In imagination-land, it could've been a higher echelon of test.
Despite the dynamic in which you were the one being tag-teamed in an interview, would your catalyst presence bring the interview back on track, with subtle grace?
At the end of a series of "bad interview loop" tests, you learn that they secretly weren't interviewing you to be a coder, and now you are the next chosen-one CEO of Lego.
> Despite the dynamic in which you were the one being tag-teamed in an interview, would your catalyst presence bring the interview back on track, with subtle grace?
In my experience, tag-team or tribunal-style interviews are themselves a red flag. Usually it's a sign that the company doesn't know how to interview or whose opinions to trust, so they're just throwing everyone into the meeting.
And any company being so openly dishonest as to set up fake arguments for candidates react to . . . if discovered, that's the mother of all red flags.
This is not the case with new interviewers shadowing a single interviewer. That's actually a positive sign, that they know some of their people have skills and are actively trying to train their staff.
I've been part of a three-person panel for interviews at multiple companies. I think the idea of panels is first, to train people to be good interviewers. Second, to get the opinion of multiple people regarding the viability of candidate. Third, I bet there's a liability thing at a company level where they don't want a candidate who fails to be able to claim bias of one person.
One time, for an unspecified job at a think-tank-ish place, after passing the first phone screen, the recruiter lightly prepped me for a call with the hiring manager. So I get on the call that's supposed to be with the hiring manager she described... and the format is like a thesis defense in front of a room of people I can't see, taking turns asking me incisive questions, on topics of their choosing, over a speakerphone. At one point, one of the random people talking at me admonished, a bit sternly, "That's not what I asked you." I at least half-bombed it. (I did get invited to do a job-talk after, like for an academic job, so apparently someone decided I'd passed well enough or to give me another chance. But I was really peeved with the recruiter giving me worse-than-zero intel on what I walked into, and there were other demands on my time, with no job talk ready to go, so I declined.) Much later, I wondered whether that interviewer barrage was intentionally a surprise, to try to filter for people who wouldn't wilt if they were a think-tank expert suddenly put on speakerphone to room of clients on some matter.
The best tag-team interviews I recall were for an R&D unit role at a traditional financial institution, where I'd be interfacing with teams throughout the org. Some of them videoconfs (during Covid) were 2 or 3 higher-up people, representing different parts of the org. That actually worked in that case, and gave both of us parties an impression of what the other might be like in some of the kinds of interfacing between teams we'd be doing. I came away with a positive impression of smart, humble, and amiable people, who'd done big things, and would be good to work with. (I was fortunate to get that offer, and in hindsight should've taken it, at the time.)
The most recent tag-team interview was for an early startup (where the plan was I'd be a key IC, and later lead engineering/technology, as the multi-talented founder moved to focus only on CEO duties). One of the interviews was a videoconf with all three non-CEO engineers at once, and I got a favorable initial impression of them, but I had a lot more questions and felt like maybe I was being dumped on them without them having enough info about me. Later, as the founder put together an offer and bounced it off me, one of the diligence things I asked for was to meet one-on-one with at least one of the engineers from the tag-team, when we might speak more candidly than in a group, develop a little rapport, etc. Founder declined, and said something like, that wouldn't be useful. (Then other things came up on my calendar, and I'm embarrassed to say I accidentally ghosted them, so I never asked him what he meant, nor clarified why I still thought it'd be very useful to talk with any one of them one-on-one before signing on.)
Despite the dynamic in which you were the one being tag-teamed in an interview, would your catalyst presence bring the interview back on track, with subtle grace?
At the end of a series of "bad interview loop" tests, you learn that they secretly weren't interviewing you to be a coder, and now you are the next chosen-one CEO of Lego.