I was invited to an unexpected and urgent second postdoc interview (in less than 24h) - Is this fair?

Question

I had postdoc at a top 10 university in the world. The email of the first interview said I should expect questions around the job description. The first interview was very smooth and I felt very good about it.

A few days later, I received an email in the afternoon, the email said I have a second interview tomorrow morning and I should expect questions around the job description (I think these are just automatic emails).

The second interview however, was a bit different. In order to decide between me and another candidate, they said they needed a technical interview which they presented a problem I needed to solve in 10 minutes, the problem required a lot of programming skills and classic concepts. I haven't programmed in a while now and nothing in the job description not in the email says "programming skills".

I gave okay answers and played it safe a lot in my problem solving approach. I couldn't solve the problem in the given time because I simply needed to refresh my memory and remember some concepts, but I did get a "thumbs up" from the potential PI when I was explaining some stuff. Unfortunately, I wasn't selected and I think the other candidate gave better answers.

Now days later, I can't stop thinking about that whole process. Normally, if the panel expects a presentation, they mention it in the invitation email. It's very weird and a bit unfair to do that to candidates they clearly liked in a very short amount of time. I truly believe that the interview could have been way better if they mentioned anything about a technical interview. Just because one candidate performed better (obviously, people are different), doesn't make the evaluation process fair. What do you think about the situation, is this a normal routine for postdoc interviews?

PS: The postdoc was in the UK and I live in north Africa. I am saying this because perhaps it justifies why the HR send an email and didn't call (perhaps they can only call candidates within the UK). The field is Computer Science.

Answer 1

It's not respectful to applicants for the interview process to be unclear or changed at the last minute. However, for various reasons, many of them completely innocent (busy people, miscommunications), this may happen.

It's also not always transparent what an interviewer is looking for. If the interview has you attempt "Task A", it may not be performance on Task A that you are being evaluated on. Instead, you may be evaluated for how you handle an unexpected change in plans. Or you may be evaluated on how you ask for clarification around a task, how you manage time if a task cannot be completed within the window you are given, what you do when you find you are stuck on something (do you ask for help? Stop and admit you are stuck? Make something up that might work? Pretend you know what you're doing?), etc.

Judging "success" on this sort of task is entirely up to the interviewer's views and opinion. As far as whether it's "fair", well...the definition of "fair" is a moving target and various opinions would give various descriptions of "fair". In one sense, as long as the same information is communicated in the same time frame to all the candidates, and all candidates are judged by the same criteria, it is "fair" among those candidates.

As far as whether it's the process that selects the true best candidate for the job, well... if we had a better way of determining the best candidate than the clunky interview process, we'd use that method instead.

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I'm not sure you can do much about this except for continuing to interview for positions that interest you. Positions at desirable universities are likely to attract many qualified applicants, and you aren't guaranteed a job just because you're qualified. Ultimately, they have to select someone, and it's not even really possible for the person doing the hiring to know that they've got the best one.

I'd recommend not spending more time thinking about the process of this one interview. Maybe their expectation is that programming is a bigger part of the role but didn't think it was necessary to mention it. Maybe they had a preferred candidate already but lacked the justification they needed and invented this task on the fly to create it. Maybe they're disorganized. The answer, whatever it is, won't help for your next interview. Maybe you even dodged a bullet and this is a bad work environment, and had you been hired your next Academia.SE question would be about being stuck in a post doc where you're just treated as a programmer and aren't making any progress on independent research projects. Move on and forget this one.

Answer 2

What do you think about the situation, is this a normal routine for postdoc interviews?

No. It’s not normal in several ways.

It’s not normal for a postdoc interview to have someone else schedule your interview for a specific time without consulting you first about whether the time works for you.

It’s doubly not normal when you are informed of the interview on such short notice, in the afternoon before an interview scheduled for the following morning.

(A possible exception to the above would be if it had been previously communicated to you ahead of time that this is how the scheduling would be carried out. But it sounds like that isn’t what happened in your case.)

Separately from that, it’s not normal to be tested on specific skills like programming, when you cannot reasonably guess based on the job description or obvious things about the PI’s research that those skills would be relevant for the job you’re being interviewed for.

Overall, it sounds like you had an unpleasant experience - sorry! - which does not reflect well on the competence and professionalism of the people who were interviewing you. Hope things go better next time and that you end up working with more thoughtful people.

Answer 3

Maybe you should try to see it from the other perspective.

What would you do if you had to decide between two candidates and cannot decide based on the interview. If you are not involved in HR hiring standards, you could easily try to break the tie by scheduling a second round of interviews on the fly. Postdoc positions tend to be short for getting collaborative work done and you do not have the time to wait for the post doc to acquire skills that you now have decided are needed. (Projects evolve and between posting an opportunity and interviewing the profile of the ideal candidate has changed.) Maybe you would want to break the tie by looking for something that is valuable, but not part of the original description.

So, (quite) a bit ad hoc, but presumably no malice nor indications of a bad working environment. My reading of the situation is that you came in second, which is disappointing, but should also give you hope about your employability.

Answer 4

You might've been the subject of a stress interview. These interviews are supposed to put you on the defensive and see how you react under pressure. For example, the interviewer might ask "your CV looks inadequate, what makes you think you can do this job?" This question is obviously aggressive, but it's kind of the point: it shows how you react. Other examples of stress interview questions are "How many rats are there in New York City?" or "Here's a problem, how would you solve it?".

Stress interviews are of course stressful, but don't take it personally. The interviewer doesn't hate you, they just want to see how you perform when stressed. From your description it sounds like you performed OK, but the other candidate was simply better. It's probable you could've done better if you had more time to prepare, but that probably also applies to the other candidate. Such is life. Good luck with your other interviews!