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A few years ago, I used to conduct interviews and I remember one thing clearly: when a candidate got scattered, when their ideas spilled out in every direction, it didn’t bother me. If anything, it intrigued me. I’d bring them back and ask questions, curious to see what was underneath. And often, I found it fascinating. I should say, I know what it’s like to have a head full of ideas and only manage to put a sliver of them into words.
This piece isn’t about the candidate. My April article already covered that – what they live through in the format, what the interview asks them to manage in real time. This one looks at the other side of the table. At the place where someone decides, sometimes without realizing it, what counts as a good answer.
The filter we don’t see
We often blame the format. And honestly, I’m the first to criticize it when it’s followed too rigidly. The trick questions, the fuzzy criteria. The résumé too, which never says much about what a person is really worth. All of that plays a part. But even the best format is only as good as the gaze applying it. That’s what gives it its colour.
Let’s take an example. A candidate takes a long moment before answering a question. Faced with that silence, one interviewer thinks “he’s hesitating, he doesn’t know his stuff.” Another thinks: “he’s thinking, he’s taking the time to get it right.” Same silence. Two readings. And it’s that reading that decides what comes next, far more than the silence itself.
Most of the time, the one who reads it wrong isn’t acting in bad faith. They’re applying a grid they’ve never had to question, because most of the people they’ve seen matched what they expected. The catch is that this grid was built for one kind of cognitive style. And it stays invisible until someone doesn’t fit it.
What ambiguity leaves behind
An interview is already a loaded moment. Loaded cognitively, loaded emotionally. The person manages the environment, decodes the unspoken, monitors their own reactions, puts together answers in a format that may not be theirs at all. They’re running on empty. They’re drawing on their reserves just to perform.
And then something happens. A furrowed brow. A silence that lasts a second too long.
For most people, it’s background noise. For a brain that processes information differently, that signal captures everything. All of it. It pulls them elsewhere, cognitively, at the worst possible moment. The person isn’t quite in the room anymore – they’re decoding what that look meant, whether their answer was the right one, what’s coming next. For some people, a skeptical glance can even trigger an intense emotional reaction that has nothing to do with their competence. It’s something we’re seeing more and more in people with Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), even if research is only just beginning to put words to it. It’s a whole subject on its own. It’s sometimes called Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD). I won’t dwell on it here. But for the curious, it’s well worth reading up on.
And it doesn’t stop when the interview ends. A look that throws you off can haunt you for a long time. The scene replays on a loop, again and again. The words analyzed, the glances dissected. Because an unspoken thing, by definition, isn’t said. You have to guess at it. And you can guess at it a thousand ways – most of the time, the wrong one. When nothing is left unsaid, it’s so much lighter.
Brené Brown, who has a real gift for making things simple, says something that often comes back to me: “Clear is kind, unclear is unkind”. Clarity is more than a courtesy. For some brains, it’s a condition for staying in the conversation. If you’re looking at someone with skepticism, or rolling your eyes without even meaning to, you might as well name it. “Sorry, if I’m looking at you like this, it’s just because I have a question.” And then you ask it, the question. It costs so much less than a look you leave the other person to interpret on their own.
What I learned from the other side of the table
When I conducted interviews, I often had a colleague beside me. We were two curious people. She’d catch things I missed and I’d catch things she missed. We complemented each other well. And what might have thrown others off, an answer going in every direction, a long silence before a reply, for us, it was intriguing.
That curiosity, I think it comes from my background in customer service. Twenty-five years trying to understand human behaviour. What’s behind that look? What’s behind that hesitation? And above all, I liked to ask. “I sensed a hesitation. Tell me what’s going on, I’m genuinely interested.” You have to have that curiosity – and it can absolutely be learned.
Because very often, what throws us off in an interview is just someone who works differently under pressure. Nothing more.
Let me give you an example. An autistic person will sometimes prepare so much – every possible question dissected, every worst-case scenario gone over with a fine-tooth comb – that they can end up coming across as not quite genuine. And the day you step outside the frame they’d prepared, the overload can set in.
Someone with ADHD is often the opposite. An urge to improvise, to live a little dangerously. Or else preparation left to the last minute. It gives lively answers that go all over the place, stories that stretch out and leave the impression of being hard to follow. What registers: a lack of focus. What we missed: an associative mind that just needed a bit of room to land.
Take someone living with dyslexia, too. The fear, sometimes, is being handed a written test on the spot, or being asked about how they learn. The format then starts measuring something that has nothing to do with what the job will actually ask day to day. And the person leaves with a sense of failure that isn’t really theirs.
What conducting interviews taught me is that a scattered answer often holds everything you need. Sometimes all it takes is being willing to bring the person back, to ask for an example, instead of concluding too fast.
What this sheds light on
You might recognize the scene. A client comes back to see you after an interview. They were prepared, truly invested. And yet they tell you: “I think I blew it.” You ask what happened and they can’t quite explain it. They keep coming back to one detail: “At one point, the interviewer furrowed her brow. After that, I lost my footing.”
That furrowed brow? The interviewer has likely forgotten it already. The candidate hasn’t. He replayed it the whole drive home. He tried to guess what it meant, what was wrong with him. And he walked into your office convinced the problem was him.
Something happened in that room during the interview. A signal poorly sent, poorly received. An unspoken thing that pulled him elsewhere at the worst moment. These people often know exactly what they’re worth. What they’re looking for, sometimes, is just someone to confirm that what went wrong wasn’t in them.
Twice in my career
I sometimes think back to the rare times a recruiter called me after an interview to explain their decision, even when it was a no and to ask: “Do you mind if I offer you a piece of advice?” It happened twice. Twice in my whole career. And I’m still grateful today, because those people named things for me I’d never have seen on my own. It became something I made a point of doing in turn. Some take the advice, some don’t. And sometimes, you’re surprised by what comes after.
To close
Let me be clear about one thing. There are so many good practices out there and passionate people doing this work with enormous care. My intention here isn’t to point a finger at anyone.
It’s simply to put forward one small idea. When a behaviour throws us off in an interview, a silence that’s a beat too long, an answer that veers off, instead of noting it as an inconsistency, we could ask ourselves: what if the person in front of me simply has a different cognitive style than mine? What if we went to meet them with a question, before concluding? Sometimes, the answer surprises you. In a good way.
Maybe, reading these lines, a face came to mind. For some, it’ll be a client supported with care, who came back from an interview empty-handed without quite understanding why. For others, a candidate they interviewed and couldn’t quite read.
If I had to keep just one thing from all of this, it would be this: clarity is a form of kindness. A question asked out loud, a hesitation named instead of left hanging, it spares the other person hours of guessing at what we didn’t say. It’s often the finest gift we can give, on either side of the table.
