Student Question:
After reading your post on how to assess job candidates by asking for specific details, I started wondering — can job seekers use the same approach to evaluate their interviewer (their potential future direct manager)?
A couple of days ago I went to an interview and wanted to understand the business interviewer’s previous project experience in detail, but he wouldn’t share. He said to wait until I joined and then he’d “brag about it.” Does that mean the interviewer wasn’t very capable?
Master Chi’s Response:
A lot of people misunderstand interviews. They imagine it as an interrogation — both sides exchanging scripted lines, feeling each other out.
A good interview is actually a deep, substantive exchange between two people about the work itself.
When you’re answering the interviewer’s questions, you’re thinking.
When the interviewer is asking, they’re thinking too.
It’s a process where both sides think together.
What you’re picturing — “probing for details” — sounds more like playing interrogator: pressing for every clue, trying to catch someone in a lie or expose their incompetence.
What probing for details actually looks like is both parties having a focused discussion about specific work situations.
Say you describe a major project from your past — one that was hard to push forward, where you overcame real obstacles, put in serious effort, and finally got other departments on board, leading to a successful outcome.
The interviewer would then ask: what obstacles did you actually overcome? What was your thinking? What exactly did you do? If your manager hadn’t stepped in, did you have a backup plan?
That is attention to detail.
And while the interviewer is learning about your experience, they’re simultaneously thinking — thinking about whether your capabilities fit the role, whether your approach is sound and effective.
So in the course of the conversation, you’ll naturally be able to sense: are their questions hitting the mark? Do they have depth? Do they cut to what actually matters?
If you can’t pick up on their thinking at all, then even if they recited every project they’d ever done to you like a grocery list, it wouldn’t help.
Because what they’ve done may simply be beyond your current frame of reference — and you have no way to evaluate it based on your own experience alone.
I can’t say for certain what that interviewer’s level was. But if you can’t identify the key points yourself, you have no way of gauging someone else’s competence to begin with.