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IIRC, the published results were that above a certain bar, there was no predictive value to interview results. Having interviewed many dozens of people, and bee

IIRC, the published results were that above a certain bar, there was no predictive value to interview results. Having interviewed many dozens of people, and been in dozens of interviews, I can confidently say that the current standards of technical interviews do not screen for quality, but interest. The whole point of having someone study typical problems to the point where they can solve them in 30-45 minutes is not to demonstrate quality at the job. Rather it is to have them signal that they are interested in doing the things they need to do to get hired. Those types of problems are outside the scope of software engineering, and getting good at them requires a significant investment in time. Yes, they will reduce the rate of false positives somewhat, but greatly increase the rate of false negatives.

rco8786 9y ago
> the published results were that above a certain bar, there was no predictive value to interview results What I said is not exclusive to this research. These types of interviews are not great, but there's no other "accepted" way and a lot (most?) companies are afraid to try new stuff because making a bad hire is very expensive. > they will reduce the rate of false positives somewhat, but greatly increase the rate of false negatives. In addition to what I just mentioned above, the companies that invented and stick to this style of interviewing are well aware of and don't care about the false negatives. Their desire is to reduce false positives and they have a mile long line of willing candidates behind that person if they get a false negative. When you interview at Google/Facebook/etc, your recruiter will tell you that a lot of people don't pass the interview the first time. And if you don't pass, they'll reach out to you again in ~6 months to see if you want to try again. The companies that use these interviewing processes that don't have a large pipeline of candidates are doing themselves a huge disservice IMO. But kind of like "nobody got fired for hiring IBM"..."nobody got fired for copying Google".

rco8786 9y ago

> the published results were that above a certain bar, there was no predictive value to interview results What I said is not exclusive to this research. These types of interviews are not great, but there's no other "accepted" way and a lot (most?) companies are afraid to try new stuff because making a bad hire is very expensive. > they will reduce the rate of false positives somewhat, but greatly increase the rate of false negatives. In addition to what I just mentioned above, the companies that invented and stick to this style of interviewing are well aware of and don't care about the false negatives. Their desire is to reduce false positives and they have a mile long line of willing candidates behind that person if they get a false negative. When you interview at Google/Facebook/etc, your recruiter will tell you that a lot of people don't pass the interview the first time. And if you don't pass, they'll reach out to you again in ~6 months to see if you want to try again. The companies that use these interviewing processes that don't have a large pipeline of candidates are doing themselves a huge disservice IMO. But kind of like "nobody got fired for hiring IBM"..."nobody got fired for copying Google".