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>Also, a ton of this conversation makes a lot more sense if you make the assumption that the interviewee is misremembering the questions. Which is a very gentle

>Also, a ton of this conversation makes a lot more sense if you make the assumption that the interviewee is misremembering the questions. Which is a very gentle assumption. No, that's a pretty insulting and disturbingly koolaid flavored presumption. This conversation makes sense to me because of the number of people who have commented that they ended up being unwittingly considered for position that they did not apply for and did not actually even necessarily want. There's at least two in the comments section here and I know two more personally (one of whom is a very talented director of HR, ironically enough). I actually even said this to that director of engineering's comment you mentioned two years ago. He neglected to respond.

geofft 8y ago
I admit that this is certainly possible (Google recruiters wildly underleveling people, at least relative to their expectations if not their actual qualifications, and not clarifying this before passing the candidate onto other recruiters). If it's happening, it's a very different problem (no less real of a problem, though) and process fixes at this stage wouldn't help. Also, this interview performance should have been enough to disqualify this candidate for the role he envisioned, too. If only because, if he was actually intending on applying to be a director of engineering, the right answer to question 3 is something like "I think there's been some sort of mistake."
- crdoconnor 8y ago
  It's not only possible it's likely if they are setting general hiring quotas for their recruiters. And, they almost certainly are setting quotas because they're currently being sued by one of their own recruiters over their quota policy. >Also, this interview performance should have been enough to disqualify this candidate They neither qualify him nor disqualify him. Correctly or near correctly answered trivia questions tell you almost nothing about a candidate other than that they're probably a software engineer of some kind.
  - geofft 8y ago
    > They neither qualify him nor disqualify him. Correctly or near correctly answered trivia questions tell you almost nothing about a candidate other than that they're probably a software engineer of some kind. Please read the entire sentence you quoted halfway - by "interview performance" I don't mean the correctness of the answers, I mean his a) expectation that UNIX trivia quizzes are a normal part of a director-level interview (and that it's not more likely that there was a miscommunication in scheduling) and b) attitude.
  - geekbird 8y ago
    "Correctly or near correctly answered trivia questions tell you almost nothing about a candidate other than that they're probably a software engineer of some kind." This. I hate trivia, and trivia questions. You can get a book or find a website to bone up on trivia questions if that's your thing. However, it says nothing about whether you actually know anything about working with computers every day.

geofft 8y ago

I admit that this is certainly possible (Google recruiters wildly underleveling people, at least relative to their expectations if not their actual qualifications, and not clarifying this before passing the candidate onto other recruiters). If it's happening, it's a very different problem (no less real of a problem, though) and process fixes at this stage wouldn't help. Also, this interview performance should have been enough to disqualify this candidate for the role he envisioned, too. If only because, if he was actually intending on applying to be a director of engineering, the right answer to question 3 is something like "I think there's been some sort of mistake."

crdoconnor 8y ago
It's not only possible it's likely if they are setting general hiring quotas for their recruiters. And, they almost certainly are setting quotas because they're currently being sued by one of their own recruiters over their quota policy. >Also, this interview performance should have been enough to disqualify this candidate They neither qualify him nor disqualify him. Correctly or near correctly answered trivia questions tell you almost nothing about a candidate other than that they're probably a software engineer of some kind.
- geofft 8y ago
  > They neither qualify him nor disqualify him. Correctly or near correctly answered trivia questions tell you almost nothing about a candidate other than that they're probably a software engineer of some kind. Please read the entire sentence you quoted halfway - by "interview performance" I don't mean the correctness of the answers, I mean his a) expectation that UNIX trivia quizzes are a normal part of a director-level interview (and that it's not more likely that there was a miscommunication in scheduling) and b) attitude.
- geekbird 8y ago
  "Correctly or near correctly answered trivia questions tell you almost nothing about a candidate other than that they're probably a software engineer of some kind." This. I hate trivia, and trivia questions. You can get a book or find a website to bone up on trivia questions if that's your thing. However, it says nothing about whether you actually know anything about working with computers every day.