Weird. When I was casting for actors instead of trying to "trick them into doing something bad" and throwing them out, I tried my best to get it to work with them, even if it meant I had to do something different.
A casting is always stressful, they don't need me as an enemy as well. If they are not good enough with a ton of help, they won't be good enough period. If they are really good with a little of help, they can still be better than someone who needs no help at all. In the end I care about the final result, not about whether they grade well on some invisible scale that only I can see.
This. Help the person you're interviewing. You'll both get more out of it, you'll both enjoy it. If you're in a company that is expanding, you'll be interviewing a lot, so it's really important that it doesn't depress the shit out of you.
So factor that into your judgement. If you needed to help them constantly, you still know they're a bad candidate. Nothing is gained by stonewalling them other than potentially getting someone who's going to badmouth you to everyone.
I've definitely had interviews with solid candidates who just faced an early roadblock, but were brilliant after I gave them an early push. Sometimes that's more of a sign of communicating a question poorly or nerves than genuine lack of knowledge on the candidates part.
This, so much. Interviews are very stressful for candidates, everyone should remember what it's like sitting on the other side.
I've been doing a bit of technical interviewing and I usually try to help people along so they reach the "end" of the interview, especially if they're not doing too well. So many candidates sound defeated when they're struggling with a task and it's a form of respect for me. They've put themselves out there, after all.
Treating candidates - which you know you are going to reject at some point of the interview - with dignity is the right thing to do and can go a long way when it comes to your company's reputation.
That is the hard part of the job. You need to be able to take yourself out of the equation. If you can't do that, you are simply the wrong person for the job.
Usually it is not hard to notice whether you'd like someone to succeed and then factor that in.
Same thing. One of our main actors was once a guy I didn't like at all. But he was fantastic for the role and it turned out to be a good decision afterwards (despite him being complicated to handle, which we also factored in).
Maybe the hard part is to get a HR person that cares about the outcome instead of their authority.
What happens in the real world when a colleague has a mental block? They Google it. If that doesn't help, they slack the team: "Hey guys, this is something stupid-simple that I can't bring to mind right now, but... <question>".
Why should their interview be a stressful stone-walling event when life as an employee is not?
Maybe an interview should have "Who wants to be a millionaire" lifelines. Two "Googgle"s, and an "ok, I give up - give me a hint".
I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, and in light of the role unconscious biases plays in hiring, I'm challenging my own beliefs on how to run an interview.
How does an interviewer ensure all candidates are offered help fairly and equally?
What is the purpose of asking a question, that if a solution is found after "hints" are offered, would be acceptable for hiring?
If the question you are answering has a "right" answer you are asking the wrong question. E.g. if you search for a web dev, give them a problem and some constraints (e.g. language), ask them to draft a quick solution.
When they are unsure then they will usually ask about the problem or about how the problem should be solved (microservice, shell script, ...)
These are valid questions and you can turn them into more knowledge about the candidate by asking them what pros/cons they see by going each route.
Just like that I have actors that want to know more about the role and actors that need less guidance. In the end their performance counts. I will still try to give them hints inbetween takes (just like I would when we work together on the set) — but in the end it is their work which I will judge.
Unless you are hiring for a position where a dev works in complete isolation and receives no guidance whatsoever I think emulating the real thing is the way to go. And that usually doesn't entail holding a devs hand and neither it does entail not helping them at all.
A casting is always stressful, they don't need me as an enemy as well. If they are not good enough with a ton of help, they won't be good enough period. If they are really good with a little of help, they can still be better than someone who needs no help at all. In the end I care about the final result, not about whether they grade well on some invisible scale that only I can see.