In face to face interviews the candidate is likely to give an answer based on their espoused theory of the world and hence can come across as being very good if they know the type of answers you’re looking for.

I’ve interviewed a couple of people over the last few years where I couldn’t find fault with any of the answers being given but I was convinced that they weren’t giving me an accurate picture of the candidate. The answers were too perfect.

Luckily we have an opportunity to get a closer look at a candidate’s theory in action in the pair programming interview that we do.

I believe HashRocket take this even further by having candidates pair with their team for a week before they potentially get hired.

In a recent conversation with Dave Cameron I was telling him about the difficulties I’d been having in applying the ideas I’d read in Crucial Confrontations, Agile Coaching and Fearless Change.

I understand the ideas that the books are suggesting but in a real life situation I nearly always make a mistake.

Dave pointed out that this is the difference between knowledge and experience - just because you know what to do doesn’t mean that you will do it unless you’ve had some experience of the situation before.

This sounds pretty similar to the difference between espoused theory and theory in action - I know what I want to do in a situation but at the moment that isn’t what I actually do.