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Interviews are Broken

erniemiller.org

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Re: Interviews are Broken

#41

Post by cpprototypes »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #35
Peroni wrote: post #6

I've been in this game for a while now and the breakdown is pretty simple. If you are an employer, I implore you to trust me on these two simple points: 1. Finding decent people that are both technically competent and a good culture fit is bloody tough and can take a lot longer than you'd ever expect. 2. Interviewing/screening these people is simple. Don't make it more difficult than it needs to be. You've done the h…

>Get a feel for their personality, the things that motivate them, the things that annoy them, the things that inspire them, etc. What exactly are you trying to determine from this? The problem with such open-ended types of questions is that all objectivity is lost. You end up picking people who mirror your own motivations, annoyances, etc. Unless you are sure your question will produce actual signal in an objective m…

If technical competency has already been established, then there should be no problem with asking these kinds of subjective questions since it's meant to screen for a subjective area (team/culture fit).

Re: Interviews are Broken

#42

Post by Apocryphon »

You know, there's a lot of these interview articles. Where whiteboarding doesn't work. Or whiteboarding works but filters out a vast majority of applicants. Give homework problems instead. No, applicants can easily cheat or resort to copy pasting code when given time away from the interviewer. The future is GitHub repos to see candidates' prior work. No, open-source code is not verifiable and easily falsifiable. What about determining if an applicant has solid fundamentals, not overthinking it, and having him or her learn on the job? Whatever happened to providing training? Is there really no room for apprentices or novices in modern tech companies?

Re: Interviews are Broken

#43

Post by codegeek »

My personal opinion. If you are hiring for a fulltime role where you hope to have that person on the team for a long time , then it is a heck of a lot more than just technical ability that matters. I learned this from an ex-boss who taught me the value of skills that matter in the long run. Hint: technical skill is just one aspect and not enough. It matters what the attitude is, what encourages/discourages them etc. Why do these matter ? Because we are humans and we use our experiences/emotions/values in practice a lot more than just technical skills.

The game changes however if you need an expert consultant/contractor/freelancer who can solve a very specific problem with a very short period of time. For those, go hard on the specific tech. questions.

Re: Interviews are Broken

#44

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

Peroni wrote: post #7
Aqueous wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you need another 5 hours of coding to prove that I'd be a good culture fit, or would a 30 minute - 1 hour interview and the high recommendation of my references suffice?

An hour in a relatively relaxed environment over a cup of coffee is more than enough for me to work out if you would get along with our team, work well with your potential new boss, actually enjoy working for us or not and whether or not you are likely to stay loyal to our company.

In a single meeting, I believe it is often easy to determine if there is likely to be no fit. Going with your gut here makes a lot of sense.

But it is completely unrealistic to believe that in a single meeting you will be able to predict with any certainty that a candidate will work well with your team, enjoy the position and remain loyal. You simply can't establish these things until a person is on the job.

If you do a good job not hiring obvious poor fits, the odds that your relationship with your new employee will be a fruitful one obviously increase, but don't fool yourself into believing that there isn't a lot of luck involved.

Re: Interviews are Broken

#45

Post by HelloMcFly »

tokenadult wrote: post #9

Peroni writes in his top-level comment, "Give the candidate a realistic technical challenge to complete in a realistic timeframe, in an environment that will be indicative of the environment they would expect to work in should they succeed in getting the job." And of course that is saying "Give the candidate a work-sample test." That's a very well validated hiring procedure,[1] one that every company ought to use for…

That's a very well-researched comment! There a few things probably worth noting. Roth, Bobko and McFarland have been pretty active in this topic for the past decade. They've found the validity coefficient cited by Schmidt and Hunter in 1998 is likely an over-estimate due to relying on research conducted when there were less rigorous statistical and methodological best-practices.

[1]http://www.psychologie.uni-mannheim.de/cip/Tut/seminare_witt...

The validity coefficient provided by Roth and Bobko is likely more accurate. That isn't to diminish their value as they are still valuable, but the aren't the cure-all we'd like them to be. They do continue to show promise in reduced adverse impact though, which is great (note: the full article is behind a paywall - what is the HN-approved method of sharing the information?):

[2]http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2389.2010....

That is for gender. With regards to ethnicity, the evidence isn't quite as optimistic yet. Like other predictors including cognitive ability tests, if they are showing notable adverse impact you may be in trouble Like other predictors including cognitive ability tests, if they are showing adverse impact you may be in trouble despite their validity.

[3]http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2008....

It's a problem with lots of predictors, though scope of the problem varies. There is work being done all the time, even in the most reliably stalwart predictor, the cognitive ability test:

[4}http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/apl/92/3/794/

Anyone interested in the great "diversity-validity dilemma" can check out this link for more information, though there's always progress. It's a great article.

[5]http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2008....

For my money I endorse integrity tests as a part of the solution. Decent validity, including incremental validity over cognitive ability due to a low correlation between the two, and small sub-group differences.

[6]http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2007....

Having said all that, I imagine the efficacy of work samples is moderated by the type of work, and I'd have to believe they are more amenable to demonstrations of technical skill like coding (I don't know of any references for this now, but I'll look later). Coding-related jobs would be nice because it would be possible to blindly judge on the output as well, and in programming-type jobs it would be much easier and cost-efficient to test large numbers of applicants than it would for many other jobs. Cost and ease of large-scale administrations are their big problems, so overcoming those would be gravy. I don't know how subgroup differences are impacted though.

Re: Interviews are Broken

#46

Post by HelloMcFly »

cpprototypes wrote: post #41
hackinthebochs wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Get a feel for their personality, the things that motivate them, the things that annoy them, the things that inspire them, etc. What exactly are you trying to determine from this? The problem with such open-ended types of questions is that all objectivity is lost. You end up picking people who mirror your own motivations, annoyances, etc. Unless you are sure your question will produce actual signal in an objective m…

If technical competency has already been established, then there should be no problem with asking these kinds of subjective questions since it's meant to screen for a subjective area (team/culture fit).

One could argue that while you're overtly trying to screen for cultural fit, what you're actually screening for is self-monitoring, presentation skills, etc. But that's a "problem" with all interviews, structured or no, and typically those attributes are functional anyway.

Re: Interviews are Broken

#47

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

ryguytilidie wrote: post #13
Aqueous wrote: post #2

Yes. I have a new rule with recruiters. If you are trying to recruit me, make me an offer. Otherwise, go away. You called me, not the other way around. I'm not going to jump through a bunch of your hoops to prove to you for free that I can do what you already know that I can do just by looking at my resume, looking at some of my public projects, and asking me questions in an informal, short interview. And I'm certain…

My god this is such an ignorant comment . Stuff like this just makes Silicon Valley look pretty disgusting honestly. If you think a list of work you've done is the only thing a company should care about than there's really not much to argue about, you're just wrong.

> If you think a list of work you've done is the only thing a company should care about...

I don't think anybody reasonable is going to suggest that there's a single criteria on which a hiring decision should be made, but if you don't think that what you've accomplished should be pretty high on the list, finding candidates with an ability to create real business value is probably going to be much harder.

Who would you rather hire: a person with a track record of delivering working solutions or a person who can code on a whiteboard?

Re: Interviews are Broken

#49

Post by philwelch »

emiller829 wrote: post #27
balloot wrote: post #16

This person sounds completely insufferable. He basically is declaring himself too good for interviews (except for C-level execs, whom he apparently tolerates). Heaven forbid you don't just assume Ernie Miller is god's gift to your job position, because he is Ernie Miller and he is a special unique snowflake who is not to be insulted with petty questions pertaining to his ability to do the job. Anyway, good luck with…

Did you actually read the article, or just the big, bold letters? The point wasn't that I am special. It's that each person is an individual, and a company that doesn't recognize that situations differ and make reasonable accommodations is unlikely to be a company at which I (or many like me, if the comments are any indicator) would enjoy working.

Because nothing makes a hiring process more fair and accurate than changing the rules for each candidate.

Re: Interviews are Broken

#50

Post by mmcnickle »

Lost_BiomedE wrote: post #33
Peroni wrote: post #6

I've been in this game for a while now and the breakdown is pretty simple. If you are an employer, I implore you to trust me on these two simple points: 1. Finding decent people that are both technically competent and a good culture fit is bloody tough and can take a lot longer than you'd ever expect. 2. Interviewing/screening these people is simple. Don't make it more difficult than it needs to be. You've done the h…

I long for an interview like that. I first left the tech industry due to having to deal with HR and the hiring process. I became a chef, where the interview could be moved to having them watch me make a dish or show knife skills. Then out of interest, I went through a biomedical engineering degree and am back into the tech field. Still, due to my negative experiences with the filtering process, I have stayed in the r…

I've always thought the simple coding interview questions was like asking a chef to prepare a very simple meal; they should be able to do it without any problem. Though it's apparent that coders, like chefs, can choke on even these simple tasks. You only need to watch the "skills tests" on "Masterchef: The Professionals" to see a dozen professional cooks fail to fry schnitzel or fillet a fish. The same chefs go on the create some fantastic dishes in less stressful challenges.
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