I've hired maybe 30 to 40 people over the past 15-20 years and interviewed atleast an order of magnitude more. I don't claim to have things figured out but I can create a list of things that owrk and things that don't work. Things that work: - white board interviews, they let you get a dialog going with the candidate, - take home work, they let the candidate work at their own pace - showing work samples, whether that…
Ask HN: Whiteboard interviews don't work, what's your ideal technical interview?
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Re: Ask HN: Whiteboard interviews don't work, what's your ideal technical interview?
#12I've hired maybe 30 to 40 people over the past 15-20 years and interviewed atleast an order of magnitude more. I don't claim to have things figured out but I can create a list of things that owrk and things that don't work. Things that work: - white board interviews, they let you get a dialog going with the candidate, - take home work, they let the candidate work at their own pace - showing work samples, whether that…
Additionally, if unsure after this discussion, what about proposing small, relevant to the job paid project? Can't you afford this?
Re: Ask HN: Whiteboard interviews don't work, what's your ideal technical interview?
#13Re: Ask HN: Whiteboard interviews don't work, what's your ideal technical interview?
#14I believe pg wrote in one of his essays that a hacker can immediately recognize another hacker, but it is impossible for a non-hacker to do so. Therefore the best method would be to let your best developers handle interviewing as they would be the best at recognizing skill.
Re: Ask HN: Whiteboard interviews don't work, what's your ideal technical interview?
#15Then perhaps a phone interview so that the company can confirm I'm likely not cheating.
Finally an onsite white board interview or written test or at the computer programming test. Yes I get nervous doing white board interviews but if the difficulty level of the problem is not too great it is a useful filter.
I dislike long take home work because it requires too much of a time sink and it could be abused by employers fishing for ideas, competitor information, or just wanting free work for one of their problem areas. Algorithm tests on hackerrank or leetcode or wherever are still useful practice but take home tests can be too job specific and therefore prematurely requires candidates to commit to learning a particular companies needs without the company committing anything in return.
Questioning candidates about their experience in an informal manner by conversation may be of some benefit, but is likely just testing how well the candidate has prepared various stories about their past employment and past projects. Unfortunately, abandoned projects that taught a candidate a lot and served their intended purpose may not make as good a portfolio or story as completed projects that were just cookie-cutter implementations of projects found in books or tutorials or elsewhere.
The important thing for all of these filters though is that they be carefully calibrated in difficulty to the companies needs and job sourcing pool. If your large top-N company carefully optimizes it's customer funnel with a/b testing but has no real employee hiring sanity checks, then that is not good. Randomly have one employee at the company white board interview another employee at the company from a different department. Secretly test your interview process with known good programmers from outside the company.
Re: Ask HN: Whiteboard interviews don't work, what's your ideal technical interview?
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
So in the case of trial jobs how do you narrow down the candidate pool to the point that you have few enough candidates that you can bring them in office and let them work for a day without the office just becoming an unmanageable Fiesta?
Trial jobs happen at the point that you would be ready to hire that candidate. This is after you have evaluated if they are excitable if they fit well in the current culture of your company or would bring a good change to your company culture, and if they have some level of technical expertise (they went to college, worked at another development position, or have side projects).
Re: Ask HN: Whiteboard interviews don't work, what's your ideal technical interview?
#17From Laszlo Bock, former SVP of People Ops @ Google. > [1] The best predictor of how someone will perform in a job is a work sample test (29 percent). This entails giving candidates a sample piece of work, similar to that which they would do in the job, and assessing their performance at it. Based on the statistics he provided, it seems like a combination of work sample and behavioral questions will typically produce…
> On the basis of meta-analytic findings, this paper presents the validity of 31 procedures for predicting job performance and the validity of paired combinations of general mental ability (GMA) and the 29 other selection procedures. Similar analyses are presented for 16 predictors of performance in job training programs. Overall, the two combinations with the highest multivariate validity and utility for predicting job performance were GMA plus an integrity test (mean validity of .78) and GMA plus a structured interview (mean validity of .76).
Re: Ask HN: Whiteboard interviews don't work, what's your ideal technical interview?
#18Re: Ask HN: Whiteboard interviews don't work, what's your ideal technical interview?
#19Asking for a prepared presentation is a nice alternative to take home coding (If applicable to your work culture).
Phone call trumps videochat every time. Our communication isn't strengthened by a video chat unless there are prepared visual aids, don't solve problems that don't exist.
Let me know who I will be meeting during 'in person' interview. What teams are they on.
Live coding with a current employee is a good practice. Keep problems small, and loosely specified.
Re: Ask HN: Whiteboard interviews don't work, what's your ideal technical interview?
#20I've hired maybe 30 to 40 people over the past 15-20 years and interviewed atleast an order of magnitude more. I don't claim to have things figured out but I can create a list of things that owrk and things that don't work. Things that work: - white board interviews, they let you get a dialog going with the candidate, - take home work, they let the candidate work at their own pace - showing work samples, whether that…
Can't you tell if someone is taking someone else's work as their own? It seems like they wouldn't be as familiar with the code and wouldn't be able to explain why things are done certain ways. I feel like I'd be able to tell.