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>> much prefer to whiteboard Who would have thought? Maybe - just maybe - not everyone has the same strengths and weaknesses. The real answer here is obvious:

>> much prefer to whiteboard Who would have thought? Maybe - just maybe - not everyone has the same strengths and weaknesses. The real answer here is obvious: present the interviewee with options. Forcing all potential hires to whiteboard is a terrible idea. Forcing all potential hires to do a take-home project is a terrible idea. It's extremely short-sighted and a little pompous to assume that any single interview format one chooses is going to magically sort everyone into neat little buckets of "good" and "bad". If you force the whiteboarding approach, you are only going to wind up hiring social butterflies who have absolutely no nerves standing up in front of complete strangers and having all the answers on the spot. If you force the take-home project approach, you're turning off a lot of people who can nail a first impression presenting themselves and their skillset in person. People are different. Applying the same interview type to everyone is going to target a specific set of strengths, and a specific set of weaknesses. And frankly, no business should be composed entirely of one type of person. Some diversity does wonders when assessing the overall strength of a team.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "If you force the take-home project approach, you're turning off a lot of people who can nail a first impression presenting themselves and their skillset in person." Whiteboarding is a poor reflection of what people do day-to-day, and can be misleading if a candidate practices interview technique over coding experience. In other words, just because someone can regurgitate an algorithm on command, doesn't mean they'll be a good developer. If all you want to optimise for is finding people who make a good first impression, by all means carry on with whiteboarding. However, if you want to find good developers then there is a one-size-fits-all solution, and that's to see how they develop code in the real world, which is exactly what the 'weekend project + appraisal' approach is a great fit for.
dlgeek 10y ago
> The real answer here is obvious: present the interviewee with options. If you're a company that does any kind of business with the federal government, that's simply not an option. You have to be super-consistent in terms of your interviewing and recruiting process across all candidates for a job req and can't do things for some candidates without doing it for all of them.

ZenoArrow 10y ago

> "If you force the take-home project approach, you're turning off a lot of people who can nail a first impression presenting themselves and their skillset in person." Whiteboarding is a poor reflection of what people do day-to-day, and can be misleading if a candidate practices interview technique over coding experience. In other words, just because someone can regurgitate an algorithm on command, doesn't mean they'll be a good developer. If all you want to optimise for is finding people who make a good first impression, by all means carry on with whiteboarding. However, if you want to find good developers then there is a one-size-fits-all solution, and that's to see how they develop code in the real world, which is exactly what the 'weekend project + appraisal' approach is a great fit for.

dlgeek 10y ago

> The real answer here is obvious: present the interviewee with options. If you're a company that does any kind of business with the federal government, that's simply not an option. You have to be super-consistent in terms of your interviewing and recruiting process across all candidates for a job req and can't do things for some candidates without doing it for all of them.