People suck at technical interviews
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People suck at technical interviews
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Re: People suck at technical interviews
#2I think there are some good points here, but I would argue that a lot of these are essentially points for hiring more junior engineers. There are cases where hiring for what someone already knows DOES matter.
I have come across too many codebases that were clearly written by folks who were in the "get stuff done" mentality. Frankly, when you're learning a new technology in addition to trying to do your job, your code/architecture just isn't going to be that good off the bat. If the company had instead hired someone who knew what they were doing from the get go, they could have started with a more solid foundation and potentially avoided pain down the road.
Re: People suck at technical interviews
#3My primary criteria when interviewing junior candidates are:
1) Do you have basic problem solving skills?
2) Can you communicate clearly?
3) Do I want to sit next to you for the next 6 months or longer?
If you don't know Ruby, I can teach you. If you don't know Elasticsearch, I can teach you. What I can't and don't have time to teach you is how to solve a problem on your own without me holding your hand, and I especially don't have time to waste trying to communicate poorly with you.
And obviously, I want to work with someone who is pleasant and interesting. I don't wanna sit next to someone for 40 hours a week who stinks or is rude or can't carry a conversation.
If you meet those three criteria, you've beaten 90% of candidates that walk through the door. The last 10% is what gets you the job. (Obviously, if you DO know Ruby or Elasticsearch, that's a huge plus... but it's not one of the bare minimum requirements.)
Re: People suck at technical interviews
#4My first technical interview they asked me to write a constructor and I completely panicked. It still haunts me to this day that I think the guys in the room thought I was some sort of idiot.
Re: People suck at technical interviews
#5From my experience this is how everyone is hiring... sounds like you've had some bad experiences.
Re: People suck at technical interviews
#6> Variation across teams in big companies is enormous. Just because a company was successful doesn't mean your candidate had anything to do with that.
This might seem to be an over generalisation. It's probably true enough at large consulting body-shops but I'd certainly punt on a lower-end ex google dev comparing favourably to the industry average.
Re: People suck at technical interviews
#7I am an instructor at a coding bootcamp and I conduct technical interviews of our applicants pretty regularly. I have recently been very concerned with tackling the idea the author first addresses: not hiring (or in my case admitting) for what people already know. Our program only has 12 weeks with the students and so what I am most concerned with is the applicant's ability to pick up new concepts quickly.
In the past we have tested students on the little bit of Ruby or Javascript they had studied to prepare for the interview. I am of the belief that that method has helped determine who knows a little bit of Ruby but not who can ramp up on complicated topics quickly during the program. My attempts to address this have led me to doing a 15 minute lesson on something totally new to the applicant and then having them answer questions based off of that lesson. So far I've found it to be useful.
Technical interviews are hard. It's easy to suck at them.
Re: People suck at technical interviews
#8My first technical interview they asked me to write a constructor and I completely panicked. It still haunts me to this day that I think the guys in the room thought I was some sort of idiot.
I have this issue as well. I get extremely nervous and forget very basic things during phone and in person interviews.
I like reading these kinds of articles because they make me feel like less of an idiot, but that's not going to help me get over the issue.
I think the next time I'm actively looking for a job I'll have to just buckle down and practice interviewing and whiteboarding code, which unfortunately is time I would rather be spending building real things instead.
Re: People suck at technical interviews
#9>> Somebody who can intelligently discuss technology
>> Somebody who knows what they don't know
I believe in these principles especially. Most of my interview questions are vague (and I tell the candidate this up-front, and explain why). For instance, I'll ask them to explain how they would debug a very slow cluster, or to explain everything happens between me hitting the keys 'google.com' to me viewing the web page. This gives them a huge range of topics to cover in as much detail as they want. If they know a lot about Linux administration, or how hardware interfaces with the OS, or a lot about network protocols, they have a chance to show it off. I'll drill deeper into wherever they take the conversation, and a person scores major points with me if I drill down far enough that they get lost and say "I don't know, but my guess would be... and I would confirm that by...". I've found it to work exceptionally well.
Re: People suck at technical interviews
#10Fizzbuzz isn't supposed to be a test of your knowledge of the modulo operator. It's supposed to be a very low bar that can filter out a large percentage of candidates who have no business being there.
If you spend 20 minutes on Fizzbuzz, you're doing it wrong. It should take 10 tops, and be limited by how quickly the candidate can write.