14 ms·

What do the best interviewers have in common?

237 points by leeny 9y ago

minimaxir 9y ago
I saw this was posted yesterday. For reference, don’t delete and resubmit things to HN if they do not get traction.
- dang 9y ago
  It's true that submitters aren't supposed to delete and repost (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) but as the FAQ also says, a small number of reposts are ok when an article hasn't gotten traction. And in this case we invited it, which we do a fair bit of.
NTDF9 9y ago
>> If you’re asking a classic algorithmic question, that’s ok, but you ought to bring some nuance and depth to the table, and if you can teach the interviewee something interesting in the process, even better! This! This! This! If you're going to ask a textbook dynamic programming problem, tell me why that is important. If you're checking to see they can think top-down/bottom up, that's fine. But penalizing (aka no hire) for not knowing "the trick" of that dp problem is futile. In the end, you want a guy/girl who can do the job well. What signal does a candidate solving max subarray give you? Does it tell you they'll write your mission critical service well? Also, LOL at "How to be human". It's sad that smart people have to be taught this.
sskates 9y ago
As an interviewer, I’ve found that the ability to talk through the problem at multiple layers of abstraction to be one of the strongest indicators of mastery of a subject. This is independent of the topic as well- whether you’re interviewing for coding ability, sales skill, or good management practices. Glad to see it show up in these findings as a great way to interview people.
- RubenSandwich 9y ago
  One of the best questions I've ever been asked in an interview is: "Can you explain what a RESTful API is and pretend I know nothing about programming but am familiar with web surfing." For the simple reason that it asks the interviewee to show mastery by using use clear, simple language to explain something that can quickly turn into a bunch of rabbit trails.
  - itronitron 9y ago
    so if the candidate had never heard of 'RESTful' but the hiring manager hired them anyway, how long do you think it would take for someone on the team to teach the new hire what they needed to know about 'RESTful API'ness ? I seriously wonder if the person asking you that question is hoping you can explain REST to all of their coworkers :)
d--b 9y ago
When we do interviews, at least 6 people evaluate the candidate. that would certainly smoothen the cons and pros of individual interviewers and provide a fairly honest picture of the company's culture...
alexbeloi 9y ago
It looks like their metric is: "good" interviewer means the interviewee enjoyed the interview and to want to move forward if asked. Likely a very useful metric for figuring out if some interviewers are turning people off about the company. I (and probably everyone else) would really like to see if this at all correlates with future performance metrics.
- draw_down 9y ago
  Yeah, that part is important but it’s not everything. A good interviewer would result in hires who perform their jobs very well, but as always the question is how to measure all that. We don’t want to admit to ourselves that the choices right now are either strict adherence to a rubric (which likely has all sorts of false positives and negatives), or woo (which we convince ourselves isn’t woo by means of different obfuscations).
- namelezz 9y ago
  > I (and probably everyone else) would really like to see if this at all correlates with future performance metrics. I don't see how it's not possible. If your manager likes you, s/he will give you good reviews.
  - indubitable 9y ago
    That's one oddly insightful little comment. It would be interesting to see the relationship between perceived performance and actual performance (by some impartial metric) in teams/management made up of people that get along well versus teams that don't particularly get along, but also don't actively dislike each other. The trends in 'emotional intelligence' are largely based upon one psychology paper that did not reasonably show what many think it did. The author broke people into groups and found that average aptitude test scores did not work as a predictor for tasks such as 'planning a shopping trip as a team' whereas the average scores of another test, "seeing in the mind's eye", did. The conclusion was therefore that a team's performance is not determined by the aptitude of its individual members, but their 'emotional intelligence.'. That is quite absurd since in order to make that conclusion you'd need to take the people who are individually best at 'planning a shopping trip' and put them in a team and compare their results to another team that scored well on the "seeing in the mind's eye" test but individually not as well on 'planning a shopping trip.' I think the author did not do this as she was well aware of what the result would be, and it's not publishable. The reason for this tangent is that 'emotional intelligence' is now being used as a cornerstone for many things, and this article/company is yet another group feeding off of this. Yet wouldn't be it be quite remarkable if having groups that get along 'too well' could end up being counterindicative for performance. Most people find it difficult to be objective around those they're fond of. Create teams/management systems full of people fond of each other and everybody's going to say everybody's incredible and doing incredible things -- regardless of whether or not that's true.
ChrisSD 9y ago
How good are even good interviewers at picking the best candidate for the job? IIRC what research there is shows mixed results at best. Or is the only point of an interview to motivate the new employee?
sushisource 9y ago
I'm so, so tired of doing interviews filled with "did you memorize this particular algorithm" whiteboard coding questions. Especially given I'm not some fresh-out-of-college hire. The industry's research on this is pretty unequivocal that it's a terrible way to evaluate candidates for anything other than "isn't a complete idiot" which would also be accomplished by more reasonable questions. Why can't the industry finally just drop stupid whiteboard coding and move on to more practically focused questions?
- UncleMeat 9y ago
  Can you give an example of a good practically focused question?
  - sushisource 9y ago
    I personally think the more design focused ones are good. EX: "Here's a system were building. How would you build it?" Then you build on that with "Ah, I see you want to use a cache between these two servers/regions, what kind of cache would it be, what are some limitations there, etc?" Or something like in the article where you start with a little code, and build on it to solve some problem that isn't a totally arbitrary tree traversal like most of the whiteboarding stuff seems to be.
    - ng12 9y ago
      See, I hate questions like that. They're completely face-level and easy to bullshit. I don't want to work at a company full of bullshitters.
    - pkaye 9y ago
      I do the design focus based on the candidates own background... something they have worked on in their resume. This also help me confirm they didn't make things up on their resume. For the coding part, I try to pick things that don't depend on someone hearing about it previously. I try to solve the problem myself in 1/3 the time I allot to the candidate since they are under pressure. Most candidates seem to struggle with simple problem though. A simple one I have asked in C is to reverse the order of numbers in an array in place.
watwut 9y ago
Best interviewer is aware of what the actual position really requires and will adjust interview to find match for that exact position instead of some other generic one.
User23 9y ago
If people didn't routinely fail simple "can you think and write it in code" problems like fizz buzz I wouldn't ask them. But they do so I do. Dijkstra observed that the majority of working programmers can't even write a correct binary search. I tried using it as an interview question and gave up because nobody got it right.
- mjevans 9y ago
  I think it depends on the language(s) your team(s) work with or would like to use. Have all of the reference docs and a dev environment setup on an offline laptop. Have an obviously toy problem inspired by real problems, yet clearly unrelated to anything your company plausibility needs solved. If it is common public knowledge that you already have a solution it might be fine to use a simplified version of that. Define solution criteria. Providing an interface and expecting an object that implements it correctly might be a good test for a go programmer.
- sidlls 9y ago
  The majority of working programmers rarely have to write a correct binary search from scratch. Why should you ask it? A better question would be to ask when it's appropriate to use the algorithm, and possibly provide a set of data and a scenario (i.e. context) that the candidate might encounter in which using the algorithm is an appropriate solution but not necessarily obviously so, then see if his process of thinking about the problem leads him there.
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    Does every language include a generic binary search method? Where? Or similar, if I asked you to find a specific value in a list of Comparable objects, in my language of choice, how would you do it?
    - itronitron 9y ago
      read pseudocode definition of the algorithm and implement in your language of choice, alternatively you could port from one language to another language
brudgers 9y ago
If you enjoyed this article, you might like HN'er tptacek's https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/ https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/
- ohyoutravel 9y ago
  Isn't this the streetfighter.io guy? Pass.
  - rhizome 9y ago
    Isn't this the streetfighter.io guy? Pass. And, ladies and gentlemen, that's how we can get subtle insight into a person's attention to detail.
btilly 9y ago
Here is a crazy interview trick that I've seen work well. Group interviews! It isn't as crazy as it sounds. Suppose that you're hiring for multiple related roles. You have a bunch of people who are ready for their in-person interview come in as a group. You go to lunch with some select employees, and explain that they are not in competition with each other because you're hoping to make multiple hires. Then you come back and are asked to do a basic hackathon over the afternoon. (The available projects for which are all small but real stand-alone things that you could use.) Through the time, you take each person aside, ask them for a basic demonstration of ability, then return them to the group. Hire all who seemed competent and worked well in the group. This saves a lot of time over interviewing each one, and shows you something important about how they will be in the workplace that you otherwise wouldn't see in the normal interview structure. And it is more fun for the candidates!
- seanwilson 9y ago
  > And it is more fun for the candidates! Really? It would be difficult to shake the thought that you're being directly compared and in competition.
  - booleandilemma 9y ago
    I participated in one of these group interviews recently and it felt like I was in the Hunger Games.
  - btilly 9y ago
    That can be a challenge for some. But it is more common to see people swapping phone numbers, leads, and tips. Looking for a job is an isolating experience. And you don't often get the chance to connect with people who are in the same boat as you. And for the people who really can't get past trying to compete against each other..would you want someone like that on your dev team? That's one of the things that this is intended to weed out.
    - seanwilson 9y ago
      Personally, I would hate preparing for a normal interviewing experience and be thrown into something completely nonstandard like this. Why would they be swapping tips and numbers if they're in competition with each other?
yesenadam 9y ago
Oh, it's only about job interviews. Sigh. Maybe that should have been obvious to me from the title or URL? I'm fascinated by interviews, but job interviews, not so much. Except this, from my favourite book by a mile about philosophy of art: "Two men meet; one is the applicant for a position, while the other has the disposition of the matter in his hands. The interview may be mechanical, consisting of set questions, the replies to which perfunctorily settle the matter. There is no experience in which the two men meet, nothing that is not a repetition, by way of acceptance or dismissal, of something which has happened a score of times. The situation is disposed of as if it were an exercise in bookkeeping. But an interplay may take place in which a new experience develops. Where should we look for an account of such an experience? Not to ledger-entries nor yet to a treatise on economics or sociology or personnel-psychology, but to drama or fiction. Its nature and import can be expressed only by art, because there is a unity of experience that can be expressed only as an experience. The experience is of material fraught with suspense and moving toward its own consummation through a connected series of varied incidents. The primary emotions on the part of the applicant may be at the beginning hope or despair, and elation or disappointment at the close. These emotions qualify the experience as a unity. But as the interview proceeds, secondary emotions are evolved as variations of the primary underlying one. It is even possible for each attitude and gesture, each sentence, almost every word, to produce more than a fluctuation in the intensity of the basic emotion; to produce, that is, a change of shade and tint in its quality. The employer sees by means of his own emotional reactions the character of the one applying. He projects him imaginatively into the work to be done and judges his fitness by the way in which the elements of the scene assemble and either clash or fit together. The presence and behavior of the applicant either harmonize with his own attitudes and desires or they conflict and jar. Such factors as these, inherently aesthetic in quality, are the forces that carry the varied elements of the interview to a decisive issue. They enter into the settlement of every situation, whatever its dominant nature, in which there are uncertainty and suspense." - John Dewey, Art as Experience
- make3 9y ago
  this is hackernews, not cooljournalistnews
tyingq 9y ago
>What do the best interviewers have in common? Not sticking to some rigid formula or format. Being able to adjust to the particular candidate in a way that works for both sides. For example, some people aren't great at answering questions rapid fire. Giving them a chance to mull on something, and come back to it later, might reveal something you would have missed. Or, if they miss a question you feel was obvious, ask them what area they feel strong in...then ask a question in that space. Interviewing is stressful, and so you're not necessarily getting a clear view of their skills if you aren't flexible.
Havoc 9y ago
I feel this is somewhat industry dependent, so take this with a grain of salt (finance answer). They cultivate a friendly banter type atmosphere. As to the actual test part: The ones that have asked questions that require a judgemental answer. Bad interviewers try to ask difficult or complex questions. (Stupid monkey puzzles / google style "trick" questions") The good ones assume you're technically competent and throw you questions where the question is crystal clear but the scenario is ambiguous & open to interpretation & vague. I don't need people that can do monkey puzzles I need people that can respond dynamically in the face of uncertainty. e.g. How would you go about detecting fraud in a scenario like XYZ. That has a million possible answers...but depending on which route you chose it'll become painfully obvious to the interviewer whether you know what you're talking about. It doesn't even have to be the right one...the language and logic alone will betray you if you don't know what you're talking about.
- mratzloff 9y ago
  I agree completely, and it applies equally to software engineering. It's how I interview. Now, if it becomes clear that there are gaps in their knowledge, I will spend some time on those areas so I (or the relevant hiring manager) can make a decision regarding if the trade-offs are something I (or they) can live with. For engineers, that can sometimes mean an algorithm problem--but something they haven't likely seen before. The key here being that I don't want to see someone regurgitate a solution, but to understand how they think. If they can't solve a problem fully but can come up with a list of 10 extremely pertinent questions I intentionally failed to mention, that is good information to have.
B1narySunset 9y ago
I have really bad anxiety during interviews and it clouds my mind. I'm considering taking a beta blocker for my next interview.
- hackinthebochs 9y ago
  Do it. It's an open secret in musician circles that many rely on beta blockers for high pressure performances.
Xeoncross 9y ago
The best interviewers are the ones that see your dribbble/github/youtube/etc.. matches their company needs and reach out directly.
- rco8786 9y ago
  What sort of companies need people like me with empty YouTube/dribbble/github accounts?
  - Xeoncross 9y ago
    You've built nothing others can see that would make them want to hire you?
    - rco8786 9y ago
      Nope. I've built tons of stuff for companies though. Stuff you've almost certainly used before, in fact. I do have a github account, but the publicly available stuff is just a bunch of garbage from me tinkering with new technologies or whatever. The idea that I need to have some sort of public portfolio to land a job is ludicrous. I have a life outside of programming.
      - sjellis 9y ago
        "I do have a github account, but the publicly available stuff is just a bunch of garbage from me tinkering with new technologies or whatever." Speaking as an interviewer, that's actually still pretty valuable: it tells me a lot.
cerealbad 9y ago
we are transitioning from a knowledge based economy to a decision based one- it's useless to ask questions which test skill competency if those questions could be answered by a few search engine queries. your goal as a person hiring (or firing) is to assess the candidate's ability to consistently make efficient decisions given complex scenarios with many rotating pieces. can this person handle their responsibilities and grow with them, or will they be difficult. some of the most technical and capable people also have terrible interpersonal skills and a fickle work ethic, which means they follow their interests and not yours. do you want to herd cats or work as a team? teams need leaders, leaders need respect and to be followed. a working environment is a benevolent dictatorship not a democracy. if flat structures worked they would be applied broadly across fortune 500 companies, are you a wheel inventor? it takes about 6 months to train almost anyone to do almost anything in the modern digital/information world. it takes a lifetime to be agreeable, polite, conscientious, patient, dedicated, unbiased. you'd learn a lot more about someone watching them interact with strangers and friends for 5 minutes than from hours in interviews (which ostensibly they have crammed for and are hiding as much of their weaknesses as possible). i assume this is why so many companies want private information on their employees, social media, public profiles. hiring at the moment works as a great filter, there is no best candidate for any job, a better strategy would be to filter out personality traits which would clash with company direction and assume some level of skill training will be required. pretty sure this transition is already happening. the real stickler will come when hiring agencies realise basic fitness and hand eye coordination tests are better predictors than technical ability, then you enter into some genetic discrimination areas which will only accelerate the relevant bio-technologies, a fissile cavitation.
- aangjie 9y ago
  >leaders need respect and to be followed. This works two ways. Parts of it has to be earned, I've worked with founders, whom I would gladly followed when it comes to s/w engineering, but disagree violently when it comes to product/business calls/experiments to do. The reverse has been hard to detect, but my first instinct is that it's a lower percent.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
gesman 9y ago
"When can you start?" question :)
known 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_more_than_one_way_to_do_it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_more_than_one_way_to...
aorloff 9y ago
The best interviewers have 1 big thing in common : they are the actual team the candidate will be working with.
- mathgeek 9y ago
  For short term employment, sure. Teams change, though, so you need to be sure you're hiring for overall ability and not just current fit. Same goes for "culture" as well. There's an argument that "who you'll be working with" as a metric leads to homogenous teams.
dba7dba 9y ago
better interviewing through data Quote from http://blog.interviewing.io/ http://blog.interviewing.io/ Writing Good Code is like Writing a Novel Quote from https://hackernoon.com/writing-good-code-is-like-writing-a-novel-33973645be01 https://hackernoon.com/writing-good-code-is-like-writing-a-n... When I put above two ideas together, I realized following. If you were running a publishing house and needed to a writer to publish your next book, how do you go about picking the writer? You usually look at the body of work from the writer. You read the books the author wrote in the past to decide if the writer is any good. You don't decide if the writer is good or bad from just 1) reading a page of resume and 2) asking him to write out a clever sentence on a whiteboard in the middle of the interview. That tiny slice of data is useless for deciding on anything. If you are all about deciding based on data, why would you make an employment decision based on the most tiny fraction of the actual data (resume and 30 min interview)? Programming/IT/DevOps workers now have ample ways of showing past work. Often it's personal projects in github or a blog with tutorials on how to secure servers. These are far better tools to measure a candidate. Just like reading books by an author is a far better way to predict how that author's works would turn out. And my personal experiences have shown me that majority of interviewers don't read my blog or my github. I find out in interviews that some don't know it's there. It's at the top of my resume for a reason. And no one's asked about any question what I've written about in my blog or in my github repo. And these are topics directly related to the position.

237 points by leeny 9y ago

minimaxir 9y ago

I saw this was posted yesterday. For reference, don’t delete and resubmit things to HN if they do not get traction.

dang 9y ago
It's true that submitters aren't supposed to delete and repost (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) but as the FAQ also says, a small number of reposts are ok when an article hasn't gotten traction. And in this case we invited it, which we do a fair bit of.

NTDF9 9y ago

>> If you’re asking a classic algorithmic question, that’s ok, but you ought to bring some nuance and depth to the table, and if you can teach the interviewee something interesting in the process, even better! This! This! This! If you're going to ask a textbook dynamic programming problem, tell me why that is important. If you're checking to see they can think top-down/bottom up, that's fine. But penalizing (aka no hire) for not knowing "the trick" of that dp problem is futile. In the end, you want a guy/girl who can do the job well. What signal does a candidate solving max subarray give you? Does it tell you they'll write your mission critical service well? Also, LOL at "How to be human". It's sad that smart people have to be taught this.

sskates 9y ago

As an interviewer, I’ve found that the ability to talk through the problem at multiple layers of abstraction to be one of the strongest indicators of mastery of a subject. This is independent of the topic as well- whether you’re interviewing for coding ability, sales skill, or good management practices. Glad to see it show up in these findings as a great way to interview people.

RubenSandwich 9y ago
One of the best questions I've ever been asked in an interview is: "Can you explain what a RESTful API is and pretend I know nothing about programming but am familiar with web surfing." For the simple reason that it asks the interviewee to show mastery by using use clear, simple language to explain something that can quickly turn into a bunch of rabbit trails.
- itronitron 9y ago
  so if the candidate had never heard of 'RESTful' but the hiring manager hired them anyway, how long do you think it would take for someone on the team to teach the new hire what they needed to know about 'RESTful API'ness ? I seriously wonder if the person asking you that question is hoping you can explain REST to all of their coworkers :)

d--b 9y ago

When we do interviews, at least 6 people evaluate the candidate. that would certainly smoothen the cons and pros of individual interviewers and provide a fairly honest picture of the company's culture...

alexbeloi 9y ago

It looks like their metric is: "good" interviewer means the interviewee enjoyed the interview and to want to move forward if asked. Likely a very useful metric for figuring out if some interviewers are turning people off about the company. I (and probably everyone else) would really like to see if this at all correlates with future performance metrics.

draw_down 9y ago
Yeah, that part is important but it’s not everything. A good interviewer would result in hires who perform their jobs very well, but as always the question is how to measure all that. We don’t want to admit to ourselves that the choices right now are either strict adherence to a rubric (which likely has all sorts of false positives and negatives), or woo (which we convince ourselves isn’t woo by means of different obfuscations).
namelezz 9y ago
> I (and probably everyone else) would really like to see if this at all correlates with future performance metrics. I don't see how it's not possible. If your manager likes you, s/he will give you good reviews.
- indubitable 9y ago
  That's one oddly insightful little comment. It would be interesting to see the relationship between perceived performance and actual performance (by some impartial metric) in teams/management made up of people that get along well versus teams that don't particularly get along, but also don't actively dislike each other. The trends in 'emotional intelligence' are largely based upon one psychology paper that did not reasonably show what many think it did. The author broke people into groups and found that average aptitude test scores did not work as a predictor for tasks such as 'planning a shopping trip as a team' whereas the average scores of another test, "seeing in the mind's eye", did. The conclusion was therefore that a team's performance is not determined by the aptitude of its individual members, but their 'emotional intelligence.'. That is quite absurd since in order to make that conclusion you'd need to take the people who are individually best at 'planning a shopping trip' and put them in a team and compare their results to another team that scored well on the "seeing in the mind's eye" test but individually not as well on 'planning a shopping trip.' I think the author did not do this as she was well aware of what the result would be, and it's not publishable. The reason for this tangent is that 'emotional intelligence' is now being used as a cornerstone for many things, and this article/company is yet another group feeding off of this. Yet wouldn't be it be quite remarkable if having groups that get along 'too well' could end up being counterindicative for performance. Most people find it difficult to be objective around those they're fond of. Create teams/management systems full of people fond of each other and everybody's going to say everybody's incredible and doing incredible things -- regardless of whether or not that's true.

ChrisSD 9y ago

How good are even good interviewers at picking the best candidate for the job? IIRC what research there is shows mixed results at best. Or is the only point of an interview to motivate the new employee?

sushisource 9y ago

I'm so, so tired of doing interviews filled with "did you memorize this particular algorithm" whiteboard coding questions. Especially given I'm not some fresh-out-of-college hire. The industry's research on this is pretty unequivocal that it's a terrible way to evaluate candidates for anything other than "isn't a complete idiot" which would also be accomplished by more reasonable questions. Why can't the industry finally just drop stupid whiteboard coding and move on to more practically focused questions?

UncleMeat 9y ago
Can you give an example of a good practically focused question?
- sushisource 9y ago
  I personally think the more design focused ones are good. EX: "Here's a system were building. How would you build it?" Then you build on that with "Ah, I see you want to use a cache between these two servers/regions, what kind of cache would it be, what are some limitations there, etc?" Or something like in the article where you start with a little code, and build on it to solve some problem that isn't a totally arbitrary tree traversal like most of the whiteboarding stuff seems to be.
  - ng12 9y ago
    See, I hate questions like that. They're completely face-level and easy to bullshit. I don't want to work at a company full of bullshitters.
  - pkaye 9y ago
    I do the design focus based on the candidates own background... something they have worked on in their resume. This also help me confirm they didn't make things up on their resume. For the coding part, I try to pick things that don't depend on someone hearing about it previously. I try to solve the problem myself in 1/3 the time I allot to the candidate since they are under pressure. Most candidates seem to struggle with simple problem though. A simple one I have asked in C is to reverse the order of numbers in an array in place.

watwut 9y ago

Best interviewer is aware of what the actual position really requires and will adjust interview to find match for that exact position instead of some other generic one.

User23 9y ago

If people didn't routinely fail simple "can you think and write it in code" problems like fizz buzz I wouldn't ask them. But they do so I do. Dijkstra observed that the majority of working programmers can't even write a correct binary search. I tried using it as an interview question and gave up because nobody got it right.

mjevans 9y ago
I think it depends on the language(s) your team(s) work with or would like to use. Have all of the reference docs and a dev environment setup on an offline laptop. Have an obviously toy problem inspired by real problems, yet clearly unrelated to anything your company plausibility needs solved. If it is common public knowledge that you already have a solution it might be fine to use a simplified version of that. Define solution criteria. Providing an interface and expecting an object that implements it correctly might be a good test for a go programmer.
sidlls 9y ago
The majority of working programmers rarely have to write a correct binary search from scratch. Why should you ask it? A better question would be to ask when it's appropriate to use the algorithm, and possibly provide a set of data and a scenario (i.e. context) that the candidate might encounter in which using the algorithm is an appropriate solution but not necessarily obviously so, then see if his process of thinking about the problem leads him there.
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  Does every language include a generic binary search method? Where? Or similar, if I asked you to find a specific value in a list of Comparable objects, in my language of choice, how would you do it?
  - itronitron 9y ago
    read pseudocode definition of the algorithm and implement in your language of choice, alternatively you could port from one language to another language

brudgers 9y ago

If you enjoyed this article, you might like HN'er tptacek's https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/ https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/

ohyoutravel 9y ago
Isn't this the streetfighter.io guy? Pass.
- rhizome 9y ago
  Isn't this the streetfighter.io guy? Pass. And, ladies and gentlemen, that's how we can get subtle insight into a person's attention to detail.

btilly 9y ago

Here is a crazy interview trick that I've seen work well. Group interviews! It isn't as crazy as it sounds. Suppose that you're hiring for multiple related roles. You have a bunch of people who are ready for their in-person interview come in as a group. You go to lunch with some select employees, and explain that they are not in competition with each other because you're hoping to make multiple hires. Then you come back and are asked to do a basic hackathon over the afternoon. (The available projects for which are all small but real stand-alone things that you could use.) Through the time, you take each person aside, ask them for a basic demonstration of ability, then return them to the group. Hire all who seemed competent and worked well in the group. This saves a lot of time over interviewing each one, and shows you something important about how they will be in the workplace that you otherwise wouldn't see in the normal interview structure. And it is more fun for the candidates!

seanwilson 9y ago
> And it is more fun for the candidates! Really? It would be difficult to shake the thought that you're being directly compared and in competition.
- booleandilemma 9y ago
  I participated in one of these group interviews recently and it felt like I was in the Hunger Games.
- btilly 9y ago
  That can be a challenge for some. But it is more common to see people swapping phone numbers, leads, and tips. Looking for a job is an isolating experience. And you don't often get the chance to connect with people who are in the same boat as you. And for the people who really can't get past trying to compete against each other..would you want someone like that on your dev team? That's one of the things that this is intended to weed out.
  - seanwilson 9y ago
    Personally, I would hate preparing for a normal interviewing experience and be thrown into something completely nonstandard like this. Why would they be swapping tips and numbers if they're in competition with each other?

yesenadam 9y ago

Oh, it's only about job interviews. Sigh. Maybe that should have been obvious to me from the title or URL? I'm fascinated by interviews, but job interviews, not so much. Except this, from my favourite book by a mile about philosophy of art: "Two men meet; one is the applicant for a position, while the other has the disposition of the matter in his hands. The interview may be mechanical, consisting of set questions, the replies to which perfunctorily settle the matter. There is no experience in which the two men meet, nothing that is not a repetition, by way of acceptance or dismissal, of something which has happened a score of times. The situation is disposed of as if it were an exercise in bookkeeping. But an interplay may take place in which a new experience develops. Where should we look for an account of such an experience? Not to ledger-entries nor yet to a treatise on economics or sociology or personnel-psychology, but to drama or fiction. Its nature and import can be expressed only by art, because there is a unity of experience that can be expressed only as an experience. The experience is of material fraught with suspense and moving toward its own consummation through a connected series of varied incidents. The primary emotions on the part of the applicant may be at the beginning hope or despair, and elation or disappointment at the close. These emotions qualify the experience as a unity. But as the interview proceeds, secondary emotions are evolved as variations of the primary underlying one. It is even possible for each attitude and gesture, each sentence, almost every word, to produce more than a fluctuation in the intensity of the basic emotion; to produce, that is, a change of shade and tint in its quality. The employer sees by means of his own emotional reactions the character of the one applying. He projects him imaginatively into the work to be done and judges his fitness by the way in which the elements of the scene assemble and either clash or fit together. The presence and behavior of the applicant either harmonize with his own attitudes and desires or they conflict and jar. Such factors as these, inherently aesthetic in quality, are the forces that carry the varied elements of the interview to a decisive issue. They enter into the settlement of every situation, whatever its dominant nature, in which there are uncertainty and suspense." - John Dewey, Art as Experience

make3 9y ago
this is hackernews, not cooljournalistnews

tyingq 9y ago

>What do the best interviewers have in common? Not sticking to some rigid formula or format. Being able to adjust to the particular candidate in a way that works for both sides. For example, some people aren't great at answering questions rapid fire. Giving them a chance to mull on something, and come back to it later, might reveal something you would have missed. Or, if they miss a question you feel was obvious, ask them what area they feel strong in...then ask a question in that space. Interviewing is stressful, and so you're not necessarily getting a clear view of their skills if you aren't flexible.

Havoc 9y ago

I feel this is somewhat industry dependent, so take this with a grain of salt (finance answer). They cultivate a friendly banter type atmosphere. As to the actual test part: The ones that have asked questions that require a judgemental answer. Bad interviewers try to ask difficult or complex questions. (Stupid monkey puzzles / google style "trick" questions") The good ones assume you're technically competent and throw you questions where the question is crystal clear but the scenario is ambiguous & open to interpretation & vague. I don't need people that can do monkey puzzles I need people that can respond dynamically in the face of uncertainty. e.g. How would you go about detecting fraud in a scenario like XYZ. That has a million possible answers...but depending on which route you chose it'll become painfully obvious to the interviewer whether you know what you're talking about. It doesn't even have to be the right one...the language and logic alone will betray you if you don't know what you're talking about.

mratzloff 9y ago
I agree completely, and it applies equally to software engineering. It's how I interview. Now, if it becomes clear that there are gaps in their knowledge, I will spend some time on those areas so I (or the relevant hiring manager) can make a decision regarding if the trade-offs are something I (or they) can live with. For engineers, that can sometimes mean an algorithm problem--but something they haven't likely seen before. The key here being that I don't want to see someone regurgitate a solution, but to understand how they think. If they can't solve a problem fully but can come up with a list of 10 extremely pertinent questions I intentionally failed to mention, that is good information to have.

B1narySunset 9y ago

I have really bad anxiety during interviews and it clouds my mind. I'm considering taking a beta blocker for my next interview.

hackinthebochs 9y ago
Do it. It's an open secret in musician circles that many rely on beta blockers for high pressure performances.

Xeoncross 9y ago

The best interviewers are the ones that see your dribbble/github/youtube/etc.. matches their company needs and reach out directly.

rco8786 9y ago
What sort of companies need people like me with empty YouTube/dribbble/github accounts?
- Xeoncross 9y ago
  You've built nothing others can see that would make them want to hire you?
  - rco8786 9y ago
    Nope. I've built tons of stuff for companies though. Stuff you've almost certainly used before, in fact. I do have a github account, but the publicly available stuff is just a bunch of garbage from me tinkering with new technologies or whatever. The idea that I need to have some sort of public portfolio to land a job is ludicrous. I have a life outside of programming.
    - sjellis 9y ago
      "I do have a github account, but the publicly available stuff is just a bunch of garbage from me tinkering with new technologies or whatever." Speaking as an interviewer, that's actually still pretty valuable: it tells me a lot.

cerealbad 9y ago

we are transitioning from a knowledge based economy to a decision based one- it's useless to ask questions which test skill competency if those questions could be answered by a few search engine queries. your goal as a person hiring (or firing) is to assess the candidate's ability to consistently make efficient decisions given complex scenarios with many rotating pieces. can this person handle their responsibilities and grow with them, or will they be difficult. some of the most technical and capable people also have terrible interpersonal skills and a fickle work ethic, which means they follow their interests and not yours. do you want to herd cats or work as a team? teams need leaders, leaders need respect and to be followed. a working environment is a benevolent dictatorship not a democracy. if flat structures worked they would be applied broadly across fortune 500 companies, are you a wheel inventor? it takes about 6 months to train almost anyone to do almost anything in the modern digital/information world. it takes a lifetime to be agreeable, polite, conscientious, patient, dedicated, unbiased. you'd learn a lot more about someone watching them interact with strangers and friends for 5 minutes than from hours in interviews (which ostensibly they have crammed for and are hiding as much of their weaknesses as possible). i assume this is why so many companies want private information on their employees, social media, public profiles. hiring at the moment works as a great filter, there is no best candidate for any job, a better strategy would be to filter out personality traits which would clash with company direction and assume some level of skill training will be required. pretty sure this transition is already happening. the real stickler will come when hiring agencies realise basic fitness and hand eye coordination tests are better predictors than technical ability, then you enter into some genetic discrimination areas which will only accelerate the relevant bio-technologies, a fissile cavitation.

aangjie 9y ago
>leaders need respect and to be followed. This works two ways. Parts of it has to be earned, I've worked with founders, whom I would gladly followed when it comes to s/w engineering, but disagree violently when it comes to product/business calls/experiments to do. The reverse has been hard to detect, but my first instinct is that it's a lower percent.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

gesman 9y ago

"When can you start?" question :)

known 9y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_more_than_one_way_to_do_it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_more_than_one_way_to...

aorloff 9y ago

The best interviewers have 1 big thing in common : they are the actual team the candidate will be working with.

mathgeek 9y ago
For short term employment, sure. Teams change, though, so you need to be sure you're hiring for overall ability and not just current fit. Same goes for "culture" as well. There's an argument that "who you'll be working with" as a metric leads to homogenous teams.

dba7dba 9y ago

better interviewing through data Quote from http://blog.interviewing.io/ http://blog.interviewing.io/ Writing Good Code is like Writing a Novel Quote from https://hackernoon.com/writing-good-code-is-like-writing-a-novel-33973645be01 https://hackernoon.com/writing-good-code-is-like-writing-a-n... When I put above two ideas together, I realized following. If you were running a publishing house and needed to a writer to publish your next book, how do you go about picking the writer? You usually look at the body of work from the writer. You read the books the author wrote in the past to decide if the writer is any good. You don't decide if the writer is good or bad from just 1) reading a page of resume and 2) asking him to write out a clever sentence on a whiteboard in the middle of the interview. That tiny slice of data is useless for deciding on anything. If you are all about deciding based on data, why would you make an employment decision based on the most tiny fraction of the actual data (resume and 30 min interview)? Programming/IT/DevOps workers now have ample ways of showing past work. Often it's personal projects in github or a blog with tutorials on how to secure servers. These are far better tools to measure a candidate. Just like reading books by an author is a far better way to predict how that author's works would turn out. And my personal experiences have shown me that majority of interviewers don't read my blog or my github. I find out in interviews that some don't know it's there. It's at the top of my resume for a reason. And no one's asked about any question what I've written about in my blog or in my github repo. And these are topics directly related to the position.