For any type of interview, it’s essential to have key topics you want to explore. In job interviews, the interviewer asks questions based on the job description and the candidate’s resume. But, there is an initial selection process before candidates are invited to interview—not everyone gets the opportunity. At IETF, the NomCom is required to interview every nominee, which is highly time-consuming. I believe this process should be reconsidered. Instead of interviewing everyone, NomCom could first review community feedback and questionnaire responses, compare them against the job description, and then decide who should be interviewed. To ensure fairness, all interviewees should be asked the same core questions. However, the initial questions should be broad enough to allow interviewers to dive deeper into specific areas as needed. It is up to the interviewer to determine how much to explore one topic versus another, all within the strict 45-minute time limit. In general, conducting interviews is challenging. That’s why only a few journalists excel at making interviews truly engaging and insightful. Dean On 20 Mar 2025, at 20:29, Barry Leiba wrote: > Online interviews work well if *all* the interviews are online, and > most boards that I'm involved with do that now. It's true that some > people do poorly online who might interview better in person, but I'm > not sure whether the reverse isn't also true. Some people will do > better if interviewed in a non-English language too. We can't deal > with all of those aspects. But, as you note, the main thing to me is > that putting people at a disadvantage if they can't travel to > interview in person select for the same set of people all the time. > If we really do want to make these positions accessible to people from > more parts of the world and different financial backing (or lack > thereof), then we have to change the parameters. > > Barry > > > On Fri, Mar 21, 2025 at 5:40 AM Eliot Lear <lear@xxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> Barry asked Dean why in this day and age does the NOMCOM do in-person interviews? >> >> Without going into the details, based on my experience in this NOMCOM, remote candidates were put at a disadvantage, because numerous aspects of communication (body language, additional humanization, eye contact, contact outside the interview, etc) were lost over conferencing. >> >> We're in a bit of a catch 22: >> >> Do we want the NOMCOM to lose that additional communication? Performing all interviews prior to the 3rd IETF compresses the timeline, and requires addressing time zone and scheduling conflicts. For non-native English speakers, I think there is an additional disadvantage as microphones can make accents more difficult to understand. This is no small road block. >> On the other hand, if people are required to travel to a conference, then only sponsored or rich people can do the job. This is no small road block. >> >> I'll add one more: remote interviews prior to the IETF put candidates at an additional disadvantage in that many NOMCOM members are learning as we go, in terms of using the form of interview that is agreed. I will tell you, I was quite stiff in my first interview, for instance. >> >> The astute will notice that I haven't offered any grand answers. I wish I had some. Maybe someone smarter than me has a good approach. >> >> Eliot >> >> >>
