3 ms·
You're ignoring the sentence that came immediately after that one: > It also might be that they know them inside-and-out but aren’t used to answering questions
by c3534l 8y ago
You're ignoring the sentence that came immediately after that one:
> It also might be that they know them inside-and-out but aren’t used to answering questions on the fly, or that our question didn’t use the vocabulary they’re familiar with, or that they misheard the question and answered a different one. [...] People are generally open to hearing that, one way or another, they didn’t manage to demonstrate that they understood a topic.
The author is actively acknowledging that being unable to answer a question about RDMSs doesn't mean they don't actually know anything about them.
And the point, I think, stands. An interview isn't a passive process where by some magic algorithm they determine good candidates from bad and the candidate just sits there hoping the right question will be asked. You have to actually communicate to the interviewer your knowledge and experience because they don't know.
- tptacek 8y agoNo, I get that! I think the author does a good job of implicitly recognizing the weakness of interview processes. I'm really just saying 2 things: 1. They missed a failure mode: in addition to (a) lack of knowledge and (b) lack of communication skills, there is also (c) lack of interviewing skill. 2. It's possible to design an interview process that is resilient to both (b) and (c), and I figured Triplebyte, "who has just one job", would do that. In addition, on this thread, I've tried (badly) to point out that while (b) is maybe a reasonable thing to check candidates for, it's better to do that explicitly, with an actual test of communication skill, rather than something that can easily get confounded with (a) and (c) (and all the attendant stress that situation generates!). Thanks for the opportunity to clarify; I'm doing too many things at once today.