I've been involved in interviews for new hires a couple of years now. I'm pretty sure I could have the interviewee talk about cucumbers for 10 minutes and I could determine if its a good hire or not. It's all about getting insight about how the person thinks.
Don’t do interviews, do discussions
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Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions
#12I've been involved in interviews for new hires a couple of years now. I'm pretty sure I could have the interviewee talk about cucumbers for 10 minutes and I could determine if its a good hire or not. It's all about getting insight about how the person thinks.
To be honest I sometimes get better signal from things like cucumbers than I do with technology. Tech has a real issue with biasing towards people who happen to have worked on a particular topic, and as we all know we get bounced to unfamiliar topics constantly.
Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions
#13I do the discussion approach, but my goal is to make sure I 'give candidates enough rope to hang themselves'. I also make extremely clear that it's ok to tell me that they don't know or aren't sure. A lot of times, I never ask the question that makes someone look bad, I just let them talk.
No interview system is good, but after cycling through many interview styles, this is the one I have found to be the least bad.
On a side note, I also can't believe tools like hackerrank report if a candidate has alt-tabbed out of the browser. I'm nearly 20 years in and I still have to look up basic syntax.
Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions
#14To me it comes down to the following: you're not going to advance your career at a place you don't do your best in, and the best way to find out is to see how well you do with future _peers_. Treating your interview as talking with your peers frames your thinking in a much more productive manner. Life's too short to be stuck with mediocre employers.
> you're not going to advance your career at a place you don't do your best in Hard disagree. I've worked at a lot of places where I was frustrated, didn't give a damn and felt like I was completely underperforming. And yet, my career has been advancing both in terms of title and earnings. So, unless you have a different metric for "advancing your career" I disagree. That being said, I agree with your main point :)
But how do you know you wouldn't have advanced more if you'd been doing better?
It seems sort of trivially true to me, excepting any workplaces that are simultaneously soul-sucking and growth-prospect-full, in such an outsized way that it's better to underperform there than overperform elsewhere...
Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions
#15"Discussion interviews" can suck because they're a lie. You're still being examined, and now you have to pretend that you aren't being examined in addition to performing well.
Some of my best interviewing experiences have been when as part of the interview I ended up having a discussion about something. But the interview didn't explicitly start with that format in mind.
Some of the worst interviewing interviewing experiences that I've had is when they say that it will be a discussion, and it is, up to the point when they spring an algorithm question out of the blue... it feels so scummy and fake. Ask me about the algorithm if you want, but mixing your question into 40 minutes of discussing other things and pretending that you aren't examining me is a farce.
The intention seems to be to make the experience more authentic and it often ends up having the exact opposite effect.
If your criteria for hiring boil down to "did I like talking to this person", you're probably not hiring well and you're allowing all kinds of biases to influence your decision. If your criteria are specific but you're hiding them behind the pretense of "discussion", you're doing everyone involved a disservice.
Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions
#16I interviewed a guy who had this approach. He seemed to think it was a great way to avoid answering actual questions, needless to say it wasn't a positive result.
Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions
#17There usually is not a table between us. I sometimes sit on a couch, or we both go to the balcony and talk facing the sea (balcony view:https://twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/145136819388953805...). If they smoke they'll have a cigarette there. We sometimes hack on a project together right there.
I use the term conversation or dialogue often to do away from discussion's root of 'breaking' or 'stomping'. I offer to make them coffee. We talk about pretty much everything. I ask questions. They ask questions.
We try to quickly get rid of the interview vibe by making them feel comfortable. We've refined this over the years.
Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions
#18Depending on the interview I always try to make it light hearted and a discussion
One of the best times this happened is when I was being interviewed by the future manager and he said after 5 minutes you clearly know more than me and we started talking about the best places to go for a drink in the area.
I got the job and he was a fantastic manager and good friend
Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions
#19"Discussion interviews" can suck because they're a lie. You're still being examined, and now you have to pretend that you aren't being examined in addition to performing well. Some of my best interviewing experiences have been when as part of the interview I ended up having a discussion about something. But the interview didn't explicitly start with that format in mind. Some of the worst interviewing interviewing exp…
Discussion style interviews aren't about pretending they're not interviewing you though.
Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions
#20> Here are some tips for converting interview into the discussion as an interviewer ...
Two ideas follow. I don't think they'll work very well.
Here's the #1 thing you can do as a candidate to turn the interview into a discussion: Come prepared with some interrogative-led questions. These usually begin with the words "who"; "where"; "what"; "when"; and "why". Then ask your questions at appropriate times. A good time might be, for example, right after you answer a question on a topic related to the question you're about to ask. Another good time might be when the interviewer asks "Do you have any questions for me?" Having been on the other side of the interviewing table a lot, it's quite surprising how few candidates have anything to ask about one of the biggest decisions they'll ever make.
The quality of your questions will determine what you get out of the interview. To prepare good question, you'll need to understand the following at more than just surface level:
- the position
- the company/group/pod
- the interviewer
Research these three things before the interview. The questions you bring to the interview should be designed to gather relevant and missing information on these points.
What's "relevant information"? You'll need some goals to figure that out. Don't set foot in the interview until you have some goals that make sense for you.
Reversing the above into a process for preparing for an interview:
1. figure out why you're interviewing at all, and interviewing at that company in particular
2. research the position, the company/group/pod, and your interviewers
3. draft questions you'll ask during the interview
4. ask your questions at appropriate times during the interview