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Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

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Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#451

Post by vanceism7_ »

fhd2 wrote: post #416

The last time I've used a leet code style interview was in 2012, and it resulted in a bad hire (who just happened to have trained on the questions we used). I've hired something like 150 developers so far, and what I ended up with after a few years of trial and error: 1. Use recruiters and network: Wading through the sheer volume of applications was even nasty before COVID, I don't even want to imagine what it's like…

Wow, that was a great write up. Can I interview with you? Lol, everything you wrote was really spot on with my own interview experiences. I tend to get super nervous during interviews and have choked up on many interviews asking for live coding on crazy algorithm problems. It state of hiring seems to be really bad right now. But I'll take your advice and try to get in contact with some recruiters

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#452

Post by mavhc »

kamaal wrote: post #432
fhd2 wrote: post #416

The last time I've used a leet code style interview was in 2012, and it resulted in a bad hire (who just happened to have trained on the questions we used). I've hired something like 150 developers so far, and what I ended up with after a few years of trial and error: 1. Use recruiters and network: Wading through the sheer volume of applications was even nasty before COVID, I don't even want to imagine what it's like…

>>Do either no take home test, or one that takes at most two hours. I do discuss the solution candidates came up with, so as long as they can demonstrate they know what they did there, I don't care too much how they did it. If I do this part, it's just to establish some base line competency. The biggest problem with the take home tests are not people who don't show up due to not being able to finish the assignment, B…

If you're expecting a week's worth of work from them you'd better pay them for their time, if they turn up.

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#453

Post by Stratoscope »

asalahli wrote: post #443
Stratoscope wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was interviewing candidates at IBM, I came up with a process I was really happy with. It started with a coding challenge involving several public APIs, in fact the same coding challenge that was given to me when I interviewed there. What I added: 1. Instead of asking "do you have any questions for me?" at the very end, we started with that general discussion. 2. A few days ahead, I emailed the candidate the pr…

Love the 3rd point! I might start using that in my future interviews

Please report back when you do!

I don't remember how I came up with the idea. Maybe I just like learning things.

One candidate even wrote after their interview, "that was fun!"

Have you ever had a candidate say that? This was the moment when I realized I might be on to something. :-)

Interviews are too often an adversarial thing: "Are you good enough for us?"

But the real question is would we enjoy working together and build great things!

People talk about "signal" in an interview. Someone who has an interest they are passionate and curious about and likes to share it with others? That's a pretty strong signal to me.

Even if it has nothing to do with "coding".

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#454

Post by vanceism7_ »

Stratoscope wrote: post #435
fhd2 wrote: post #416

The last time I've used a leet code style interview was in 2012, and it resulted in a bad hire (who just happened to have trained on the questions we used). I've hired something like 150 developers so far, and what I ended up with after a few years of trial and error: 1. Use recruiters and network: Wading through the sheer volume of applications was even nasty before COVID, I don't even want to imagine what it's like…

When I was interviewing candidates at IBM, I came up with a process I was really happy with. It started with a coding challenge involving several public APIs, in fact the same coding challenge that was given to me when I interviewed there. What I added: 1. Instead of asking "do you have any questions for me?" at the very end, we started with that general discussion. 2. A few days ahead, I emailed the candidate the pr…

That sounds really cool. I wish I was running into more job interviews like the one you describe. The adversarial interviewing really hurts the entire feel of the process

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#455

Post by wkat4242 »

kamaal wrote: post #432
fhd2 wrote: post #416

The last time I've used a leet code style interview was in 2012, and it resulted in a bad hire (who just happened to have trained on the questions we used). I've hired something like 150 developers so far, and what I ended up with after a few years of trial and error: 1. Use recruiters and network: Wading through the sheer volume of applications was even nasty before COVID, I don't even want to imagine what it's like…

>>Do either no take home test, or one that takes at most two hours. I do discuss the solution candidates came up with, so as long as they can demonstrate they know what they did there, I don't care too much how they did it. If I do this part, it's just to establish some base line competency. The biggest problem with the take home tests are not people who don't show up due to not being able to finish the assignment, B…

> From the candidate's perspective, its pointless to spend a week working and doing every thing the hiring team asked for and still receive a 'no'.

Uhhh yeah. That would really piss me off. Like reviewbombing glassdoor type of pissed.

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#456

Post by quacksilver »

twoparachute45 wrote: post #145
ryandvm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, I kind of feel like leetcode interviews are a situation where the employer is cheating. I mean, you're admittedly filtering out a great number of acceptable candidates knowing that if you just find 1 in a 1000, that'll be good enough. It is patently unfair to the individuals that are smart enough to do your work, but poor at some farcical representation of the work. That is cheating. In my opinion, if a…

I dunno why there is always the assumption in these threads that leetcode is being used. My company has never used leetcode-style questions, and likely never will. I work in security, and our questions are pretty basic stuff. "What is cross-site scripting, and how would you protect against it?", "You're tasked with parsing a log file to return the IP addresses that appear at least 10 times, how would you approach thi…

I once got a surprise leetcode coding interview for a security testing role that mentioned proficiency in a coding language or two as desirable but not essential.

I come from a math background rather than CS and code for fun / personal projects, so don't know the 'proper' names for some algorithms from memory. I could have done some leetcode prep / revision if I had any indication that it was coming up, though the interview was pretty much a waste of time. I told them that and made a stab at it, though they didn't seem interested in engaging at all and barely made eye contact during the whole interview.

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#457

Post by vanceism7_ »

BowBun wrote: post #184
sergioisidoro wrote: post #63

I've let people use GPT in coding interviews, provided that they show me how they use it. At the end I'm interested in knowing how a person solves a problem, and thinks about it. Do they just accept whatever crap the gpt gives them, can they take a critical approach to it, etc. So far, everyone that elected to use GPT did much worse. They did not know what to ask, how to ask, and did not "collaborate" with the AI. So…

This has been my experience as well. The ones that have most heavily relied on GPT not only didn't really know what to ask, but couldn't reason about the outputs at all since it was frequently new information to them. Good candidates use it like a search engine - filling known gaps.

Yea I agree. I don't rely on the AI to generate code for me, I just use it as a glorified search engine. Sure I do some copypasta from time to time, but it almost always needs modification to work correctly... Man does AI get stuff wrong sometimes lol

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#458

Post by Fr3dd1 »

kamaal wrote: post #445
Fr3dd1 wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did a lot of these assignments and no one assumed that they will be hired if they complete it. Its about how you communicate your intent. I always told the candidates, that the goal of the task is 1. to see some code and if some really basic stuff is on point and 2. that you can argue with someone about his or her code.

>>We did a lot of these assignments and no one assumed that they will be hired if they complete it. Its about how you communicate your intent. Be upfront that finishing the assignment doesn't guarantee a hire and very likely the very people you want to hire won't show up. Please note that as much as you want good people to participate in your processes. Most good talent doesn't like to waste its time and effort. How…

I am in germany, so by far not the same situation as in other areas of the world. If I would get such an assignment myself and I have the feeling that this will help the company and also me to verify, if it is a fit, I will do that 1 to 3 hour task very happily.

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#459

Post by fragmede »

Barrin92 wrote: post #222
fragmede wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there's a format of interview that's basically a brainteaser that takes 45 minutes to think through and whiteboard some code for, but which is trivially solvable by copy and pasting a screenshot of the prompt into ChatGPT. This amounts to candidates being given the answer and then pretending to struggle with understanding your question and then figuring out a solution to it when really they're just stalling f…

If you're doing this at least face to face over Zoom and you can't tell that someone is copying answers from their second monitor and throwing ChatGPT explanations at you, you honestly need a better interviewer. I've done a lot of interviews over Zoom, and whenever someone cheats, by passing someone else's work off as their own (the weirdest thing I've ever encountered was someone having a friend on trying to feed th…

If you believe your catch rate is 100%, just because you've managed to identify a couple of people who were really bad at it, you might want to check your priors.

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#460

Post by throwaway2037 »

fhd2 wrote: post #416

The last time I've used a leet code style interview was in 2012, and it resulted in a bad hire (who just happened to have trained on the questions we used). I've hired something like 150 developers so far, and what I ended up with after a few years of trial and error: 1. Use recruiters and network: Wading through the sheer volume of applications was even nasty before COVID, I don't even want to imagine what it's like…

    > Put the candidate at ease - nervous people don't interview well
This is great advice. I have great success with it. I give the same 60 second speech at the start of each interview. I tell candidates that I realise that tech interviews are stressful -- "In 202X, the 'tech universe' is infinitely wide and deep. We can always find something that you don't know. If you don't have experience in a topic that we raise, let us know. We will move to a new topic. All, yes, all people that we interviewed had at least one topic where they had no experience, or none recent." Also, it helps to do "interview ramp-up", where you start with some very quick wins to build up confidence with the candidate. It is OK to tell them "I will push a bit harder here" so they know you are not being a jerk... only trying to dig deeper on their knowledge.
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