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Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel laureate noted for his work in judgment and decision making, stated in an interview earlier this year that interviews are terrible at choosing the best candidates. Unfortunately, he didn’t articulate alternatives.
The other big problem is not even giving an interview to a great candidate based on things like a resume and possible a cover letter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've also "heard" that the ratio of people who fail at fizzbuzz is truly disturbing even if they have impressive CV's. It makes me wonder, though. Has anyone ever just admitted they failed at fizzbuzz here on HN? I can imagine someone bombing it if they're nervous or if they forgot the modulo operator in their language of choice and got lost doing it an "ugly" error-prone way because they were too embarrassed to chan…
I've wondered before how many of the "OMG tons of candidates can't fizzbuzz" anecdotes come down to messing up syntax or forgetting the name of something in the language they're using and mixing in something from another language, or making a plausible but incorrect guess. I could definitely see doing those things in an interview, and I've usually been considered the "smart one" or one to come to with weird/low-level…
I had a person break down and confess, and we spent the rest of the interview talking about how their codecademy lessons were going.
I am both a recruiter and a highly experienced developer and software designer. I once sent one of the very best programmers I know for a job interview. I have met a small handful of outstanding programmers in my > 30 years in IT and this guy was in the top five, near the top. I had personally worked directly with him for 5 years and he was unquestionably one of the most talented programmers there is, and a nice guy,…
I disagree. Maybe not immediately, but I’ve definitely picked the wrong candidate when I had two other better candidates in hindsight.
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I agree about FizzBuzz. But how often do interviewees showing up with gross clothes, swear, or be rude to interviewer? I'd say almost 0?
Funny that this was brought up. I agree fully that it's rare. But...a friend of mine was "den mother" for graduate students in a top 20 comp sci program. The students were often doctoral candidates but could also be MS students doing a thesis. A large part of her job was prepping them for interviews with companies like Google, MS, Oracle, etc. Here are a few gems she had to remind/inform them of. "Yes, you have to sh…
I am both a recruiter and a highly experienced developer and software designer. I once sent one of the very best programmers I know for a job interview. I have met a small handful of outstanding programmers in my > 30 years in IT and this guy was in the top five, near the top. I had personally worked directly with him for 5 years and he was unquestionably one of the most talented programmers there is, and a nice guy,…
As a recruiter what percentage of the time are you throwing candidates at jobs to see what sticks?
It's better to let good/great people slip away then to get a bad apple onto the team. Or worse, a mediocre one who never does anything wrong but also isn't contributing positively either.
I just read someone talk about job post on linkedin with over a thousand applications. Are people on linked in truly mediocre that not one out of a thousand can fill the position?
I am both a recruiter and a highly experienced developer and software designer. I once sent one of the very best programmers I know for a job interview. I have met a small handful of outstanding programmers in my > 30 years in IT and this guy was in the top five, near the top. I had personally worked directly with him for 5 years and he was unquestionably one of the most talented programmers there is, and a nice guy,…
Why did they reject him the first time around? As a recruiter what percentage of the time are you throwing candidates at jobs to see what sticks?
Because most people do a really bad job at technical interviewing and selection - there's so much to say about why it would take a book to explain it all. BUT importantly - everyone thinks they do a great job at interviewing and selection.
>> As a recruiter what percentage of the time are you throwing candidates at jobs to see what sticks?
I'm not sure I understand the question. Is it saying "recruiters send any old person for a job in the random hope they might get it, how often do you do that?".
I don't do that.
I try to find the right person for the job, I look for people who are smart and get stuff done and I send people who I think are going to contribute something meaningful to a company. I use my technical expertise to try to understand the candidates level of technical experience, and I articulate the strengths and weaknesses of the candidate to the employer.
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I've been programming for 35 years and I can't fizzbuzz cause I don't know what it is. Yes, I've heard about it before cause it's mentioned on forums, and I even looked it up once, but I always consider such things childish. (I honestly don't remember anything about it.) Ask me about an algorithm and I'm there but don't play games with me. EDIT: Just looked it up. Yep. A game. Now compare that to my years of accompli…
In internet discussions, people say "write fizzbuzz" because it's a well known trivial problem. In an interview, they ask you to print the numbers 0..n to the screen, while replacing numbers divisible by 3 with the string literal fizz, and numbers divisible by 5 with the string literal buzz. The biggest trick or gotcha is that they will also specify that numbers divisible by 15 should be replaced with 'fizzbuzz', but…
The OP said that one should know how to write a fizzbuzz. I said I couldn't cause I don't know what it is. That doesn't mean I couldn't once it was explained to me.
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I've been programming for 35 years and I can't fizzbuzz cause I don't know what it is. Yes, I've heard about it before cause it's mentioned on forums, and I even looked it up once, but I always consider such things childish. (I honestly don't remember anything about it.) Ask me about an algorithm and I'm there but don't play games with me. EDIT: Just looked it up. Yep. A game. Now compare that to my years of accompli…
Fizzbuzz isn't a trick questions that you have to have heard of. It's designed to be an EXTREMELY easy question, answerable by anyone with even a basic knowledge of programming. It's not a game. It's a way to weed out people that don't know anything. If you have been programming for 35 years, you'll probably be appalled by how easy it is. Look it up.
It may be easy but you would have to explain it to me if you were interviewing me.
After looking up what it is, as I said I did, yes, I could do it easily but don't ask me to code your game "fizzbuzz" as if I would know what it was.
I am both a recruiter and a highly experienced developer and software designer. I once sent one of the very best programmers I know for a job interview. I have met a small handful of outstanding programmers in my > 30 years in IT and this guy was in the top five, near the top. I had personally worked directly with him for 5 years and he was unquestionably one of the most talented programmers there is, and a nice guy,…
At least for me, a "no hire" does't mean that I'm convinced the developer wouldn't be a good fit. In fact, I'm pretty sure my team is likely passing on some good developers that just don't look that way given the limited time and options we have to evaluate their skills and overall "fit."
But, we try to follow Joel Spolsky's suggestion of turning any "maybe" into a "no", so this reality is an accepted trade-off in the model that informs how we hire.