11–20 of 106 posts
Why are we suddenly inundated with "If companies interviewed * the way they interview programmers" posts?
"Curated list of XXX" was popular a while back, after that it was "Machine learning applied to XXX", and this week it is recruitment.
Next week it will be something else.
Recruiter: "We're looking for someone with React experience, do you have that?"
Me: "Yes"
Them: "Ok, how about Javascript?"
Why are we suddenly inundated with "If companies interviewed * the way they interview programmers" posts?
"We use quite a bit of python. I see from your CV you've used python".
"Oh absolutely, I consider python the language I know best. I've worked on a couple of larger python applications as well as used it extensively in a number of smaller projects"
"Great!"
Interviewer: It means we do Agile. Everything is in a flat structure, except when it comes to salary and responsibilities. We have a Recruitment Master, that coordinates all the other recruiters in Sprints. Absolute gold.
To give credit where it is due, this especially funny quote is nearly verbatim copied from the original article ( https://medium.freecodecamp.com/welcome-to-the-software-inte... ) from which "inspiration" for this one was taken: It means we do Agile. Everything is in a flat structure, except when it comes to salary and responsibilities. We have a Translator Master, that coordinates all the other Translators in Sprint…
Candidate: Forget it. Just give me a second ok? I think I will organize
rows as candidates and columns as dates/times and use NOW, TODAY, WEEKNUM
and the rarely used called YEARFRAC
Interviewer: Oh, no, that’s from the answer sheet in the “Cracking the
Recruiting Interview: 150 Spreadsheet Questions and Solutions.”
Candidate: No, I mean, that is something I have used in the past for simple
fractions
Interviewer: How would I know? I’m not a spreadsheet wizard like you.I think at least some of the animosity job seekers have for recruiters is that they may feel recruiters are designing these types of esoteric interview questions and exercises. The overwhelming majority of recruiters are entirely incapable of designing them because they lack the technical skills (myself included).
The recruiter is primarily responsible for identifying a (hopefully) qualified candidate and managing the hiring process along to ensure the "candidate experience" doesn't get in the way of a hire being made. The recruiter might be just as frustrated with that hiring process and the methods as the candidate, but probably has little control over it.
If we want to end these types of interviews, the people to change them are engineering managers. If the engineering manager wanted to end whiteboard exercises and trivial questions on minute details, I assure you the recruiter wouldn't be against it.
On the flip side I recently interviewed for a programming position at a civil engineering company and at no point in the process did anybody ask any questions that would in any way test if I actually knew any of the things I claimed to know. The entire "programming" part of the interview was essentially: "We use quite a bit of python. I see from your CV you've used python". "Oh absolutely, I consider python the langu…
"How would you rate your skill with cloudformation on a scale of 1 to 10"
"I guess a 9.5"
"Great."
No follow up question.
In other words, I simply don't believe that interviewers are, as a group, so stupid that they regularly ask obscure Excel questions when they are plainly not relevant.
To continue with the recruiting example, I suspect what is more common is that interviewers are expecting candidates with some Excel experience, and ask questions to gauge some basic level of competency. And interviewees have conflated using it one time with any depth of experience.
I can attest to seeing this many times during programming interviews. If I see something towards the top of someone's resume, I will ask a basic question to see if anything whatsoever is known about that thing. Yes, book knowledge. Stuff that you would know if you had actually read any docs.
I don't want to work alongside someone who claims knowledge or experience of something and doesn't know the basics. Or doesn't know that they don't know the basics.