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When I interview candidates, the make or break question for me is does the person possess critical thinking skills? Various things may point one way or another
by Bahamut 11y ago
When I interview candidates, the make or break question for me is does the person possess critical thinking skills?
Various things may point one way or another for this, but it is a mistake to assume [insert working at a particular company] is an indication that someone has to have the skills, as well as to assume someone not having [insert pet qualification] is an indication that someone does not have these skills.
Sadly, there is a severe lack of this skill applied in our profession, and it is probably the costliest common mistake I see.
- walterbell 11y agoAny pointers on assessing critical thinking skills during an interview, e.g. with or without technically focused questions?
- im_down_w_otp 11y agoI would be interested to know how you're assessing for "critical thinking skills".
- beachstartup 11y agoinstead of asking them stupid, verbatim-recall questions, i give them a problem and ask them how they would solve it. i.e., "a customer reports his website is running too slow. describe how you would identify and solve the problem." it's a good sign when they start asking you follow-up questions, like "is it load balanced? is there a database?". it's a bad sign when they say, "just restart the server".
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoI got asked "what happens when you hit return in the browser?" After I had traced from the keyboard driver through libraries and runtimes to the browser event system, then back down thru the network layers to sockets, then thru IP events to land a packet on the remote router, they called a halt. Apparently nobody had actually answered the question before. IMO Its a good exercise for problem-solving, and plumbs experience and terminology. I'm not so sure you learn anything about the subject's actual programming skills?
- beachstartup 11y agowell yeah, it's just one question. programming and devops proof is in the pudding. we just ask for code samples and a walkthrough, and go with our gut. maybe a few technical procedure questions. in my experience it's the other things that will make or break an employee, like whether or not they have an actual work ethic, or is a closet drug addict, or gets too drunk and touches women inappropriately at company events. these are things you can't test for in an interview or background check, and i find it strange that nobody ever mentions this kind of stuff because personal problems are the most common kind we run into. it's rare to hire someone totally incompetent if you yourself have extensive experience in the work you're hiring them for.
- taurath 11y agoIf you have personal problems with people - check references. People will rarely state that such a person who causes problems is a "joy" to work with.
- beachstartup 11y agoyeah, we do that too.
- andersen1488 11y agoI think that's actually a really good question. It shows deep knowledge and understanding of everything that is happening during a user interaction which is essential knowledge for a webdev. Plenty of "front end developers" have no clue what an HTTP request is.
- gearoidoc 11y agoWeb developers don't need to know how a keyboard works. Nothing much more complex than key press down/up anyway.
- bobwaycott 11y ago