The Interview Gamble

It was always like this, interviews are a gamble. But nowadays, with the advancement of technology and AI integrated into recruitment processes, interviews have become a gamble where the candidate almost always loses.

I’m not going through interviews now, luckily, I haven’t had to for a while. Although I’ve had to attempt them several times throughout my career, I have family members enduring the process, and in both my current and previous job positions, I was the one interviewing candidates. So I do believe I have a fairly good understanding of this whole interview scene.

And I am positive and confident in my statement: interviews are a gamble, meant to put you down, to bring sadness, to bring depression into your life.

There are several aspects of the interview circus that make me say this, but I’ll highlight some that pops out for me.

The Appearance Gamble
This one was more enforced or expected in the “before times.” However, humans are humans, and appearances matter. And I say it’s a gamble because it’s a game of luck, no matter what you try to do to appear better, nicer, or more beautiful, it’s only an attempt to reduce the inevitable “no” you’ll most likely receive at the end. Any effort we put into our appearance merely contributes to the reduction of negative points.
I’d like to think something along the lines of “Everyone doing an interview, even before it starts, has 100 negative points and zero positive points.” This is not something i apply when i interview people, it is something i believe that happens everywhere, and our task during this brief meetings, where we try to summarize our work life, abilities, and personality, is to reduce those negative points and, of course, increase the positive ones. But things aren’t that simple. I can’t just say, “Wear a suit,” and voilà, a guaranteed reduction of 30 negative points! Unfortunately, it’s not that predictable.
Being presentable is certainly a huge plus, an almost guaranteed cut in negative points, and often a slight bump in positive ones, especially if other candidates didn’t even bother looking presentable. But it depends on the other side too. The amount of imaginary negative points reduced hinges on how the interviewer perceives you being presentable. Maybe to them, it’s just normal, the bare minimum, so all your effort into looking better might feel wasted, not exactly for nothing, because it was “the bare minimum,” but still. Or the interviewer might just be in a bad mood, rushing through the interview and not even noticing your well-groomed appearance. In that case, it’s might also be kind of a blessing, they would’ve certainly noticed if you looked terrible or smelled bad. So no highlights on appearances can be kind of good (?), but it also means no contribution to your virtual score.
So what to do? There’s no way around it, like most aspects of life, it’s better to make a good first impression, even if that simply means not making a bad impression, it would still be a valid impression. And the gamble here is that you’ll never know how the interviewer will assess it. This is a major part of the interview as it’s not just about answering questions nicely, your appearance, how you present yourself, contributes significantly to your final “score.”

The Mood Gamble
I mentioned this briefly above, but it’s huge, the mood gamble. And this goes both ways, your mood during the interview, and perhaps more importantly, the mood of the person interviewing you.
Is that person angry? In a hurry? Worried about something else? Are they even paying attention to your answers? All of this dramatically affects your results.
There are even some techniques that attempt to hack this mood barrier, though most are hard to apply since interviews are usually scheduled by the interviewer, but you can try. The technique involves booking interviews for times when people in that line of work are typically more relaxed. Let’s say you’re applying for an IT position, and you know that in this industry, usually 9:30am is often when project meetings happen, leaving everyone agitated or distracted or angry because of deadlines. In that case, it would be better to avoid scheduling interviews around that time. Alternatively, you may notice that at around 11am, or early afternoon, like 2pm can be good times to book interviews, because the workers there may have cleared urgent tasks, they are not yet draining with the daily work, they are less likely to be interrupted by some urgent matter and so on, anyways, still a gamble and you have to play your cards right, or count on luck so that the interviewer is in a good mood.

The Questions Gamble
Another massive gamble. It doesn’t matter what you’ve studied, how much experience you have in a certain area or technology or skill, it’s impossible to know 100% of everything, especially nowadays when we’re all expected to “dominate” a plethora of subjects and technologies, and everything is so urgent and you barely have time to study properly or even read documentation.
So it’s quite normal that even if you’re an expert in a certain technology and can do wonders with it, there certainly are plenty of small aspects or features you’ve just never had the opportunity to work with. And guess exactly what’s going to be asked in the interview?
But this one’s tricky, especially for higher-level positions. Because how can you guarantee that a Senior is really a senior unless you ask about those obscure details most people never touch? It’s yet another gamble, as we have to count on luck, the hope that the interviewer asks about things we actually master.

The Technology Gamble, The Biggest Gamble of Them All!
This isn’t new, but it’s getting worse. Big companies don’t hire anyone directly anymore, they all contract recruitment agencies or similar services. And these agencies most often have a handful of overworked employees with little to no training, and their job is mostly being just human filter-machines with the purpose to catch whatever the digital filters missed and filter out.
And I’m also on the other side of this multi-level human-machine filter. Whenever I open a position I expect to be highly disputed, I end up receiving a handful of résumés over weeks or even months. It’s incredible, and no matter how much I complain to the humans involved, little gets done, it doesn’t matter the job is on LinkedIn, on the company’s website, or we send out mass emails company-wide asking for recommendations, if I can’t receive the CVs directly, I’m always forwarded just 2 or 3 profiles. It’s frustrating.
But even more frustrating is being on the job-seeking side, sending curriculum’s far and wide, getting zero feedback, zero calls, zero interviews.
I want, I need, these filters to stop, this is the biggest scam, the biggest gamble of them all.
As it stands, making your pretty CV and sending it out to 10 job applications gets you nowhere, your résumé won’t even reach human eyes. With filters filtering filters, you now have to craft your CV with the precise keywords needed for each job application, basically, lie first, tell the truth later during the interview, because only then, maybe, your information might reach a human, who might apply yet another human filter, and maybe forward your profile to the actual person hiring.
It’s a shitty system that needs to end.

For all of you out there looking for jobs and sending your CVs, first, good luck. Second, know that you have to lie. You have to modify each résumé based on each position you’re applying for. And make use AI as well. If recruitment agencies are using AI and machine filters to block you from jobs, even when you’re fully qualified, then use AI yourself too, just copy the entire job description into an AI of your preference, together with your actual résumé, and ask it to create a new one, tailored to that job description, loaded with the exact keywords they’re scanning for.
Use their weapons against them, AI against AI, until the system is improved.

Interviews, one of the biggest and mandatory gambles in life. And I hope you win it.