My guess is that this kind of people will add a few remarks here and there, look at the persons doing one question, look at you while you answers, look at the other person doing the question, smile, look at you while you answers, make a small nod, ... Not stare at you with the eyes open like a cartoon character.
Re:Jessica Livingston
by mywittyname on Friday June 23, 2023 @03:42PM
(#36451340)
I would hope someone would introduce the person as, "just observing."
My past few jobs required interviewer training, which involved observing interviews. So pretty much any interview I was involved in had an observer.
I mean it is all fine. There are other more suitable candidates for them and other more suitable jobs for you. Else we would be totally fungible which I am sure employees wouldn't want (though employers may).
For another data point I'm not sure I would notice until later unless there were cues that one person wasn't simply taking the lead.
The YC interviews at the time were with 4 to 6 partners. So given 10 minutes an interview, it's natural that not everyone asks questions. Jessica almost never said a thing, but would be quite attentive. So it wouldn't be unnerving that there was someone that didn't get to ask questions in the interview.
I'd honestly be a little unnerved by this as an interviewee. I've seen interview shadowing before for people first starting to interview (and in the past have both shadowed and been shadowed), but having someone watch me like that not to learn how to interview but to just focus on monitoring me would feel very different. I definitely have an above average amount of social anxiety though, and one of the biggest things that induces it for me is not getting feedback about whether I'm communicating clearly, so maybe this is specific to me and not generally how people would react,