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A hiring test I'd like to run

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Re: A hiring test I'd like to run

#151

Post by Iv »

I keep hearing and reading horror stories like this one on HN and other website. I never did interviews at big companies, nor did I do any in the US, in 15 years of freelancing, I only had once a technical interview, with a C++ guru, I failed most of the questions but still got hired because "you still did good, kept calm and asked good questions".

In my last gig, it was for a work on a Java application. I was upfront that I only did a bit of Java in school, but that I was more of a C++ guy. The Java guru hirer was like "Yeah, if you know C++, you'll get Java quickly" they were more interested in my experience with video and image processing.

I basically avoid to do HR-based interviews. Short-circuit them when you can.

Re: A hiring test I'd like to run

#154

Post by sylvainkalache »

That's how Holberton School (we train people to become software engineer) select and train students. We are a college-alternative where students learn by working on projects, in group.

The whole education is flipped compared to a regular one. We give students problem sets and they have to find the answer. We never give lectures (we have no teachers), just guidance so that they can get started on a topic, but never enough that they can actually achieve the tasks we give them.

> Are they able to read a manual? Candidates (no prior experience in coding needed) need to answer questions on a specific command that can be found by reading the manpage. At first we provide the manpage, then we show them how to find a manpage, and finally, we don't provide any guidance, because at this point they should be able to do it on their own. In the curriculum, once students, we have a quizz to makre sure they can answer basic questions on the topic before jumping into the coding part.

>Can they formulate a search query? We ask trivial questions that can be answered just by Googling. Might sound like a no-brainer to the developer community, but not everybody is good at this.

>How do they assess whether the tutorial they found is suitable or reliable? That's the tricky part, but basically, because the school is not providing material that contains the answer, candidates and students have to navigate the ocean of information/tutorial that can be wrong/incomplete of correct. By pressing a button, students work (code at this point) is automatically and instantly corrected, so they can easily figure that what they built is correct or not.

> What steps do they take to make sure they're finding - and learning - the right information? On this one, we as a school, are the one providing this guidance. Basically when students are doing their projects, we define learning goals. Getting coding part done is great, but we also want to make sure that students have been able to grasp concepts that are key to becoming a great software engineers. So students look at these "learning points" before, and by the end of the project, they must be able to discuss all the points.

Re: A hiring test I'd like to run

#155

Post by drdaeman »

ditonal wrote: post #25

I interviewed at Twilio. My resume and phone chats made it abundantly clear that my professional experience was 95% backend in languages like Java and Go. I looked at their Glassdoor where people wrote they were heavily biased to the algorithm type questions, for better or worse. In reality I was given only a single coding interview my whole onsite, and it was to build a JavaScript SPA, including routing/linking, wit…

> It felt like a massively unfair way to evaluate me.

My advice to someone in a similar situation is to start talking and ask about what we want to really achieve here. Not what the task description literally says (SPA or whatever - that's "how" but not "what for"), but what's the real business purpose for it. For the interview purposes - what do they want to see during or after those 50 minutes.

Then making a guess whenever this objective can be realistically delivered within the provided constraints, and communicating how do you feel about it.

If they provide their real expectations (e.g. "we want to see how you tackle a problem outside of your immediate expertise domain, we recognize harsh time constraints and it is okay if you won't complete it, although we'd appreciate trying your best") it's all fair game. If they don'tjust insist they want this specific JS SPA done in 50 minutes - well, that says something about their project management habits. In such case, I'd start asking questions about the role responsibilities.

Re: A hiring test I'd like to run

#156

Post by walshemj »

avip wrote: post #53
ditonal wrote: post #25

I interviewed at Twilio. My resume and phone chats made it abundantly clear that my professional experience was 95% backend in languages like Java and Go. I looked at their Glassdoor where people wrote they were heavily biased to the algorithm type questions, for better or worse. In reality I was given only a single coding interview my whole onsite, and it was to build a JavaScript SPA, including routing/linking, wit…

I don't do much hiring, but when I do I make an active effort to avoid reading candidates resumes. I've found it's not possible for me to enter an interview with an unbiased mind having read a resume.

Good job you postings as AC - other wise your employer would be a lot of peoples "call first" list.

Btw that's the PC way of saying blacklisted.

Re: A hiring test I'd like to run

#157

Post by Alex3917 »

ditonal wrote: post #25

I interviewed at Twilio. My resume and phone chats made it abundantly clear that my professional experience was 95% backend in languages like Java and Go. I looked at their Glassdoor where people wrote they were heavily biased to the algorithm type questions, for better or worse. In reality I was given only a single coding interview my whole onsite, and it was to build a JavaScript SPA, including routing/linking, wit…

> In reality I was given only a single coding interview my whole onsite, and it was to build a JavaScript SPA, including routing/linking, without the use of any framework, just vanilla JS.

OK but that's like 4 lines of code:

Line 1: Get the URL of the current page

Line 2: Get the path part of the URL

Line 3: Using the path as a key, retrieve some chunk of text from an object

Line 4: Write that chunk of text to the DOM

I wouldn't know the syntax for any of that without googling, but that doesn't seem excessively crazy even as a question for someone who doesn't know the language.

Re: A hiring test I'd like to run

#158

Post by aniketpanjwani »

stedman wrote: post #150

We do this at retriever.co for our virtual assistants, in two areas: 1. we have applicants do a data transform with an esoteric excel function that they've /almost surely/ never used, and prompt them to find videos / tutorials on how to use it if they don't know (which, we assume, they wont) 2. we have people answer fake customer support tickets that require them to do some on-the-job learning about the Internet Serv…

I've been thinking through how best to screen personal assistants, and these are both very helpful ideas. I particularly like the first idea to screen applicants on esoteric utilities - thanks for your comment!

Re: A hiring test I'd like to run

#159

Post by walshemj »

bduerst wrote: post #91
avip wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't do much hiring, but when I do I make an active effort to avoid reading candidates resumes. I've found it's not possible for me to enter an interview with an unbiased mind having read a resume.

You're being downvoted but I've had the same experience as well. They bias interviews that are supposed to be performance based. Resumes are a carefully crafted signal paper targeted at getting past an algorithm, recruiter, and into an interview. They're chock full of brand names (both education and company) and keywords. There's also unconcious bias based on the person's last name, locations that they've lived in th…

"last name" ??

In what way I could see some edge cases, which one where you thinking of ?

Re: A hiring test I'd like to run

#160

Post by organsnyder »

Iv wrote: post #149
organsnyder wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did an interview once at a company that is religious about pair programming. I found the exercise unsettling: would they evaluate technical ability or culture fit more? If they were focusing on the former, I should take the wheel and try to demonstrate my chops (perhaps making me appear arrogant); if the latter, I should try to demonstrate how I can collaborate with the other developer to make both of us better (pe…

> would they evaluate technical ability or culture fit more? Why not ask them that? "What are the roles in this roleplaying game? Am I a driver and you are evaluating me? Are you a client? Are we colleagues?" Or even more directly what you asked: "Are you evaluating technical ability or culture fit more? " I don't think there would be a point in keeping that a secret.

Yeah, from a candidate perspective that's a good idea. From an interviewer perspective, though, it's important to remember that many very good candidates will feel uncomfortable doing so.
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