Flipping the Bozo Bit

The expression “Flipping the Bozo Bit” means you are dismissing someone as an idiot and refusing to take them seriously. It’s a major step and is usually not reversible. It’s not constructive either, because the ‘Bozos’ are often your colleagues whom you’ll have to work with again in the future.

In rare cases in my interviews I will cut the discussion short. Sometimes it becomes clear early on that the candidate has no clue, making me wonder how they ever passed the phone interview. Still, ending an interview early is a major decision and not something I do lightly.

It’s probably all too easy to flip the bozo bit on a clueless candidate. After all, it’s been said that we usually make a judgment about people we meet within the first 15 seconds of the encounter. That process may take longer in a job interview, but I suspect that within the first few minutes many interviewers will have formed an opinion about the candidate. This practice of course is not ideal, but it’s only natural and perhaps unavoidable.

Hence what we need to do as interviewers is to try and suppress this natural tendency to jump to conclusions about a candidate. Perhaps the candidate is inarticulate or a poor English speaker, but we cannot let those factors alone drive our impression of them. We need to talk with them in detail before we start to form any conclusions.

So let’s say we’ve gotten past the greetings and chitchat. As the interviewer I’ve asked the candidate some technical questions and they have missed every single one, even in areas they claimed to be strong in. Then what?

Usually I’ll try to cover all the bases and ask them questions in each of the technologies we use. It’s possible they performed poorly in the early skill questions but may redeem themselves later on. This has happened in the past where I’ve found candidates who were clueless about OOP and C# but displayed strong HTML/CSS/JavaScript skills, just because of the nature of their previous experience. And I’ve ended up hiring several of them.

But what happens if someone is clearly lacking in all the important knowledge they claim on their resume? Is it safe to flip that Bozo bit and thank them for coming (even though they’ve just wasted your time)? Usually the more people there are involved in the interview the earlier I try to wrap things up. But if by some scheduling oddity I’m the only person they’re interviewing, I’ll grit my teeth and try to give them every opportunity to redeem themselves.