discussed your experience instead.

Answer 2

It seems like you've made a confusing mess of the situation.

I've stopped interviews prematurely before, but never where I actually wanted to interview again with the same company, and still had a variety of questions!

You clearly could have salvaged the interview. You could have soldiered on with the difficult assessment (whilst performing poorly), or you could have accepted the reasonable offer to move on to discussing the skills you do have.

Sometimes a hiring manager will realise he doesn't want you for the role at hand, but for a different one instead. That is besides the possibility, which you already acknowledge, that the assessment was just a standard device, the results of which the hiring manager isn't particularly vested in.

Indeed, you could have asked the hiring manager, "is this technology representative of what I'd be doing in the role, or is it a standard assessment?". That would put him on the spot, and if he said the technology was essential to the role he had in mind (and if you have no intention of re-learning it), then you'd be on much stronger ground to ask to end the interview by mutual consent, or to ask why he believes it is worth proceeding further.

If you were offered another interview in future, you would just ask the question directly beforehand: "will there be an assessment during this interview, and will it involve any specific technology?".

It would definitely pay to be less impulsive in future. If an interview starts centring around a technology you aren't familiar with recently, it shouldn't be a problem to just admit that you're no longer familiar with the technology, without becoming flustered.

Also, if you haven't interviewed in a while, it usually doesn't hurt to just practice receiving questions and giving answers, even if the interview is already fatal in your mind.

Answer 3

• Never end an interview early if you still want the job.

  Interviewers sometimes intentionally ask really difficult questions not expecting the right answer, but rather to see how interviewees cope with those: how they think through the problem. Or they might try to gauge where you're at with a broad range of questions, with the expectation that you'd get some questions wrong (without that necessarily counting against you).

  You might also give a good answer, thinking it's a bad answer, because our brains can trick us like that sometimes.

  Just because it feels like it's going poorly doesn't necessarily mean it is going poorly. And even if it is going poorly in this moment, doesn't mean it will keep going poorly for the rest of the interview - it may still be salvageable.

  If you end the interview, you basically guarantee that you won't get the job. If you keep going, you've got much more of a shot.

  Never mind that a company might be hiring for multiple roles, or might hire for other roles in future. As the person who left the interview early, you likely aren't going to seem like someone all that interested in the company, so you probably won't be high on the list of consideration for any of those.

• Trust what the interviewer tells you, don't assume their intention.

  The interviewer said he was impressed with my background and suggested you could skip the assessment to discuss your experiences instead. This sounds like a good sign, but you interpreted that as a bad sign.

  Don't do that. That's self-sabotage. That's the voice of insecurity - you shouldn't listen to that voice.

  It sounds like you could've and should've just taken them up on that offer. Although if you try to end the interview, getting such an offer seems like it would very much be an exception, whereas most of the time the interviewer will probably just end the interview.

• How do you handle an interview going poorly?

  The best advice is probably: just try your best.

  There's plenty of time after the interview to worry about whether the interview went well or went poorly. At worst, you can use the opportunity to practice your interview skills a bit.

  If you're asked about things you haven't work with in years, you could perhaps just say you haven't work with that in years, and then answer the questions as best you can.

  You could maybe ask whether there's a possibility to reschedule the interview so you can refresh your knowledge on the topic (if they are specifically looking for someone knowledgeable in that). Although you should also add that you're willing to continue this interview, because most of the time, they'd probably just move forward with other candidates instead of having the same interview with the same candidate twice.

• How do you handle this now, after you've already ended the interview early?

  I'd probably recommend sending a "thank you" note, and saying that you probably didn't make the best decision in deciding to end the interview early, and that you are still interested in the role and the company, but you'd understand if they'd instead move forward with other candidates.

  You could maybe briefly (in a sentence or two) reiterate why you want to work there and why you think you'd be a good fit for the role.

  It would be ideal to send this on the same day or on the next day, but a few days late would still be better than never.

  If they've already sent a rejection letter, one could send a similar reply to that, although I'd phrase that less as "I'd still be open to an interview but I'd understand if you wouldn't be" and more as "I accept the rejection".

Answer 4

In most jobs you will be expected to handle problems that you haven’t handled before. Maybe they wouldn’t hire you for that right now, but it will come up.

So in this case, they couldn’t reasonably expect you to know all the answers, but they could expect you not to give up. It seems they were happy with your interview and how you handled it. Next time don’t give up.

Answer 5

Never negotiate against yourself my friend! Just make the best case you can and be your own advocate, and let the other party decide they don't think you're suitable. As you found out, their opinion of you was better than you suspected. Good learning experience.

That said, anyone can have a temporary crisis of confidence. Don't dwell too much or beat yourself up about it. I would contact the company or manager and say you really had an off day, maybe hint at some home life challenges that played a role, and ask if there is a way you can re-interview or re-apply for the position. It's worth a shot! What do you have to lose?

Good luck.

Answer 6

Getting the most out of an interview

When an interview goes sour and you are confident that you are not going to get the position (whether this turns out to be true or not), the best thing to do is to take a deep breath and shift your focus on: What can I still get out of the remaining time in this interview?

If the interviewer was hammering you with tough questions that you could not handle and they are willing to keep going on for 20 more minutes of tough questions, then take it. Knowing more of those tough questions will help you better prepare for that next interview.

If the interviewer and you both agree that this position is not a good fit for you, then you ask if there are other open positions that you would be a good fit.

At the very least you can take the last bit of interview time to relax and focus on practicing your communication skills. One of my coworkers loves to tell the story of how she was in a layoff status and had been stressing out during interviews which was causing her interviews to go poorly. She eventually got an interview but it was for a position she was convinced she had no chance of getting. Instead of declining and walking away she figured it would be good practice. Because she though she had no chance she was very relaxed and cruised through the interview. During the interview she found out the job title was misleading and she had the exact skill set they were looking for, and she got that job.

Do not give up when things look bad, things might not be as bad as they look. But even if an interview has gone bad, they still make for great practice so that when you do get the interview for that dream job you already know the hardest questions that you can be hit with and you can walk into that interview with confidence.

Answer 7

Was there a better way to handle the situation?

Yes!

Especially that you've sat on both sides of the table, you are aware that an invitation to an interview means an applicant has already "shown a degree of promise" in the eyes of the company. It was up to the applicant to prise wider the opening of the door-that's-now-ajar.

Anecdote: 30 years ago I was one of several interviewed for an attractive position. Like you, the interviewer asked about my competence with a particular language and with a particular DBMS. The language could be assimilated quickly enough (another one, right?) and the DBMS would be a matter of adapting/extending to pick-up the particular dialect. The rest of the interview was very collegial, but I could not let go of the sting of having to admit that, at that moment, I had only shallow experience with what seemed to me to be critical skills. After the interview ended, I drove home thinking I'd never hear from them again. The following Monday, I was shaking hands while being introduced to my new colleagues. The interviewer and I are still good friends, 30 years later (although I had moved on from that position after only 18 months.)

Did Tom Hanks give up on "making fire" (in the movie "Cast Away")?
Or, did he go back to try again and exploit the fortunate splitting of the bamboo?

Suggest you put on a brave face, frame the past in its best light, and try again.

"...and found a company I've always dreamed of working for."

You won't make your dreams your reality if you let them pass and add a "notch of regret" to your life's story.

Answer 8

I, too, have sat on both sides of the interview table. From what you're saying, the interview possibly wasn't going badly at all.

As an interviewer, I want to know not just what the candidate can do, but what they can't do. Our practice was to take the candidate through their comfort zone, and try to get them out the other side. We wanted to see their limits, and we wanted the candidate to see them too. (To be fair, we always explained that was what we were doing, so the candidate didn't get discouraged.)

Again, as an interviewer, we knew we were never going to get "perfect" candidates. Someone who was weak in one area might be great in another. We constructed our systems to allow the candidate to show us what they were great at, and tried to give them every opportunity to do that, restarting as many times as necessary.

Thing is: an in-person interview is an expensive thing. The candidate has to travel perhaps some distance, and we're taking some senior people out of productive work to interview them. We didn't take that lightly. Having committed that time and money, we all wanted to get the best possible result.

And finally: remember Winston Churchill's words: "When you're going through hell: keep going".

Answer 9

Being both an interviewer and interviewee at multiple companies over 20+ years, I have found that the purpose and objectives of a technical interview changes as the candidate gets older. So,

• Trust the interviewer. They don't want to waste their time or yours any more than you do. If they are willing to continue, persevere. Their intentions and goals for filling the role might be different than what you expect them to be.

• When a candidate is fresh out of school, the focus is almost completely on the technical skills. The company needs someone to implement an architecture in their chosen technology stack, and the interview assesses those skills. Only glaring personality red-flags would get noticed and cause a rejection.

• When a candidate is older, their resume and work history show if they have been able to successfully execute the technical parts of their job (adding technologies, increasing responsibilities, promotions, job change patterns, etc.). A technical assessment is done to make sure they aren't completely lying on their resume, but otherwise it's assumed the skills are there, and the ability to learn is there. When a company pays more to hire a senior candidate, they generally want to see if they have developed the soft skills required to be a good team member, mentor, and leader. They want to see if you've picked up good rules-of-thumb, or a feel for good design/architecture, etc. Did you learn any hard lessons that guide your day-to-day, or affect the way you problem solve? How have you dealt with difficult situations regarding teams and schedules? It can be ok if the candidate hasn't developed those soft skills and has instead focused completely on technical skills. It's the job of the interviewer to figure out the shape of the candidate and see if/how they will fit into the team. The point is that "extreme levels of knowledge in technology X" is only the main determining factor in specialized situations.

• For anyone with 10 years or more of work experience, a resume should indicate which skills are current and which skills were used in the past. I've run into the situation where I've been in an interview and wasn't able to answer a question about the PERL programming language to my satisfaction and said, "sorry, I thought I remembered more about that. I guess it's time to move that to my Previous Experience list." (As technical people we have always been judged on our knowledge base and ability to provide correct answers. It has never been acceptable for me to forget things. As I got older, it was very difficult for me accept that it's ok to no longer know everything on my resume. But then I realized that I don't have to remember everything. I just need to make it clear on my resume which technologies I have current proficiency in (and be ready to answer detailed questions about those), and which ones I successfully used in the past.)

Answer 10

I had a similar experience interviewing applicants for a critical technical position. I had a few specific questions, one of which (I thought) was pretty easy, but it turned out that none of the applicants had a clue. All of them would have been exposed to the relevant theory in school, since the educational requirements were fixed, but that's not the same as using it in anger. Once I realized that, the only way to compare applicants was to look at their approach to being tasked with something similar.

One tried to BS me (bad move), and the others went about explaining how they would approach the problem and find out the required information. The successful candidate mentioned similar problems and how they had gone about solving them- and what challenges came up. It's nigh on impossible to fake that sort of narrative, so it comes across as very convincing.

Obviously, it would have been preferable to find a candidate that had done that exact thing successfully several times in the past and knew all the pitfalls and tricks. However that candidate might never appear, and might not want to work for the kind of company it was at the time.

From the reaction you describe, it sounds like you were a leading (if not the leading) candidate that they'd seen to that point. On the other hand, if you tell the interviewer that you can't handle it, even given some time to learn and refresh, then they're quite likely to believe you. So don't do that again.