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If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

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Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#61

Post by ryandrake »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #53
mrfusion wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all deserved to be treated with that kind of dignity. I'm not sure where our industry went wrong. You'd never ask a doctor medical school trivia during an interview.

In this hospital we use scalpels. Are you familiar with scalpels? How would you rate your experience in scalpels?

I'd like to hire you as my lawyer to review my contracts. Lawyers need good reading skills. Can you please read this fax to me and tell me what it's about?

I'm looking for someone to cut my hair. Can you tell me how many hairs are in a typical human head? Can you show me how you hold a scissors? I'm only looking for people with the best scissors skills.

Oh, you're here to fix my microwave? Great. Before we start though, can you show me the contents of your toolbox? I want to make sure you are familiar with all the latest brands of screwdrivers and wrenches. Come over to this whiteboard and draw a typical microwave, labeling the major parts.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#62

Post by rootsudo »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #44
mrfusion wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all deserved to be treated with that kind of dignity. I'm not sure where our industry went wrong. You'd never ask a doctor medical school trivia during an interview.

Doctors take a test and go through a verifiable apprenticeship period. If Dr. Nidal got his MD from Johns Hopkins and did his residency in pediatric oncology at Sloan Kettering where he is a fellow and has published 2 papers on Nueroblastoma you can safely assume he knows a thing or two about high risk pediatric solid tumor cancers. What do we have for programmers?

Github, and the number of stars on their repo.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#63

Post by metaphorm »

mrfusion wrote: post #31
dagw wrote: post #15

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…

We all deserved to be treated with that kind of dignity. I'm not sure where our industry went wrong. You'd never ask a doctor medical school trivia during an interview.

on the other hand doctors are credentialed and software developers aren't. you don't get invited to interview for a position as a doctor unless you have your medical school degree, and all of the associated training that goes with that (residencies, etc.). there is nothing equivalent to that for software development, and in fact a computer science degree is sufficiently abstract/mathy that it's possibly to graduate with one and still not really know how to do practical software development.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#64

Post by collyw »

rootsudo wrote: post #62
ryanmarsh wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doctors take a test and go through a verifiable apprenticeship period. If Dr. Nidal got his MD from Johns Hopkins and did his residency in pediatric oncology at Sloan Kettering where he is a fellow and has published 2 papers on Nueroblastoma you can safely assume he knows a thing or two about high risk pediatric solid tumor cancers. What do we have for programmers?

Github, and the number of stars on their repo.

Most programmers work will be in house.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#65

Post by ggggtez »

These pieces always tend to feel to me like complaining. It assumes the reader already agrees that tech interviewers are broken and does nothing to convince others. I for one don't see whiteboarding questions as a problem, so the scenario rings hollow.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#66

Post by nope123 »

ggggtez wrote: post #65

These pieces always tend to feel to me like complaining. It assumes the reader already agrees that tech interviewers are broken and does nothing to convince others. I for one don't see whiteboarding questions as a problem, so the scenario rings hollow.

Would you allow me to interview you and ask you some questions on algorithms and data structures and have that recorded for everyone here to see. I bet you that I can ask relevant questions that you'll struggle and most likely fail to answer in the 20 minutes time allotted. And no they won't be from any standard 'cracking the code interview' questions. The point is, the relationship between interviewer and interviewee should be reciprocal. Both should ask questions and the winner gets the job (maybe even the interviewer's job) Now, I think companies would love that as it exposes weakness in their ranks, but interviewers would then join the rank of complainers. You haver to think more deeply about this stuff, not just state whatever you feel like as your righteous opinion.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#67

Post by Nursie »

jordanpg wrote: post #20

When I read articles like this, I tend to assume that they are exaggerations written by people who feel burned because they didn't get the job they want and that the reason was unfair interview questions. 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 susp…

>> 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.

I was interviewed just a couple of weeks ago. The interview itself was pretty straightforward, but they asked me to do a few test questions, which were very much like those described in the article.

"Here's some really obscure C code with undefined behaviour, what's the problem" "Well, that you wrote it that way, who the hell would write that?" "Sure, sure, but can you see the problem" "Well yeah, you've got someone who delights in writing obfuscated C in weird ways, that's your problem. You could avoid many classes of error here by writing things out in simpler steps."

They were all seriously contrived. (--edit-- and equally as semi-relevant to the role, which is to do with microservices and scalability)

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#68

Post by TurboHaskal »

justin_vanw wrote: post #22
jordanpg wrote: post #20

When I read articles like this, I tend to assume that they are exaggerations written by people who feel burned because they didn't get the job they want and that the reason was unfair interview questions. 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 susp…

Yes I think you are right, buuuut... Lots of times the initial screen is done by someone totally non-technical, and they are asking questions from a sheet and judging whether you are saying what is in the answer field for their sheet. This is super stupid, but I have seen it, usually when some headhunting firm is deciding whether to add your resume to their database which they pull resume's from to send to clients. T…

My past initial screen was hilarious:

  - I see that you worked for a consultancy firm on your previous job. Do you
    have experience working with clients?
  - Yes. My client at the time was XXX Bank where I was involved in foo bar
    baz...
  - So you don’t have experience working with clients.
  - What? Yes, yes I do. I worked and interacted with them on a daily basis,
    with meetings and the like.
  - Okay. Do you have experience with databases?
  - Yes. Mostly Oracle and MySQL. Some postgresql. I’m also quite comfortable
    with NoSQL databases such as Redis and MongoDB.
  - Good. Do you have experience with programming languages?
  - ... Yes.
Some codility tests and interviews later I was notified I was not getting an offer due to lack of first hand experience with AWS (previous interviewers were apparently fine with that, but this one saw it as a red flag, although it was not listed as a requirement in the job offer).

Definitely a good call for both ends, as this was one of those modern companies where everyone are supposed to be friends, play with nerf-guns and have after work drinks. I think I’m too old for that.

For the record, it feels good for once being rejected on lack of technical merits rather than failing some “culture fit” interview. A trend that is giving me the worst interview streak of my career and is making me consider a change of profession.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#69

Post by DavidWoof »

jordanpg wrote: post #20

When I read articles like this, I tend to assume that they are exaggerations written by people who feel burned because they didn't get the job they want and that the reason was unfair interview questions. 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 susp…

I've been moving around the US for the past few years for personal reasons and I've gone through a round of interviews on every move in a wide variety of situations, and I've honestly never seen anything like this. In fact, I can remember the only two times I didn't actually know the answer to a technical questions, and in both cases I thought they were reasonable questions that tested the limits of what I had recently worked on.

This stuff may have been common 15 years ago, but I haven't seen it for a long time. OTOH, when I'm on the other side of the table, I run across a lot of candidates who literally can't write fizzbuzz in a reasonable amount of time.

"Interview parody" is a common genre these days, but I'd be much more interested in seeing the actual bad questions people are getting in their interviews rather than a parody of them.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#70

Post by John23832 »

beager wrote: post #43
TamDenholm wrote: post #12

I get at least 5 phone calls from recruiters a week, being a contractor. The amount of times i get someone that asks me something like: Recruiter: "We're looking for someone with React experience, do you have that?" Me: "Yes" Them: "Ok, how about Javascript?" I want to explain to them but i end up just saying yes to every acronym on their list since they've no idea what they're asking for.

It's funny because in a different context, that's exactly a sequence of questions that I as an engineer would ask: > Do you have experience with React? > Okay, do you have experience writing pure, vanilla JavaScript? Absent a framework like jQuery or Backbone or Angular? The second question can often screen out people who simply maintain framework apps rather than those who actually know JS.

Exactly. A nuanced question like that is beneficial... but it has to be clear that there is that nuance.
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