Steering without control (their agenda, and hidden)

Parent: stages-and-gates

The interview gate is soft: you want to steer toward your goal, but (a) you don't control the agenda — the other party does, and (b) you don't even know their agenda. Steering from the controlled seat ("reverse control"). The theory, grouped by which difficulty it answers:

The agenda is hidden (their type / state)

• Harsanyi games of incomplete information (Bayesian games) — they have a private type/agenda; you hold a belief over it and update as you go.
• POMDP / belief-space planning — their agenda = hidden state; your actions do double duty: probe (infer it) + steer (toward your goal).

You can't decide for them, only move them

• Bayesian persuasion (Kamenica–Gentzkow) — you can't choose their action, but you control your disclosure to push their posterior toward the decision you want. (An interviewee is doing persuasion.)
• Signaling games — signal to shape a hidden-type receiver.

You can only nudge, not command

• Ramadge–Wonham — act only on your controllable events; theirs are uncontrollable → ramadge-wonham-supervisory-control.
• Soft control / leader-based control of multi-agent systems — steer a system as an influence node inside it, without authority. This is the name for "reverse control": the controlled element becomes the regulator.

Operational

• Boyd's OODA loop — get inside their decision cycle; shape their orientation and tempo.
• Influence Without Authority (Cohen–Bradford); frame control (Goffman) — whoever defines the situation / asks the questions, leads (the reverse-question move).

→ Combined: in a hidden-type game, use strategic disclosure (persuasion) + only-your-controllable moves (RW / soft control) + OODA / frame to push a decider you don't control toward your goal. This is the theory behind the soft gate in a stage-gated interview.