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The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

nytimes.com

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Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#181

Post by wpietri »

bshimmin wrote: post #132
tutufan wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but that doesn't sound like my interview at Google, which was interesting but really rather random. Perhaps most notably, one interviewer became irate that I didn't know the "ps -o" flags off of the top of my head. :-/

According to `man ps` on my Mac, there are nearly seventy of them - how many did he want you to know?!

It's been a long time since I interviewed an ops person. But when I did something like this, I'd ask, "Name as many arguments to ps as you can." (Or ls, also good.) I didn't really care about which flags they knew. What I was looking for was a pattern. Anybody good knows some arguments cold. Often they know them so well as part of a phrase that they have to think about what the individual ones mean, which tells me that they've done something enough that it's become a habit. Then they'll know a few others that they use occasionally. And then they'll stretch to name a few more that are obscure for them.

But the real magic comes when they run out. What do they do then? Good people say that they don't know. Often, they will take guesses at a few more based on general principles. E.g., "I'm sure there are arguments for sorting, but I only use top for that." Or, "There must be more ways to filter, but I only do it by user or command." They'll usually look a bit uncomfortable, because they are the sort of person who likes knowing things. But what they won't do is bluff or make things up.

And honestly, that's my biggest tip for hiring: find people who like understanding things and know a good amount for their level, but are willing to say when they don't know. People who can't do that are dangerous.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#182

Post by bitL »

orang_utang wrote: post #136
gatsby wrote: post #11

Laszlo Bock (former SVP of People at Google) did a great job summarizing decades of research around structured interviewing in his book 'Work Rules!' For a quick reference, the two defining criteria for a structured interview are: 1.) They use one or several consistent set(s) of questions, and 2.) There are clear criteria for assessing responses That second point is really important. You can't only ask candidates the…

From my experience, I'd say Google's interviews need to ask harder questions and last longer. Today they ask fairly easy questions (given a list of integers, find the subsequence that has the following property etc. - basically leetcode medium level) that you can solve fairly easily using basic CS 101 knowledge. However, it ends up (again, IME) being a race against time where you have to whiteboard code a simple solu…

I recently suggested to them not to dumb down their interviews as they simply make the equation about talking to them not worth the time. I remember they used to have much tougher interviews in the past, which were super motivating; now it's like standard hackerrank stuff which is pretty uninteresting. OTOH, each company has its blind spots so that they won't be on top forever, so maybe it's better that way as those that were very capable but rejected could dethrone them at some later time.

To me their approach lately is like forcing a top tennis player to play with kids (well, you would be surprised how many pros have issues slowing down their game) or a double diamond slope skier to ski on blue slopes only (and increasing the risk of getting an injury as their timing/moves are optimized to ultimate performance instead of basics). I've heard of people that solved stuff on interviews nobody solved before them but were rejected as they messed up some basic stuff and recruiter was communicating back to them that it looked bad in the hiring committee.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#183

Post by ubernostrum »

rocket_woman wrote: post #138
tutufan wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but that doesn't sound like my interview at Google, which was interesting but really rather random. Perhaps most notably, one interviewer became irate that I didn't know the "ps -o" flags off of the top of my head. :-/

If the stuff online on Quora etc. are to be believed, the hiring committee will disregard such trivia interviews (and possibly send a node to the interviewer asking him/her to correct their technique). Not sure how well this works in practice though.

Last time I was job-hunting I experimented with Google to see if their interviews were as bad as everyone said.

They were. I was asked a ton of this kind of Linux/Unix trivia in one session. As well as just random stuff. For example:

https://twitter.com/ubernostrum/status/659182356171874304

https://twitter.com/ubernostrum/status/659182564309995520

https://twitter.com/ubernostrum/status/659182708996706308

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#184

Post by hobls »

dikdik wrote: post #35
hobls wrote: post #21

I've been a programmer for a bit over ten years. I've worked at scrappy little startups, midsized companies, now for a tech giant for a few years. The engineers I work with at the tech giant are consistently better engineers than my other coworkers have been, and I credit the very structured interview process. We're trained to ask specific questions, look for specific types of answers, and each interviewer is evaluat…

Which of the companies paid the best/has the best benefits? If it's the tech giant, it's very possible they attract better candidates because they offer more.

The tech giant, for sure.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#185

Post by hobls »

crispyambulance wrote: post #83
hobls wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always talk about the whiteboard interview, and assume it has the greatest weight, but the other questions are just as important. There are plenty of things being measured, and technical ability is often not the one that disqualifies a candidate. The other questions do tend to come from a standardized bank of questions too; the whole thing is very structured.

This. I wonder how many people "think" they flubbed an interview strictly because they got some detail wrong on the whiteboard when it was really far more related to a negative impression of grit, communication, motivation, personality, or work-history.

I think it's a lot! If you had a reasonably decent answer to the whiteboard questions it's often fine if you don't actually get it right.

There are a lot of other ways to screw up an interview.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#186

Post by nissimk »

jplasmeier wrote: post #24
andrewmutz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this work in practice? If there are consistently used questions and specific criteria for assessing responses, can a candidate just learn the likely questions and what constitutes the "right" answer?

Of course. For example, many of the questions for technical interviews involve knowing which data structure to use in a given setting, and applying it to find a solution. The interviewee is more than welcome to study data structures and interview questions about data structures. A poor student will just memorize questions and answers by rote without really understanding the data structure in question. The good studen…

Bullsh*t. Seriously, these questions are all tricks. If you memorize the tricks you can win the game. Even the "really easy" questions like reverse a string involve a trick -- swapping from the ends and stopping in the middle. The interview game involves memorizing tricks and identifying which memorized trick applies to the question.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#187

Post by mck- »

If you care about your company's culture, a person's humbleness, art of concise debating, etc - more important parameters than sheer GPA or coding skills imho - you can never do away with in-person interviews.

Calling them "utterly useless" is an utter click-bait.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#188

Post by lobotryas »

rntz wrote: post #76
scottshepard wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is critiquing the unstructured get-to-know you interview. It is not critiquing highly structured interviews with clear goals, nor technical challenges, nor references checks or past performance. In your example, how would you structure a series of questions and procedures to limit the risk of marrying someone who will abandon you or cheat on you? I think you can apply good interview process techniques to…

The trouble with this advice is that, while it's accurate if your one and only goal is to predict the likelihood of someone divorcing or cheating on you, it seems profoundly unfair. To examine this "unfairness", let's imagine it at its most extreme: a society in which divorcees are so stigmatized that it's practically impossible to ever re-marry; in which children of divorcees are likewise stigmatized; in which victi…

I'm not sure I see your point. What GP is proposing is a risk assessment strategy. If your partner ticks all of those boxes (for example), then you better think long and hard about whether the relationship is viable without being blinded by "love".

Anyone from any background can either rise above their circumstances or fail regardless of the help they get. This should never prevent is from thinking clearly and logically about our future with these people based on their backgrounds or past actions.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#190

Post by Apocryphon »

Top19 wrote: post #150
Spooky23 wrote: post #96

It's the whole process that's useless. Remember a few years ago when this forum was drowning about how to find and hire "10x" people? 98% of employees were useless in the face of the 10xer. The reality is, most of the time screening for general aptitude, self-motivation and appropriate education is good enough. I've probably built a dozen teams where 75% of the people were random people who were there before or freed…

This I think is a very a good point. The scariest point about Lazlo Block's book is that he is very against the idea that people can improve or be trained better. To him there is this idea of predestination. You're either always good and always have been, or you're not good and won't get better and there is nothing Google can do. I feel like as a company you could exploit a lot of value by just hiring people and trai…

One wonders what exactly happened to this industry, why instead of training, companies are offloading the work to universities, MOOCs, and boot camps.
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