Overcoming stereotype threat in coding interviews

Yet another obstacle for women in tech

Stereotype threat has been demonstrated to negatively affect certain racial/ethnic groups when they become hyper-aware that their performance could confirm the very stereotype that they wish to avoid. The pressure to not conform to the stereotype creates anxiety, which in turn adversely affects performance.

I recently listened to Adam Grant’s podcast episode on Stereotype Threat with guest Claude Steele. I cannot stop thinking about the similarities between stereotype threat that caused women to perform 15% lower in SAT scores to what's happening now with tech recruitment. See if you can spot it too.

The symptoms of the threat

1. Shift from doing the task to worrying about how you are doing the task.
2. More interest in the outcome of the test increases the stress.
3. Lots of worrying about performance interferes with the functioning of the pre-frontal cortex raising anxiety and inability to recall.

When we are tested in something that we have invested lot of time and effort into and identify ourselves with like a career as a software developer, the stereotype threat becomes very real. There is a constant worry about our performance in an interview test environment not reflecting what you can do.

Women in Software Development

As women in a very male dominated domain, we feel the need to beat a few stereotypes.

1. Women in tech roles are incompetent.
2. Women are hired for diversity rather than qualifications.

However, when we buckle down and actively try to beat the stereotype, we tend to burn out. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. More women exit the Software Engineering profession due to lack of support, lack of representation and simply lack of understanding.

https://www.celential.ai/blog/percentage-of-female-software-engineers/

The abomination that is live coding interviews

WHY? I understand if your company is Google or Amazon where you have to wade through thousands of applicants and an online coding test will help narrow the candidate pool.

I have noticed even a small team with 10 engineers tend to practice this awful ritual called live coding challenges. What you get in a live coding challenge is a snapshot of someone’s performance in that particular moment which happened to be a high stress and high anxiety inducing coding test. Saying that the performance in that 30 mins is indicative of a person’s coding abilities is like saying one’s IQ score is an all-encompassing indication of one’s intellectual ability.

With stereotype threat, this interview format has added yet another obstacle for women to stay in software development domain. As a very anxious person in-general, I do not fare well in live coding interviews. At first, the rejections made me question my abilities as an engineer. It took few years to learn to not place my identity on work and my ability on coding tests.

Overcoming the stereotype threat in interviews

As much as I would like to see the practice of live coding interviews go away, we won’t be able to avoid it for the foreseeable future. A few ways to overcome the threat as discussed by Adam Grant and Claude Steele.

1. Get perspective. This one performance is not indicative of my ability.
2. Practice. We only interview a handful of times in our career. Train the brain to not go into fright or flight mode by practicing and getting familiar with the interview format.
3. Self-Affirmation. What other domain in life am I good at?

According to self-affirmation theory, when people experience a stereotype threat they can reaffirm the self even in a domain unrelated to the stereotyped domain. For example, an African American student who is stereotyped by his teacher as unintelligent can reaffirm the self by thinking about how great he is at negotiating interpersonal conflict. — Claude Steele

What can we do to help?

Stay tuned for the next article that talks about individual and organizational contribution to reduce the stereotype threat.