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I'm currently working on revamping the way we do the first interview, which is nothing more than a filter. We currently ask mainly, let's face it, poor theore

I'm currently working on revamping the way we do the first interview, which is nothing more than a filter. We currently ask mainly, let's face it, poor theoretical questions. I want to ask more experience based questions. so instead of: Explain what a database index is Ask: Can you give us an example of a time you used a database index? What were you trying to achieve? Could there have been a different solution to reach the same outcome? If the candidate doesn't have experience with databases that's fine we just ignore this question, at least that's what I would like to do, whether I can sell this is another story. To be sure if the candidate has no database experience, no cloud experience and no backend development experience then it's probably not going to work out but we can try to be flexible about candidate's experience. It's easy enough to learn what SOLID means but a lot harder to know when it's a bad idea to use it or when it might be a good idea to compromise.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
I’ve been asked these kind of questions before....for a compiler job. I mean, you can clearly see on my CV that I don’t do backend, cloud, or database, the hiring manager is not interested in me for those things, yet their interview process is so inflexible that these are the only questions that can be asked during the interview (....and not one compiler question either).
- reallydontask 8y ago
  The key is flexibility. As you say, there is little point in asking somebody who is going to be working with compilers the best way of doing something with React or Angular. A guy I used to work with would walk through the technical skills section on candidate's CV asking for knowledge level out of 10 and then ask questions accordingly but that is trickier to do on an online platform (at least as far as I'm aware)
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    Many interview processes avoids trivia for pure problem practice. Either some real life problem setup designed to fit into 45 minutes, or...Leetcode problems. Only the latter are immune to the specialization problem, but have little bearing on the job actually to be done.
  - pickle-wizard 8y ago
    I recently had a job interview where I was asked about skills on my resume. Except on every question the scale would change. For example. On a scale on 1 to 7 how do you rate your self on Linux Then, On a scale of 1 to 9 how do you rate your self on AWS. It was maddening and I could couldn't give an honest answer as I kept getting confused. That is one of the many reasons I declined a second interview with that company.
    - reallydontask 8y ago
      Why change the scale? that would've confused me too I guess the interviewer thought the scale change would make you think harder about your skill level ...
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  I was on a Senior Frontend Interview, it came up that I had a startup at one point where bootstrapped just about everything, the interviewer started going into that and how I maintained database versioning, and the batch processes I had running on Linode and why I chose Linode, and why I had ElasticSearch running on Searchly and not on AWS, and how did I do performance optimization and build times and why didn't I do this type of QA process and when I took stuff from ElasticSearch and put it into Redis for quicker response times etc. etc. and devops and whatnot, which most of the responses were well that was because I was the only one who could and some of these things you wanted me to have done are just too expensive for a startup in that position. So anyway the interviewer told the recruiter who'd contacted me that I was not a good cultural fit for their Senior Frontend Developer position.
falsedan 8y ago
be more open-ended? > Can you give us an example of a time you used a database index Hey this query is slow, what could we try doing to speed it up?

seanmcdirmid 8y ago

I’ve been asked these kind of questions before....for a compiler job. I mean, you can clearly see on my CV that I don’t do backend, cloud, or database, the hiring manager is not interested in me for those things, yet their interview process is so inflexible that these are the only questions that can be asked during the interview (....and not one compiler question either).

reallydontask 8y ago
The key is flexibility. As you say, there is little point in asking somebody who is going to be working with compilers the best way of doing something with React or Angular. A guy I used to work with would walk through the technical skills section on candidate's CV asking for knowledge level out of 10 and then ask questions accordingly but that is trickier to do on an online platform (at least as far as I'm aware)
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  Many interview processes avoids trivia for pure problem practice. Either some real life problem setup designed to fit into 45 minutes, or...Leetcode problems. Only the latter are immune to the specialization problem, but have little bearing on the job actually to be done.
- pickle-wizard 8y ago
  I recently had a job interview where I was asked about skills on my resume. Except on every question the scale would change. For example. On a scale on 1 to 7 how do you rate your self on Linux Then, On a scale of 1 to 9 how do you rate your self on AWS. It was maddening and I could couldn't give an honest answer as I kept getting confused. That is one of the many reasons I declined a second interview with that company.
  - reallydontask 8y ago
    Why change the scale? that would've confused me too I guess the interviewer thought the scale change would make you think harder about your skill level ...
bryanrasmussen 8y ago
I was on a Senior Frontend Interview, it came up that I had a startup at one point where bootstrapped just about everything, the interviewer started going into that and how I maintained database versioning, and the batch processes I had running on Linode and why I chose Linode, and why I had ElasticSearch running on Searchly and not on AWS, and how did I do performance optimization and build times and why didn't I do this type of QA process and when I took stuff from ElasticSearch and put it into Redis for quicker response times etc. etc. and devops and whatnot, which most of the responses were well that was because I was the only one who could and some of these things you wanted me to have done are just too expensive for a startup in that position. So anyway the interviewer told the recruiter who'd contacted me that I was not a good cultural fit for their Senior Frontend Developer position.

falsedan 8y ago

be more open-ended? > Can you give us an example of a time you used a database index Hey this query is slow, what could we try doing to speed it up?