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I give them a chance to judge their own skillset. After looking at their resume, I have an idea based on the projects they take credit for, what their experienc

by kronin 8y ago

I give them a chance to judge their own skillset. After looking at their resume, I have an idea based on the projects they take credit for, what their experience level should be. If what they state lines up with their resume, and they are unable to answer a simple question, with multiple hints and help, then I absolutely assume they are a liar (edit: or delusional, which is even worse. An expectation I have of seniors and above is to have some idea of knowing what they don't know). It would be unreasonable for me to pass them through an interview that the other members on the team passed through based on "oh, they had a bad day". Since you haven't been on the other side of the table, have you had coworkers who obviously were at a position above their skill level? Who allowed the rest of their team to carry them? I've had periods wherey personal life has affected my productivity. That doesn't preclude my ability to write an algorithm that reverses a string nor write a simple SQL join. I don't ask brain teasers. I ask questions related to what the engineers under me will be expected to solve every day.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
a-dub 8y ago
How do you know that you're not just crap at interviewing? Assuming people are lying is both extreme and presumptuous, no? Also, are your people actually reversing strings by hand every day? I sure hope not!
- kronin 8y ago
  Since you're attacking me, do you have any experience screening resumes? Phone screens? In-person interviews? Have you had the experience of a candidate that has apparently "done it all" on their resume, and confirmed their skill level when asked in-person, only to see them struggle with the simplest question in an area they deem themself an "expert" in? I've interviewed well over 300 people, for positions from junior/entry-level to principal. If you read many of the comments to this article you'll hear other people with experience interviewing who also call out that candidates can and do lie. I don't like it, I'd rather it not be the case. I constrain the majority of my questioning to what a candidate claims to know on their resume. Here's a tip... If you don't know it (and I'm not talking about bullshit trivia questions), then don't put it on your resume.
  - a-dub 8y ago
    Yup... and I don't know, for someone who has "300 people" worth of interview experience, you sure don't seem to be demonstrating in this thread the sort of level headed temperance and soft skills I would expect. I'm joking. (sorta) I'm glad to hear that you tailor to the resume, that's actually better than most and my favorite approach. But if I had a dollar for every time someone walked out of an interview with a braggadocious claim like "they couldn't even do X, they must be lying" but then answer "no" to "did you ask them anything else?". I'd be rich. Reversing a string is a bad example, it is dead easy. But it seems a lot of people have random substitutions for it of varying obscurity and difficulty.
    - kronin 8y ago
      My interview covers coding, data structures, algorithms, system design and data modeling. I attempt to tailor to the candidate, but there needs to be some level of standardization to be able to justify to the recruiters why a candidate didn't proceed. Just because a candidate fails or falls short in one area doesn't mean they are cut, but it's a pretty large red flag if a candidate purports to know something, both on their resume and in person, yet can't answer some seemingly basic questions. If you state on your resume that you architected and implemented a system end to end, yet can't whiteboard the result and explain bottlenecks or failure conditions, I absolutely will assume you stretched the truth a bit. And if the candidate feels the need to do that to get the job, what will it be like to work with them? Could you trust their estimates? Would you be able to back them if something they delivered fails and you trusted them as a senior to deliver? I ask follow-ups. I give hints. Honestly I'm dismayed at the skillset of purported "seniors" and "architects", and that's interviewing for small companies up to one of the FAANGs.
      - indymike 8y ago
        Do you allow candidates to use their normal workflow (which is dependent on access to Google, github and q&a sites) or are we putting people in an idealized workflow where the dev has to know everything? I think many developers and interviewers think using Google and StackOverflow is a sign of weakness. It may or may not be, but it is normal in many developers workflows. Thoughts?
- travisoneill1 8y ago
  If you cant quickly write a function that reverses a string you either don't know the language at all or you can't solve simple problems. So either a liar or a completely incompetent engineer is a safe bet.
- solveit 8y ago
  I mean, people shouldn't be reversing strings by hand, but being unable to do so is also very worrying. Not because manual string reversal is an everyday problem, but because you need to do similarly complicated things all the time. In fact, you need to do them even if you're not a dev, it's just that devs share a common language that makes string reversal a sensible problem to ask in an interview.
  - pytester 8y ago
    >you need to do similarly complicated things all the time My policy is to ask about those things instead. The ones you'll actually do rather than the ones that are, at best, tangentially related.
    - recursive 8y ago
      It takes a few days to explain the business rules. It's probably better to use a well understood general structure.
      - pytester 8y ago
        It isn't that hard to isolate a block of code that addresses a small cross section of your business rules and ask a candidate to do something meaningful with it.
        nearbuy 8y ago
        That could be an excellent second, more involved, question. The first, super simple 2-minute sanity check question is to reverse a string. It's literally just a reverse for loop.
        tome 8y ago
        Then the complaint will be "they gave me a question about a really specific and hard to understand part of their code. It would have been easy to solve if I had familiarity with the concepts involved. Why didn't they just ask a similarly complicated question about strings instead?"
- BurningFrog 8y ago
  If you're crap at interviewing, you're just not going to do well at interviews. That's unfortunate, but logically inescapable.

by kronin 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

a-dub 8y ago

How do you know that you're not just crap at interviewing? Assuming people are lying is both extreme and presumptuous, no? Also, are your people actually reversing strings by hand every day? I sure hope not!

kronin 8y ago
Since you're attacking me, do you have any experience screening resumes? Phone screens? In-person interviews? Have you had the experience of a candidate that has apparently "done it all" on their resume, and confirmed their skill level when asked in-person, only to see them struggle with the simplest question in an area they deem themself an "expert" in? I've interviewed well over 300 people, for positions from junior/entry-level to principal. If you read many of the comments to this article you'll hear other people with experience interviewing who also call out that candidates can and do lie. I don't like it, I'd rather it not be the case. I constrain the majority of my questioning to what a candidate claims to know on their resume. Here's a tip... If you don't know it (and I'm not talking about bullshit trivia questions), then don't put it on your resume.
- a-dub 8y ago
  Yup... and I don't know, for someone who has "300 people" worth of interview experience, you sure don't seem to be demonstrating in this thread the sort of level headed temperance and soft skills I would expect. I'm joking. (sorta) I'm glad to hear that you tailor to the resume, that's actually better than most and my favorite approach. But if I had a dollar for every time someone walked out of an interview with a braggadocious claim like "they couldn't even do X, they must be lying" but then answer "no" to "did you ask them anything else?". I'd be rich. Reversing a string is a bad example, it is dead easy. But it seems a lot of people have random substitutions for it of varying obscurity and difficulty.
  - kronin 8y ago
    My interview covers coding, data structures, algorithms, system design and data modeling. I attempt to tailor to the candidate, but there needs to be some level of standardization to be able to justify to the recruiters why a candidate didn't proceed. Just because a candidate fails or falls short in one area doesn't mean they are cut, but it's a pretty large red flag if a candidate purports to know something, both on their resume and in person, yet can't answer some seemingly basic questions. If you state on your resume that you architected and implemented a system end to end, yet can't whiteboard the result and explain bottlenecks or failure conditions, I absolutely will assume you stretched the truth a bit. And if the candidate feels the need to do that to get the job, what will it be like to work with them? Could you trust their estimates? Would you be able to back them if something they delivered fails and you trusted them as a senior to deliver? I ask follow-ups. I give hints. Honestly I'm dismayed at the skillset of purported "seniors" and "architects", and that's interviewing for small companies up to one of the FAANGs.
    - indymike 8y ago
      Do you allow candidates to use their normal workflow (which is dependent on access to Google, github and q&a sites) or are we putting people in an idealized workflow where the dev has to know everything? I think many developers and interviewers think using Google and StackOverflow is a sign of weakness. It may or may not be, but it is normal in many developers workflows. Thoughts?
travisoneill1 8y ago
If you cant quickly write a function that reverses a string you either don't know the language at all or you can't solve simple problems. So either a liar or a completely incompetent engineer is a safe bet.
solveit 8y ago
I mean, people shouldn't be reversing strings by hand, but being unable to do so is also very worrying. Not because manual string reversal is an everyday problem, but because you need to do similarly complicated things all the time. In fact, you need to do them even if you're not a dev, it's just that devs share a common language that makes string reversal a sensible problem to ask in an interview.
- pytester 8y ago
  >you need to do similarly complicated things all the time My policy is to ask about those things instead. The ones you'll actually do rather than the ones that are, at best, tangentially related.
  - recursive 8y ago
    It takes a few days to explain the business rules. It's probably better to use a well understood general structure.
    - pytester 8y ago
      It isn't that hard to isolate a block of code that addresses a small cross section of your business rules and ask a candidate to do something meaningful with it.
      - nearbuy 8y ago
        That could be an excellent second, more involved, question. The first, super simple 2-minute sanity check question is to reverse a string. It's literally just a reverse for loop.
      - tome 8y ago
        Then the complaint will be "they gave me a question about a really specific and hard to understand part of their code. It would have been easy to solve if I had familiarity with the concepts involved. Why didn't they just ask a similarly complicated question about strings instead?"
BurningFrog 8y ago
If you're crap at interviewing, you're just not going to do well at interviews. That's unfortunate, but logically inescapable.