21–29 of 29 posts
Things like "How would you create minesweeper on the iPhone" or "How would you make an app that's Airbnb for dogsitters?"
Just try to see how people would approach the question.
I would love to be judged by my references earlier in the interview process, however this is not meritocratic. In fact it's the opposite since it favors nepotism and disadvantages people from historically disadvantaged backgrounds. This is the same reason CA introduced the recent law prohibiting employers from asking about salary history. But what is a "reference"? Often, it's a free-form phone call from the hiring m…
People who have been lucky enough to work great mentors, and smart & supportive colleagues, are at an advantage.
I personally didn't find one of these environments until 5 years into my career, so I'm well aware of the closed minded, short fused, agitated, demotivated, and political developers that exist out there. I know this may be hard to understand for anyone working in Silicon Valley where smart and open minded colleagues are probably the norm, but the other perspective is worth keeping in mind when it comes to references.
I had an idea a while back around inverting the interview/recruitment process, but a lack of resource/willpower/ability means I won't ever follow through with it. Regardless, I like the idea of it. If a third-party recruiter is involved, they will get in contact with a developer that they deem to be sellable. Once they've got his/her details, they'll pass them on to an employer, who will then interview them for the r…
I recently experienced this process, when a recruiter had "found" a technical test, and progressing to the next round was dependent on passing this. Unfortunately it wasn't related to the role, I do iOS and the test was a bunch of SQL related questions. I have barely touched SQL anything more than a basic select statement since college 9 years ago, as all searches are done through fetch requests and predicates. Long story short, it's not relevant. The recruiter was arrogant and didn't want to entertain the idea of finding a more relevant test. These people should not be trusted playing a role in the interview process at all.
However, what do you mean by "the interview is not for employment, but to sign up for a service"? This is interesting and may be worth exploring.
I want the interview be a form similar to hackathon. Given a software request (or a topic), design and implement it within 8 hours. For example, implementing a chat app.
As a general rule, if I'm asked to spend time on one of those coding assignments, I assume I have the job unless I really F it up. Only the top 2-3 contenders should be asked to spend more than half a day on one of these assignments, and they typically take half a day or more.
The best coding assignment I had from an interviewer is one where I got paid. It was part of their process, and wasn't a complete waste of time.
I had an idea a while back around inverting the interview/recruitment process, but a lack of resource/willpower/ability means I won't ever follow through with it. Regardless, I like the idea of it. If a third-party recruiter is involved, they will get in contact with a developer that they deem to be sellable. Once they've got his/her details, they'll pass them on to an employer, who will then interview them for the r…
There are a few recruiters that try to approximate this; see a list here: https://github.com/vchernoy/dreamjob
Ideally a company would have an open source code base and very clear issues with tags. With this, any sufficiently good pull request would automatically get you the job (a pull request to an appropriately difficult issue).
Great idea!
I had an idea a while back around inverting the interview/recruitment process, but a lack of resource/willpower/ability means I won't ever follow through with it. Regardless, I like the idea of it. If a third-party recruiter is involved, they will get in contact with a developer that they deem to be sellable. Once they've got his/her details, they'll pass them on to an employer, who will then interview them for the r…
This is a really bad idea letting the recruitment agency play a larger role as a gatekeeper. Recruiters have even less of an idea of what kind of technical testing would match a role than an employer, and should NEVER be trusted for this. I recently experienced this process, when a recruiter had "found" a technical test, and progressing to the next round was dependent on passing this. Unfortunately it wasn't related…
My problem with recruiters is that they are salespeople. That's all they are. They take a CV, and they sell it to someone, and ultimately it doesn't matter if the person is good or bad, all that matters is that sale. As you've rightly said, they don't know enough about the technical side to provide a technical review.
So, why not have a separate team wholly dedicated to technical vetting? Have the process be completely open to employers, so anyone looking to hire a developer can see exactly what is to be asked of their prospective employees. If the questions are bad, the employer can say so and a qualified developer hired by the recruiter can tweak the process.
It's essentially adding a separate team to the recruitment process, one that builds a robust interviewing framework. They don't need to be full-time either. They can be working developers on a freelance basis that have gone through the interview process, and know what questions to ask based on the stack an employer is using.
I had an idea a while back around inverting the interview/recruitment process, but a lack of resource/willpower/ability means I won't ever follow through with it. Regardless, I like the idea of it. If a third-party recruiter is involved, they will get in contact with a developer that they deem to be sellable. Once they've got his/her details, they'll pass them on to an employer, who will then interview them for the r…
>If, instead of having a skills-based interview with the employer, you had one with the recruiter, who would only take you on as a client if you matches a certain level of skill/talent, in theory everyone's problems are solved. There are a few recruiters that try to approximate this; see a list here: https://github.com/vchernoy/dreamjob
A lot of these platforms are trying to solve the process for huge companies that offer whiteboard algorithm-based interviews, whereas a local agency down the road just wants a Rails developer with ecommerce experience, or a .NET developer with Umbraco experience. It's these companies that are more likely to want to use a recruiter, and it's tech bosses at these companies that are often wary of not only other peoples interview processes, but their own.