Please Don’t Fake It Till You Make It: On the Need for Confidence, Honesty, & Integrity in Software Development
As a guest panelist during a recent Girls Who Code event, I was asked for advice on how to succeed during a live technical interview.
This is a tricky question to answer. Live technical interviews can be quite anxiety-provoking for many of us. Ostensibly, they’re a way for the job candidate to show how they problem-solve and what they can do. I say ostensibly because as a valid, reliable, and authentic assessment, live technical interviews can be severely lacking. Not only that, but as Behroozi et al. (2020) have written, “While technical interviews should allow for an unbiased and inclusive assessment of problem-solving ability,” they may actually instead be “a procedure for identifying candidates who best handle and migrate stress solely caused by being examined by an interviewer (performance anxiety).”
Live technical interviews aren't going away, though, so back to this audience member’s question from the Girls Who Code panel: How to succeed during the live technical interview? If we can agree that the live technical interview serves as a way for the job candidate to show what they can do, then as a somewhat-seasoned software practitioner, I have to say: I think one of the most challenging and important things a software developer should be able to do is to raise their hand and say, “I don’t know how to do that yet.”
