Today I sat on an interview panel with some of my other colleagues in Tech.
We had three candidates, one of which was internal, and likely to be picked, cos he already knew his onions, but the manager still had to follow through.

Usually when I'm not the hiring manager, I generally ask one question: Tell me what you understand by the job you are here to interview for. Nine times out of ten, the candidate doesn't even know, or can't explain. Once you don't know, interview ends for me. I still do that for my own hires, but I still try to ask a few dud questions, just to appear transparent and fair. I mean...you came for an interview and you didn't understand the role? Total waste of my time.

Today was no different. The first candidate was totally terrible, next one failed my 'Cooper Test', but was still an interesting prospect for a more junior role,. The third one (did I hear you say yeah right, the internal one) was the only one who came out to bat. And he definitely did not bunt.

Moral of the story is...interview slots these days are few and far between. Why should you go and be wasting people's precious time? If you don't understand a job role, you won't get the job, period. Except of course you know the hiring manager, possibly even in the Biblical sense.

So all of y'all, be on the lookout for skeptics and haterz like me in your next job interview...which may be soon!