I did something unusual in an interview this year: I paused it halfway through and gave the candidate feedback.
Their intro was articulate, structured, and clear. But as soon as we moved to open questions, the atmosphere changed completely. Long pauses. Repeating questions. Typing in the background. Answers that sounded like they were reading directly off a screen.
Normally, interviewers just note this down, let the time run out, and send a standard rejection email two weeks later. The candidate never learns what actually went wrong.
So I stopped the assessment and asked:
Are you nervous? Take a breath. Please just be yourself. It's completely fine if you don't know an answer—just tell me frankly and we'll move on. We make our decision based on your overall behavior, not on one perfect answer. At the moment, it sounds like you're reading a script rather than having a conversation.
They admitted they were anxious. For the rest of the call, the conversation was much better. They were less polished, but much more real.
An interview is a brief window to find out who someone actually is. If anxiety is hiding that person, waiting silently until the end helps nobody.
Have you ever given or got feedback during an interview? I think we should do it a bit more often. I like it actually.
This is part of my "100 Days of Year One" series. Follow along as I share what I've learned in my first year as Head of Data and Cloud.