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Comment by sbilstein | Hacker News Reader

In my experience, making an interview less biased is not about color of skin. It's about comfort and acknowledging how these anxieties creep up. At big companies I've worked at, we coached interviewers to do at least 5 minutes of small talk and resume review, to smile, to always leave time for questions at the end, to show some amount of enthusiasm for the work the interviewee is doing.

It's not about an interview format for a different race but interviews that take into account how being the odd person out may make it harder than it needs to be. In my ideal process, that helps everyone have a better interview.

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When I was at Google, interviewing was considered everybody's job, but without any particular benefit from doing them. They'd just try to guilt you into doing them. (I think they'd try to guilt some people harder than others, though.)

I think this is a mistake. Interviewing is a teaching/sales role and many people need coaching to come across as friendly. They aren't going to get that coaching if they see it primarily as an obligation.

I did them for many years out of a feeling of obligation, but if I got better at it, it was slowly, and with diminishing returns. It was just more of the same experience.

So much this. I don’t mind running interviews, but I don’t think I’m particularly good at running them, especially in the “making the candidate feel comfortable” angle. With engineering having such an outsized proportion of introverts and, for the lack of a better term, oddballs, we could take a better look at who _should_ be interviewing.

Yea, I’m white and I feel I have less in common with the Ivy League Zuckerbro personality than I have with poor and working class folks like who I grew up with. When I see my interviewer has two popped collars under his Stanford sweater I can instantly feel the anxiety growing. I think to myself “the minute I open my mouth he’s going to hear the mining town and farm work coming out.” It’s more about cultural background and not about race.

Thank you for understanding where I'm coming from and sharing this point. I've def had friends who corroborate this experience as well.

> At big companies I've worked at, we coached interviewers to do at least 5 minutes of small talk

For some people that causes anxiety, the exact opposite of comfort.

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