And here with the Counterpoint is Orbert
Thank you. First of all, Stadler is correct. I've done it that way and it works well. But here's a fun story about how I took exactly the opposite approach and it still worked.
I'd been working at one of the big airlines in the 90's when business was good, travel was up, money was flowing in. In the 00's, ("post 9/11") it all came apart, airlines took a huge hit, and after bankruptcy cutting my pay three times and my benefits twice, I starting looking at contracting gigs. I wasn't sure how badly I wanted it or needed it, so I only took it half seriously. I got set up for a phone interview with some company in the burbs needing a programmer. I took the morning off from work to do the phone interview from home, then I'd go in after lunch. The beauty and irony of taking company time to find another job secretly made me chuckle. Anyway, the kids went to school, wife went to work, and I visited my secret stash on the top shelf of the closet, and went outside the back door to smoke.
I came back in, made another cup of coffee, and did the phone interview. I was (obviously) quite relaxed and "myself" but a modified version of myself. They asked a lot of questions technical, business, semi-personal, all that. I answered honestly. I mentally put myself at a party, chatting with some guys I'd just met about work at our respective places, comparing notes and shit. They asked in a general way how to write efficient code. A magnificently open-ended yet specific question. Well, judicious use of the DROP and KEEP statements, knowing when to use an IF and when to use a WHERE is huge, paying attention to sort order and which variables are involved, always keeping in mind whether you're going to be summarizing later, so maybe you can kill multiple birds simultaneously by creating multiple datasets now. You know, the regular stuff.
Silence for a few seconds. There were three of them on the other side, sitting in a room on a speakerphone, and they'd just muted it and were talking amongst themselves. I'd either just blown them away or blown my shot with them, and I was too stoned to really know which. I took another sip of my coffee.
They came back on, they thought that that was a great answer. I told them Thanks, you know I've been doing this for ten years now, I guess I'm getting pretty good at it. They said Yeah, we can tell. But it wasn't a cynical thing, they were just acknowledging that I seemed to know what the fuck I was talking about. I decided to go for broke. I went faux-modest with them as I embarrassingly admitted to copping a few awards from various departments who all thought I was pretty good, and as far as I know, I could come work for you guys and do the same thing. Most of it was right there on my resume, which they were all sitting there holding.
More silence. They wanted me to come in and talk with them in person. Is Wednesday okay? This was Monday. Sure. I'd been working at my current job for just shy of 10 years, and decided somewhere in there to stop cutting my hair. I'd already gone full "Asian-looking Guy" and I wasn't going to cut it for an interview, something I would've done 10 years ago. I took Wednesday morning off (because fuck them), visited the top shelf again, and drove up to do the interview. I washed my hair and wore it long that day.
I got the job. They said they'd get back to me, but I got a call the next day. They said they'd wanted to make a decision before the end of the week. Ha! You fucking liars. You started phone screening people three days ago. You just saw me yesterday. You want me. You want to fellate me, admit it, and you want to do it before someone else gets a chance to. (Plus I work there now and know that there's no way it goes this fast.)
Anyway, it can work. I just got my super cool stupid gift commemorating 10 years at my current job.