We Don’t Care Why You Want to Work for Us🤯

                                                                                 Photo by Pacto Visual on Unsplash

I’ve completed a few interview cycles recently.

One common question has always stood out to me and is usually a given in any particular interview.

“Why do you want to work here?”

I always (and I mean always) prepare for this question. I align myself with their values, and mission and visualize myself spending the next 5–10 years in their company.

So, last week the most unexpected thing happened. They didn’t ask.

Motivation? We’re Not Motivated to Know

I sat for my video interview.

I’d always admired their innovative approach and could see myself growing with them and their shiny products aligned with my core values.

I’m ready, they asked for me to introduce myself and off we went. Straight into some live coding. Then straight into some STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) questions then we bumped out of the rest of the interview.

Did they…forget…that I needed to be motivated to work in this role?

Perhaps the company thought that once I’d produced an extensive tech test, online test and recruiter calls, I was desperate enough to give my all for the company without wasting time checking this in the interview. As long as my technical skills are up to the job, why bother investigating any interest in the product of the company (I guess).

A Bizarre Shift in Priorities

I used to know there was an emphasis on cultural fit. Tech giants and startups alike would spend an incredible amount of effort deciding if your “vibe” would fit with the team.

I even remember a time in the deep and distant past when if you could demonstrate a passion for learning technology that would trump a candidate with the requisite skills — skills can always be learned, but attitude cannot.

Perhaps those days are over. Perhaps I’m out of step with what we would want to deliver from a recruitment process. Yet in an era where AI is removing some of the heavy lifting from coding perhaps culture should be at the forefront of interview processes? What do I know, I’m just a software engineer.

Perhaps cultural fit is now a luxury rather than a necessity and as long as you can type to code you fit into our company. Yet that doesn’t make sense, as we had plenty of time for STAR questions.

Checking Boxes Instead of Hearts

The STAR questions were sufficient for assessing past performance but are generally lousy at gauging future enthusiasm.

So, if we want to know how I handle challenges and deliver results, why don’t we want to know about how excited (or not) someone is about the company, role or project?

Let me make it clear to you. There wasn’t a question about what makes me tick on any form, any stage of the process or care about how I might contribute to the company’s culture. 

A Lucky Escape?

I understand why we have live coding tests, but they reduce candidates to a set of technical skills.

If a company only wants you to churn out code on command, so have the technical skill and a track record of doing so, I infer that the company doesn’t care about those things.

If I’m a mere cog in a machine only valued for my output, you’d think that I would be happy that I won’t be working in that environment.

However here is the issue. I need to work, and no employer is perfect. This job included a salary hike, and I do believe that you gain experience and knowledge simply by changing roles. Every opportunity is just that, and opportunity — and you do never know exactly what you’re giving up by missing the path never travelled.

Conclusion

I found several things about the interview unsettling. A typical interview allows me to display my technical skills but also lets me express my enthusiasm for the project or how I might contribute to the mission. I felt let down by the process and makes me wonder if the company cares about people at all (in contradiction to their feedback).

In a rush to assess technical competence, we might all be losing sight of the bigger picture. I want to work somewhere where the work matters, and it’s more than just a paycheck. So why is it so difficult to find a company that aligns with me on that value alone?