As I recall Joseph Campbell once highlighted, the Japanese have a have a distinct tense in describing what they do as roughly equivalent to the English phrase "to play at." The idea isn't to make what you do overly templatized or rigid. When I talk about approaching an interaction as a "game," what I mean is that I try to stay fluid and engage in a non-formulaic manner.
Like it or not, candidates will almost always try to present a perfect image of themselves. However there's a "real story" under every veneer, and it's always a challenge to figure out what that real story is. I know plenty of interviewers who complain about never getting any real signal from their culture fit interviews, and when I dig deeper on why, it's because they came in with a set of questions, asked those questions verbatim, and wrote down the responses verbatim (as another reply to my comment suggested is the "right" approach). Most of the time, the candidate gave a guarded and carefully filtered narrative to all the questions. Nothing genuine makes it onto the table.
My argument is that the less effective results tend to come from a failure to "play at" interviewing! And it can be done completely respectfully and tactfully, leaving the candidate with a sense of having really connected with the interviewer.
> It also helps that I have absolutely nothing to lose and can walk into the room refreshed and cool as a cucumber, while the candidate has a job on the line and has already been hit with at least a couple of really tough and nerve-wracking technical questions"
Yes, I do think I can diagnose your effectiveness and contribution at least when it pertains to hiring in so far as this attitude is 99.9% of the time an extreme liability. If you work at big tech companies, it won't matter because you've never had to own the results of that mistake, but if you ever run your own company, you'll learn this lesson the hard way really quickly.
What you don't seem to understand is that interviewing is just as much a sales process as it is a measurement. Your argument that candidates try to present a perfect image of themselves is just that, an argument. Have you ever interviewed a candidate that candidly admitted their unvarnished struggles because they know that showing the strength and fortitude to admit that indicates a level of maturity and security that they want to communicate? Would it surprise you if I told you that these candidates tend to be the ones that have multiple offers?
It's around the same time that you realize how much expanding the team by a single engineer can add to the bottom line of the company (and conversely what the lost opportunity cost is) that you stop thinking like this. Frankly, I don't mind if you do this because very selfishly, as a hiring manager, your loss is my gain. If all of my competition wizened up over night and stopped making unforced errors like this, it would make it slightly harder for me to hire. But given that this is HN, in good faith, I do feel like it's worth giving you the warning here -- what you're doing is not a great strategy.
> It also helps that I have absolutely nothing to lose and can walk into the room refreshed and cool as a cucumber, while the candidate has a job on the line and has already been hit with at least a couple of really tough and nerve-wracking technical questions. This stacks the deck massively in my favor.
You don't know this. Your candidate doesn't necessarily have a job on the line. They may have several offers in hand, and they may only be screening to get more offers into the mix. They may know that it's a candidate's market right now, but it doesn't mean they don't have good alternatives, and it doesn't mean that you aren't permanently leaving a bad impression on the candidate you're interviewing, one that will follow you even if you don't remain at the company you're at. You're slowly poisoning the pool of candidates in your extended network, and while it may not bite you immediately, there's a fair chance that by the time you see the ramifications of your actions, it will be too late.
In particular, you treating this like a "game" or a "playing field" to be outmaneuvered speaks volumes to the low level of professionalism you place on the interviewing process, and it makes you a real liability to the company. This is the cultural brand that you're communicating to folks being introduced to your company, and it's not a competitive one. In a large company, the relative effect may end up being significantly small and diluted, so much that while negative, it never ends up being a problem for your direct manager. On the other hand, if some kind of feedback loop ever emerges that connects this kind of pattern of behavior to you that your hiring manager looks at, I wouldn't be surprised if you receive a stern conversation and expectation for change. Of the engineers I've managed over the years, this sort of behavior is a huge red flag. It's an unforced error and a huge liability, and this sort of behavior when you think there are no repercussions tells you a lot about someone. This kind of personality is usually the first to go or that I manage out, because it's not great raw material for building the culture and collaboration I want to see.