Other problem is that interviewing is a lost art. Most companies ask their developers to interview from a set of predefined algorithm/DS questions - there is no way to know if the candidate answered from his own thought process or just knew the answer. So most of the tech interview become a game of chance. I liked this article which says "let the interviewee impress you" - let the candidate show what he can do - give him a problem to solve on computer during a whole day or perhaps a week - see the results ?
It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem
41–50 of 163 posts
Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem
#42From the other side of the desk, what I am most afraid of is letting someone with weak coding or technical chops through the door. It destroys teams. Yes, culture fit is important as is someone who really likes to program and build. You get to that after you've established that the person can code. I'm not talking about the google "how many jelly beans in a bus" thing either. I'm talking "what is an inner join", "wha…
Why not give everyone a simple test, but give A LOT of people a simple test (which SELECT statement is an inner join...)? What I always here is that 90% can't write a for-loop or a basic regular expression, but look great on paper, and vice versa. EDIT: Recruiters are probably too stupid (usually) to be able to either administer or evaluate such tests and so will always be more interested in the "crisper" resume whic…
I've hear that Interview Street is aiming to solve this problem by letting people show their chops in coding contests (https://www.interviewstreet.com/challenges/) , pass one of those and you're closer to getting into the door of a big company than you were before.
Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem
#43A few years ago, I applied to a senior Windows dev position. As I recall, they needed someone primarily to port existing software. One of the first interview questions was about how I would optimize shell sort for some particular edge case. The interviewer did not appear to have any papers with her that contained shell sort. I don't know if she thought I would remember it (last time I implemented it was high school),…
"I think that a very, very large percentage of the 'screening' is really just to provide justification to the subconscious decision that was made within moments." - You are correct, but that's not because companies really want to drag you through these justifications, rather because (I believe) many are required to do so by law.
Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem
#44I personally hate graph algorithms and all the stupid associated questions. I have to spend two weeks reviewing all that stuff every time I change jobs to go ahead and never ever use it again. It simply never comes up in the type of work I do.
At my current place of employment, one of the engineering managers was complaining that an interviewee bombed a graph algorithm question. I asked, "Where -- if anywhere -- in our codebase do we use any graph algorithms?" Answer: "We don't." At all. Yet knowing graph algorithms is apparently a requirement for working here, which means that at minimum, I am unqualified to do my job. Sigh.
I'd much rather candidates spent time understanding memory implications of different types of java/jvm data structures, or know how to diagnose and fix memory pressure, or have experimented with design patterns to reduce memory requirements, etc. But nobody asks me. If you know off the top of your head that in the hotspot jvm an Integer is 4x as big as an int and that a Double is 24 bytes, and can figure out the rough size (8.5KB!!!) of a 100 entry TreeMap, and know what compressed oops does and why it works, you'll almost certainly get a "please hire" vote from me.
edit: note that knowing a bunch about jvm memory use isn't a requirement, but knowing it will impress me. It probably also means you've been burned by jvm memory use before and that's why you know this stuff.
Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem
#45From the other side of the desk, what I am most afraid of is letting someone with weak coding or technical chops through the door. It destroys teams. Yes, culture fit is important as is someone who really likes to program and build. You get to that after you've established that the person can code. I'm not talking about the google "how many jelly beans in a bus" thing either. I'm talking "what is an inner join", "wha…
Why not give everyone a simple test, but give A LOT of people a simple test (which SELECT statement is an inner join...)? What I always here is that 90% can't write a for-loop or a basic regular expression, but look great on paper, and vice versa. EDIT: Recruiters are probably too stupid (usually) to be able to either administer or evaluate such tests and so will always be more interested in the "crisper" resume whic…
Nonsense. I've worked in an organisation where we trained our recruiter to ask simple weed out questions. We would use questions like 'what is an A record?'. The candidate must give a two sentence or less answer right away. The recruiter didn't really know what an A record was, but knew how to ask the question. This saved us so much time because he could filter out tons of bad candidates for us immediately, without even looking at resumes.
As for 'crisper' resumes ... this guy was a Santa Cruz hippie at heart. He knew what was up in the tech industry. If you pick your recruiters for having some personality, it makes your hiring process go so much better too.
PS - This is about Operations hires, there are similar tricks applicable to Engineering hires.
Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem
#46A few years ago, I applied to a senior Windows dev position. As I recall, they needed someone primarily to port existing software. One of the first interview questions was about how I would optimize shell sort for some particular edge case. The interviewer did not appear to have any papers with her that contained shell sort. I don't know if she thought I would remember it (last time I implemented it was high school),…
"There's a reason that Silicon Valley is almost entirely white, male, and under 40, and it has nothing to do with technical aptitude." Ouch....That's a very damning statement. I'm not in a position to comment on the truth of it - all I can say is that I hope you're wrong.
Silicon Valley is almost entirely white
That's far from the case.
Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem
#47A few years ago, I applied to a senior Windows dev position. As I recall, they needed someone primarily to port existing software. One of the first interview questions was about how I would optimize shell sort for some particular edge case. The interviewer did not appear to have any papers with her that contained shell sort. I don't know if she thought I would remember it (last time I implemented it was high school),…
While, I'd like to agree with most of what you said. At least one of the parameters in the last statement you made can be statistically invalidated: Have you not seen the multitude of brown men in programming?
Well, honestly, no, I haven't. I've heard second-hand reports of some large companies that seemed to hire an amazing number of Indians, but I've personally worked almost entirely with white males (with a few East Asians and the odd female thrown in).
Also, I think it might be pretty much the same thing: Indian workers might be given a pass because they're "cheap" (i.e. decision made based on instant impression and personal biases). That shouldn't be happening, H1-B's and minorities should earn the same as locals, but it seems common knowledge that it's true.
Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem
#48We often find that there are plenty of technically qualified people out there, but what you can do isn’t the only factor in hiring. The most important thing about hiring talent is finding talent that works well with your existing talent. In other words: finding a good CULTURE fit. There are LOTS of smart people out there, but only a small percentage of those people are sociable enough to really do an exceptional job…
Actually,I would argue that talented teams build products.
Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem
#49A few years ago, I applied to a senior Windows dev position. As I recall, they needed someone primarily to port existing software. One of the first interview questions was about how I would optimize shell sort for some particular edge case. The interviewer did not appear to have any papers with her that contained shell sort. I don't know if she thought I would remember it (last time I implemented it was high school),…
Boy, are you wrong! http://research.fhda.edu/Planning/2010-20%20EMP%20Demographi...
Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem
#50The other problem that I found annoying when interviewing (even with Startups) is the way the whole system is organized. 1. Talk to recruiter who is a non-tech person who doesn't really know what they are talking about and to whom you cannot really go in deep. This is the only casual conversation that you get to have about the company. (Assuming you don't know anyone there..) 2. Have phone screens which are that exac…
Isn't #3 what your network is for?