31–40 of 185 posts
Odd I go to the page and there is no content. I guess it doesn't matter...
The question is "What single project or task would you consider your most significant accomplishment in your career to date?"
Big whoop!
This is a pretty linkbaity oversimplification. It's designed to appeal to the belief that there's a "magic bullet" for everything. Hiring people via interviews is hard, because evaluating people with limited time and context is hard. There's no such thing as a question that will tell you everything. If you're really trying to get an accurate picture of a candidate, conduct an accurate simulation. Get away from interv…
I like your idea about contributing to some open source project (paid), though even in that case, you will likely run into qualified people who are unwilling (or legally unable) to do this and as an interviewer, you need to be careful not to exclude those individuals.
Eh...forgive me for saying, but this is a bit of a cop-out. Especially where the author notes that you then have to supplement this "one question" with 20 min of follow-up. It's essentially saying "the only interview question that matters is having an interview". I'm not saying that this doesn't work. I've been through my fair share of interviews on both sides of the table, and focusing an interview on various dimens…
This is a pretty linkbaity oversimplification. It's designed to appeal to the belief that there's a "magic bullet" for everything. Hiring people via interviews is hard, because evaluating people with limited time and context is hard. There's no such thing as a question that will tell you everything. If you're really trying to get an accurate picture of a candidate, conduct an accurate simulation. Get away from interv…
I read this a lot here about probationary or trial periods and I agree that it's a great idea, in principle. However, the reality of the developer and system engineer ecosystem right now is that it's an employee's market. Good people are already employed and probably get a couple job leads every day via professional contacts, LinkedIn, or other channels. Those people aren't going to be willing to jump through these k…
I used to think "what a big hassle" about those companies that would make you work a contract basis at first. But after several months of thought, I realized, "hey, if I were to suddenly lose my job, it would dramatically reduce my life-stress if I knew there were a few companies out there that the unemployed could excel at apply for, and that would provide me some income while I was looking for jobs."
"What single project or task would you consider your most significant accomplishment in your career to date?" If this is the best question you can ask people, we got really lucky, because this is the essential question on all YC's application forms for events (e.g. Startup School) and has been one of the core questions on the YC application since the beginning.
It's part of a bigger problem seen here in Europe (at least for those who don't move away.) Online work profiles like Linkedin are an obsession here -- and these sites are all oriented around highlighting school and businesses associations, instead of around the list of projects one's worked on. Useless for hiring.
This illustrates the two very different approaches to the problem of getting hired:
A) If you convince school to certify you -> you will convince a company to hire you.
B) If you achieve relevant work -> a company will hire you to perform more work.
Eh...forgive me for saying, but this is a bit of a cop-out. Especially where the author notes that you then have to supplement this "one question" with 20 min of follow-up. It's essentially saying "the only interview question that matters is having an interview". I'm not saying that this doesn't work. I've been through my fair share of interviews on both sides of the table, and focusing an interview on various dimens…
"What single project or task would you consider your most significant accomplishment in your career to date?" If this is the best question you can ask people, we got really lucky, because this is the essential question on all YC's application forms for events (e.g. Startup School) and has been one of the core questions on the YC application since the beginning.
This is a pretty linkbaity oversimplification. It's designed to appeal to the belief that there's a "magic bullet" for everything. Hiring people via interviews is hard, because evaluating people with limited time and context is hard. There's no such thing as a question that will tell you everything. If you're really trying to get an accurate picture of a candidate, conduct an accurate simulation. Get away from interv…
I don't see an oversimplification here. If a programmer, business person, whoever cant answer that question well I can definitely see how they might not be the kind of person I want to work with.
As a senior guy who's been programming a long time, I honestly don't know what I'd pick in answer to this question. Partly because I've done loads of cool (and no so cool) things over the years and partly because I don't have the best memory in the world. How do you decide which past accomplishment is worthy of a 30 minute conversation? Usually what comes to mind when asked this question are simply the most recent th…
"Tell me about a project in which you demonstrate the skills and character attributes that I am looking for without me telling you what those are."
A good interviewer will ask questions like this only having given you enough context to choose the most appropriate example.
A bad interviewer will not, instead believing that the less information they give you the more revealing your answers will be. All they achieve is to introduce more chance into the interview process by leading you to pick less relevant examples.
I don't see why it's a good question. Presume you get an good answer to the question and every followup question. Now tell me this: how much more do you know about how capable the candidate is of doing the job you're hiring for? And, were these questions the fastest, most accurate way of learning that?
I submit: no. "What were the biggest challenges you faced"? How do I assess the answer to that question? How do I compare it with answers from other candidates? How do I track, over time, which challenges correlate to strong performance in the actual role we're hiring for? "Explain your manager's style and whether you liked it"? Come on.
Don't virtually all of these questions ask me to read tea leaves, to get a sense of whether I "like" or "respect" the candidate? That's not the same thing as learning whether the candidate will do a good job.
Oh, and good luck hiring anyone right out of college this way.