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Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

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Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#21

Post by Afton »

grugagag wrote: post #15

It is true, and not that I am trying to be dishonest myself but I am not the same person while taking an interview. It's a sad that we can't be honest or humble but in this system we have to sell ourselves, fake enthusiasm for the hiring company is a must, do whatever it takes to pass the interview then think later if we take the position or not. If not, somebody else with the same capability or or less will snatch t…

Someone always suggests this. The issue is that if you did this, 95% of the candidates that would agree to this kind of setup would be the kind you didn't want.

If I'm sitting on 2 offers, one is a hire and one is a "Let's see how this works out after 2 weeks of work", I'm going to take the first one. And that says nothing for the necessary benefits question in the states, where changing jobs often involves expensive (in money or time) changes to health care insurance.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#22

Post by mac01021 »

stove wrote: post #11

There's a growing rift in software between employers saying "there's a talent shortage" and a rapidly growing population of devs who feel like they're locked out due to the technical interview process. Many of the engineers not being hired are recent bootcamp grads but there are also tons of CS majors that can't seem to "crack" the interview process. Part of my job is helping companies "fix" their hiring and one of t…

This sounds like what most internships are intended to be?

How much does it cost to employ one of these apprentices?

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#23

Post by Der_Einzige »

stove wrote: post #11

There's a growing rift in software between employers saying "there's a talent shortage" and a rapidly growing population of devs who feel like they're locked out due to the technical interview process. Many of the engineers not being hired are recent bootcamp grads but there are also tons of CS majors that can't seem to "crack" the interview process. Part of my job is helping companies "fix" their hiring and one of t…

Sounds like an excuse to pay people who aren't as good at leetcode less...

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#24

Post by JoeMayoBot »

stove wrote: post #11

There's a growing rift in software between employers saying "there's a talent shortage" and a rapidly growing population of devs who feel like they're locked out due to the technical interview process. Many of the engineers not being hired are recent bootcamp grads but there are also tons of CS majors that can't seem to "crack" the interview process. Part of my job is helping companies "fix" their hiring and one of t…

This makes sense and it's a wonder that most companies aren't doing it. There are a lot of people who can do the work with the right apprenticeship/training. IMO, there really isn't a shortage of people who can learn to do the work, but there is a shortage of companies willing to make the investment in people.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#25

Post by q845712 »

stove wrote: post #11

There's a growing rift in software between employers saying "there's a talent shortage" and a rapidly growing population of devs who feel like they're locked out due to the technical interview process. Many of the engineers not being hired are recent bootcamp grads but there are also tons of CS majors that can't seem to "crack" the interview process. Part of my job is helping companies "fix" their hiring and one of t…

at the moment the comment immediately below this is advising folks to find an internship, and in many ways that's what you're describing - a role with a limited timeline and a low minimum bar, but within which some people will be able to demonstrate abilities and promise far beyond that minimum.

It's reasonable, but it doesn't always work out. One of the larger heartbreaks of my professional mentorship time was bringing in someone who seemed like they could be a "diamond in the rough" but was just unable to ever quite pull it together. Watching this person's limited successes and repeated failures and their understandable, almost always mature emotional responses, and being unable to help them get over the hump was pretty frustrating for all parties involved. I also think it was short-term bad for my career: I felt judged for putting so much energy into someone who wasn't quite working out, and I don't think that opened any doors for me personally.

So - it's still a risk! What I think is that when it works it's great, but the people doing the hiring, evaluation, and training are still taking a fairly time-and-resource intensive risk, and when it doesn't work it's no fun at all. Gives me a lot more sympathy for folks who take the safe route.

Maybe there's a paraphrase of "nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM" along the lines of, nobody ever gets dinged in performance review or passed over for promotion if they only hire candidates who can sail through whiteboard-algorithms questions.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#26

Post by Afton »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #19
kabdib wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is this a serious problem? You would be astonished, absolutely flabbergasted, at the number of "senior engineers" who interview well, talk great about projects, but cannot demonstrate basic programming skills (e.g., convert an integer to a string representation, or write fizzbuzz).

How does this happen? What (apparently huge) swath of industry am I insulated from where this can take root? Is this just a bunch of wannabes after tech salaries? Or is this is a side-effect of industrial java programming, where their "job" was basically filling in boilerplate? (I am probably unfairly slandering java shops, it seems unlikely, but everything else seems even more unlikely) It boggles my mind.

I think it usually involves 'helper' type folks. They end up on a project, and they 'help' the project get done. But the work they do tends to be just the boilerplate (or cut-and-paste style work), or just the gathering of test resources, or a surprising amount of work that you would assume that the PM or Manager would do, but instead is done by this person (organizing meetings, setting up checklists, emailing people about current issues/priorities).

This isn't to say that those people don't add value, but if they do this for a few years, they may find that their ability to do greenfield coding has significantly diminished, so much so that they struggle to write objectively simple code because they've fallen out of practice.

Source: I've been one of those people, and I've worked with many. It's an easy rut to fall into, particularly in Test Engineer role (what MS used to call SDET roles).

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#27

Post by stormbrew »

stove wrote: post #11

There's a growing rift in software between employers saying "there's a talent shortage" and a rapidly growing population of devs who feel like they're locked out due to the technical interview process. Many of the engineers not being hired are recent bootcamp grads but there are also tons of CS majors that can't seem to "crack" the interview process. Part of my job is helping companies "fix" their hiring and one of t…

My experience, as someone who has advocated for hiring people along the same lines, is that this is a pitch that everyone will agree is a good idea. But then when it comes time to actually hire someone under it, people will hem and haw about whether or not they have the capacity to mentor people like this.

Usually it then won't happen unless they fit a very specific "comfortable" mold of person that they believe can be a "self-starter" which usually just means someone who's similar to person/people deciding on the hiring in various ways.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#28

Post by manfredo »

grugagag wrote: post #15

It is true, and not that I am trying to be dishonest myself but I am not the same person while taking an interview. It's a sad that we can't be honest or humble but in this system we have to sell ourselves, fake enthusiasm for the hiring company is a must, do whatever it takes to pass the interview then think later if we take the position or not. If not, somebody else with the same capability or or less will snatch t…

As a company you're also competing against other companies for hires. Good candidates can get offers from multiple companies. If you're going to tell candidates to make an opportunity cost sacrifice of several weeks of work just to the the possibility of an offer then you better be offering something extremely valuable to the candidate. Otherwise why would the candidate take the chance on your interview process if they can secure an offer from other companies without paying the opportunity cost?

The result is that this interview process will likely only be pursued by candidates not able to get offers from other companies.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#29

Post by airstrike »

Zaheer wrote: post #2

Related message for students / new-grads: Find an internship. Internship interviews tend to be much easier as the stakes are lower. If you perform well during your internship (arguably easier / more accurate indicator of success), the company will likely extend an offer. At big companies I've seen internship to offer rates exceed 30%.

In most of Wall Street, internship to offer rates effectively start at 100% but some people during the course of internship manage to cause the employer to rethink the offer, so the final result is anywhere between 90-98%

Well, not at JPM, but most everywhere else.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#30

Post by flerchin »

stove wrote: post #11

There's a growing rift in software between employers saying "there's a talent shortage" and a rapidly growing population of devs who feel like they're locked out due to the technical interview process. Many of the engineers not being hired are recent bootcamp grads but there are also tons of CS majors that can't seem to "crack" the interview process. Part of my job is helping companies "fix" their hiring and one of t…

I don't know how to find them, and leetcode and interview puzzles clearly aren't it. However, we've all worked with folks that get way more done than others. We've also worked with people that are a net negative for company. Your paid internship only kinda works at the entry level, and doesn't fix that the filter is broken for mid and senior level.
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