Episode 494: Am I interviewing all wrong and leaving old team chats

32 snips

Jan 5, 2026

Struggling to articulate gut feelings during interviews? Discover insights on trusting your instincts while setting clear criteria for candidate evaluation. The hosts explore how early rejections save time and prevent awkward hiring situations. Plus, they tackle the etiquette of leaving old team chats after an internal transfer, emphasizing norms and attention management. Learn how to exit gracefully from previous channels while maintaining good relationships. Tune in for practical advice on navigating these common workplace dilemmas!

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ADVICE

Trust And Articulate Your Screening Gut

Trust your gut when early-screening candidates and say no earlier to avoid wasting time.
Work to articulate objective criteria that map to the instincts you already have so you can reject confidently.

INSIGHT

Frontline Screens Have High Rejection Rates

Interviewers upstream in the funnel reject far more candidates than downstream interviewers.
Seeing a truly excellent candidate recalibrates your confidence that heavy rejection at the front end is normal.

ANECDOTE

Resume Mismatch At The Screen

Dave once interviewed a candidate whose resume showed Amazon experience but it was warehouse work, not software.
The mismatch produced an interview with zero programming background and an inevitable rejection.

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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

Dear Damison and Javison, I work at a very small startup (<10 engineers) and am trying to hire 2 engineers. I’m doing the intro/screener interview for these roles & am working with a recruiting firm to source candidates. My problem is that sometimes my intuition tells me that a candidate is not going to make it through our hiring process, but I can’t articulate why. Our hiring process is neither cruel nor unusual, and on paper these candidates have the skills and experience we’re looking for. But I feel a duty to let the hiring process do its work; I want to be principled about this. For reference, I’d say I screen out 2/3 of recruiter-screened candidates, and of those remaining, 2/5 of the candidates have the je ne sais quoi for which I should be saying non, merci. One made it all the way to reference checks! Do I need to do a better job rejecting these nice, smart people instead of wasting our time? Also note that I am not a manager, and although I have a lot of experience interviewing candidates, this is the first time I’ve done the *first* interview with candidates (first-ish; the recruiting firm interviews them first).
Listener Jeppe says,

Hi Soft Skills nation,

What’s the accepted practice with staying or leaving the private chat channels of my previous team?

I work at a large company and recent switched teams internally. I helped establish the team and got along really well with them. The transfer was on good terms (they invited to their Christmas dinner after the transfer!) and my managers agreed that I could always help my old team in case something came up.

I’m still in the internal chat channels for my old team. I love hearing what they’re up to and catching up. They explicitly told me not to be a stranger, so I’m not! However, I don’t think there’s much business value in being in their channels. Sometimes we have more technical chats about internal tools, and it would probably be better if I had those discussion with my new team.

What should I do? Should I just stay until their manager decides to kick me out? Should I be proactive and talk with the manager about it? Should I leave a teary message about how I’m going to miss them all (even if I see them regularly at lunch and outside work sometimes)?