Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview
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Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview
#2Related message for students / new-grads: Find an internship. Internship interviews tend to be much easier as the stakes are lower. If you perform well during your internship (arguably easier / more accurate indicator of success), the company will likely extend an offer. At big companies I've seen internship to offer rates exceed 30%.
Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview
#3> What’s the best way to test if someone can do a particular job well? Get them to carry out tasks that are part of the job. See if they can do what they say they can do. It’s much harder for someone to lie and mislead an interviewer during actual work than during an interview. Using competency tests for a blinded interview process is also possible—interviewers could look at depersonalized test results to make unbiased judgments.
Why would a practical test be more effective than a discussion about prior work experience? Short coding tests under pressure are extremely unrepresentative of real work and I'm not sure homework-style interviews are much better. I personally don't want to spend an entire weekend on your test and I've dropped opportunities for that reason in the past.
All these "competency tests" are good for is catching blatant lying. Is this a serious problem? In my view job interviews are mostly about finding a match between skills/interests and project needs.
Communications skills are a very big advantage in interviewing and that feels unfair but I'm not sure that true. Communication and persuasion skills are extremely useful and important to all office jobs, even the most technical.
I'd bet that people who interview well also write beautiful code comments and commit messages.
Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview
#4Related message for students / new-grads: Find an internship. Internship interviews tend to be much easier as the stakes are lower. If you perform well during your internship (arguably easier / more accurate indicator of success), the company will likely extend an offer. At big companies I've seen internship to offer rates exceed 30%.
+2 for this. Worked for me with two separate companies!
One of them I had an internship and they never told me to leave, so I just kept working (and getting paid) until eventually they hired me full-time!
Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview
#5Related message for students / new-grads: Find an internship. Internship interviews tend to be much easier as the stakes are lower. If you perform well during your internship (arguably easier / more accurate indicator of success), the company will likely extend an offer. At big companies I've seen internship to offer rates exceed 30%.
I've seen internship to offer rates exceed 80% :P
Lots of Big Tech is in that general range. I actually don't know of any top companies where the offer rate is ~30%.
Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview
#6Wow, that headline is a stick in the mud on a nuanced topic.
> What’s your biggest weakness? Where do you see yourself in five years? Why do you want this job? Why are you leaving your current job?
I do a lot of tech & business interviews, and I don't ask those questions (unless they've recently left A LOT of jobs). I ask situational questions to understand how they think, who they talk to, what research they did to understand the problem, and the solution (was it simple?). If they tell me they built a Rube Goldberg machine, I ask if they would have done anything different with hindsight. If they don't realize they built a Rube Goldberg machine, well, perhaps they won't be a good fit.
I look for people who can solve problems, do their own research, ask for help when they get stuck, aren't afraid to attempt solutions (many that will knowingly fail) and have the introspection to identify failures and admit it are generally people you want to hire for senior positions.
Now I admit that it's a lot harder to hire this way for junior positions, when they have less examples, less job history, etc. Educational projects are a substitute, as well as working on personal projects.
Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview
#7> What’s the best way to test if someone can do a particular job well? Get them to carry out tasks that are part of the job. See if they can do what they say they can do. It’s much harder for someone to lie and mislead an interviewer during actual work than during an interview. Using competency tests for a blinded interview process is also possible—interviewers could look at depersonalized test results to make unbias…
I imagine a good compromise might be a small piece of "contract work" where a company presents a small representative task as a project for a candidate to complete and the candidate actually gets some form of compensation for their time. There are definitely problems to this approach, but in a best case scenario, the result is a win-win situation even if a candidate doesn't get hired. At the moment every candidate that doesn't get hired represents a net loss for both parties (time for both and opportunity for the candidate)
Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview
#8> What’s the best way to test if someone can do a particular job well? Get them to carry out tasks that are part of the job. See if they can do what they say they can do. It’s much harder for someone to lie and mislead an interviewer during actual work than during an interview. Using competency tests for a blinded interview process is also possible—interviewers could look at depersonalized test results to make unbias…
> All these "competency tests" are good for is catching blatant lying. Is this a serious problem?
Of the people I interview that claim they have years of experience, mastery over multiple languages, and expertise in various frameworks, a solid 80% or more can't pass fizz-buzz in any language they choose.
Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview
#9> What’s the best way to test if someone can do a particular job well? Get them to carry out tasks that are part of the job. See if they can do what they say they can do. It’s much harder for someone to lie and mislead an interviewer during actual work than during an interview. Using competency tests for a blinded interview process is also possible—interviewers could look at depersonalized test results to make unbias…
Agree on the test stuff. When talking to someone who can goes deep in details you mostly know that he's not a lier; then you have the trial period to fire him if he is.
Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview
#10The first time I ever heard the expression "social filter" was from Barrack Obama.
There are many things that a democracy can give to its citizens. But apparently, it seems civilization doesn't want to give up social filters.
I can understand social filters when it comes to friendships, sex and intimate relationship, but for jobs, I will never understand why they exist.