I'd really like to see how references correlate with the other factors. Did they not call references?
Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days
31–40 of 248 posts
Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days
#32The skill of the interviewer in interviewing candidates should correlate just as strongly with everything else. How are you capturing that? I ask because our #1 determinant after an at home code sample is the #3 thing you find are not predictive.
Are they asking critical questions on what decisions and trade-offs were made? Their past projects, can they explain well the reasoning for choice of tools used? Can they talk about what types of improvements they wanted to see in the pipeline process of build-test-deploy?
I'm just surprised that this question is singled out as "poor."
Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days
#33It's great to see some objective research being done on this, and I am very interested in following the results. They mention evaluating the effectiveness of giving a candidate a project to do "in their own time." I recently had a interview that included this and I can share the result: I accepted an offer from a different company that didn't require it. I doubt my life is that different than anyone else's, with a fu…
Yeah, we agree. We don't plan on asking everyone to do hours of work on their own. A lot of people don't have the time. However, we're also seeing a bunch of applicants who are good programmers, but become really stressed in interviews and do badly (they freeze). These people have trouble getting jobs. What we want to do is offer them the option of doing a larger project on their own, rather than our final interview.…
I personally prefer it to a point. My only request when I get this type of interview is that I'm allowed to make the project and requirements public on my github for future interviewers. If I'm doing a free project I feel it's fair.
Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days
#34I've done over 1000 interviews and my experience agrees with their findings that talking about a project is not a good predictor of coding. I usually left detailed resume questions for the end since so many candidates would bomb the coding part of the interview. I'm surprised they didn't get stronger results from fizz buzz, but I noticed among the candidates I saw that the percentage of 'non-coders' is substantial bu…
I really don't mean to cast aspersions on your interviewing abilities, but the common factor in all of the interviews you've conducted is you, and how you talk to a candidate abut prior projects can really matter. At one extreme you have "tell me about your last project" free-form. At the other you have highly-specific drilling down on a relevant technical issue (e.g. flow-control mechanisms in Ethernet networks) or behavioral characteristic (e.g. openness to collaboration). Which of these have you tried? Have you observed any difference in effectiveness between them? My own experience, from interviewing people who conduct interviews themselves, is that people who say "asking about projects doesn't work" just don't know how to do it right. Again, I'm not saying that applies to you personally, but what information can you provide to refute the observation?
Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days
#35Most candidates can speak well about interesting projects they'd worked on in the past, but a significant percentage of those can't pass a coding test.
Also, not being able to speak well about a past project is highly correlated with doing well on a coding test.
Sounds like one or the other should be thrown out. (Or maybe only the small percentage who do well on both will go on to do well on the job?)
Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days
#36I really think technical, or any other kind of hiring is broken. As you showed best indicators are questions (like your quizzes) or by showing "live" you can rather than a pretty CV, certificate or a fancy university name (I'm talking about tech not medicine, construction engineering or others that really require those).
I have been rejected many, many, many times because the first screening (CV check by non-technical recruiter). My last example was at a well know tech startup were I had to hack my way to get noticed in order to get the first interview. The funny thing is that I was the fasted candidate to get hired + I won a company-wide award for my work at the company just 4 months after joining.
I haven't finished a degree because I thought was boring and I was learning things I already taught myself before, but this fact makes my resume go down the list very fast. Because interviewers don't have time to lose and thousands of candidates to check I'm sure they will find very useful the use of technology on getting those good prospects in front of everyone else.
Something I've seen many times at my past jobs is having good technical applicants, some of them are even referred by one team member and are turned down later because culture. I don't know why but engineers and technical people are more likely to fail at those than others. The surprising thing is that they check culture as the last step because those who can run those type of interview are a few and can't become full-time culture keepers. This is an enormous waste of time and resources for the applicant, the interviewers and the company itself.
Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days
#37It's great to see some objective research being done on this, and I am very interested in following the results. They mention evaluating the effectiveness of giving a candidate a project to do "in their own time." I recently had a interview that included this and I can share the result: I accepted an offer from a different company that didn't require it. I doubt my life is that different than anyone else's, with a fu…
My wife is in this position now, and it's not for a programming job. She works in pharmaceuticals, in pharmacovigilance & risk management. She does a lot of data analysis & writing (the latest report she wrote for Health Canada & the FDA was 461 pages). A company she's interviewing with asked her to do a sample writing task as part of her application/interview. She hasn't decided whether it's worth it or not. For som…
12+ hours is excessive even if you don't have 15 years experience.
Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days
#38It's great to see some objective research being done on this, and I am very interested in following the results. They mention evaluating the effectiveness of giving a candidate a project to do "in their own time." I recently had a interview that included this and I can share the result: I accepted an offer from a different company that didn't require it. I doubt my life is that different than anyone else's, with a fu…
I'm kind of in a similar boat. I've done them for companies that I like in the past, however I flat out refuse to do them for recruiting / job placement companies.
ammon / uptown, I've put off doing my screen-sharing section of your interview process (I got pushed past the phone screen?) due to a lack of time. Maybe adding a way to 'schedule' it would be helpful for those of us that live by our g.calendars....and you all as well.
Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days
#39It's great to see some objective research being done on this, and I am very interested in following the results. They mention evaluating the effectiveness of giving a candidate a project to do "in their own time." I recently had a interview that included this and I can share the result: I accepted an offer from a different company that didn't require it. I doubt my life is that different than anyone else's, with a fu…
I did this once. After a take home quiz that took about an hour, I had a 6-7 hour "homework" problem. I did it, and sent it in. It took the company a month to get back to me, though I did stay in contact with the recruiter. The final answer, delivered by the recruiter, was "we've decided not to more forward at this time." No other feedback. I have no idea if anyone even looked at it - I never did speak to a dev at the company.
This experience left me embarrassed, honestly. I don't think it reflects well on me that I put up with it even once.
At this point, I will participate in tech interviews, but I won't do any more take-home assignments. I suppose this could change under different circumstances.
Gayle Laakmann McDowell, who wrote "Cracking the Coding Interview", wrote an insightful post her blog about this. It's titled "Companies who give candidates homework assignments: knock it off!"
http://www.gayle.com/blog/2013/09/18/companies-who-give-cand...
She mentions something I see as a problem as well - these tests allow the company to burn a lot of a candidate's time, but not the other way around. I may have burned 6+ hours interviewing unsuccessfully at google, but they parted with 6+ hours of developer time as well (though I did spend a lot of additional hours reviewing algorithms and doing sample problems). This creates a natural set of checks and balances that don't exist with homework assignments.
She does have some good suggestions about how to use a take home if a company is determined to do it. To me, a particularly insightful one was to have a high (she says 90%+) passage rate.
I agree. If you're going to ask a candidate to spend a day on a homework assignment, you should be very close to an offer. If you're using it as an early filter, you are wasting a tremendous amount of developer time.
Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days
#40Wait, how is this telling us anything? They don't seem to be predicting what determines the best candidate by looking at how he/she performed on the job. All this is doing is predicting how well they will do in a different part of the interview. Am I wrong?