3 ms·

I'm sure I'm not the only one here in a position where I can re-shape my company's interview process. And it's loud and clear in the comments here that people a

I'm sure I'm not the only one here in a position where I can re-shape my company's interview process. And it's loud and clear in the comments here that people are unhappy with the status quo. So, if you were making a hiring process, what would you ask candidates to do?

carapace 7y ago
> if you were making a hiring process, what would you ask candidates to do? Review code. It would be at least a few pages, in the language they would be working in, with a few bugs that you know of in advance. Depending on what the code does and the particular bugs you introduce you can get a pretty good idea of the candidates' comprehension of the things you need. (Bonus points if they find bugs you didn't introduce.) One problem with this is that both the code itself and the evaluation of the candidates review have to be done by sharp folk who know what they are about. Otherwise GIGO.
- cableshaft 7y ago
  I'll second this. This is mostly a copy paste of my comment on another one of these interview topics: "One of my best interview experiences was exactly that. The interviewer handed me a printed out class and said "tell me what this does, any mistakes you see, and any little improvements that you think could be made." I got the job and later confirmed it was a class that was actually in the software I would be working on, not some toy class he came up with. He also asked me a handful of technical questions and had me go over some source code I brought in, but that was about it. At one point he even said, "I know enough to know you can do the job, but now I'm curious what you really know." And asked me some no pressure really low level questions. When I said I didn't know the answer to something he'd spend a couple of minutes explaining the concept to me. I walked out of that interview having learned a few new things about my field. A couple of them have stuck with me over a decade later. And the guy was a grizzled veteran who was the lead on some massive mainstream video games I pretty much guarantee you've heard of. He used to code them in Assembly, even. He's probably the most knowledgeable programmer I've ever met. I've never had anyone try going over actual code with me since, in probably a couple dozen interviews, and I don't understand why. It seemed very effective."

carapace 7y ago

> if you were making a hiring process, what would you ask candidates to do? Review code. It would be at least a few pages, in the language they would be working in, with a few bugs that you know of in advance. Depending on what the code does and the particular bugs you introduce you can get a pretty good idea of the candidates' comprehension of the things you need. (Bonus points if they find bugs you didn't introduce.) One problem with this is that both the code itself and the evaluation of the candidates review have to be done by sharp folk who know what they are about. Otherwise GIGO.

cableshaft 7y ago
I'll second this. This is mostly a copy paste of my comment on another one of these interview topics: "One of my best interview experiences was exactly that. The interviewer handed me a printed out class and said "tell me what this does, any mistakes you see, and any little improvements that you think could be made." I got the job and later confirmed it was a class that was actually in the software I would be working on, not some toy class he came up with. He also asked me a handful of technical questions and had me go over some source code I brought in, but that was about it. At one point he even said, "I know enough to know you can do the job, but now I'm curious what you really know." And asked me some no pressure really low level questions. When I said I didn't know the answer to something he'd spend a couple of minutes explaining the concept to me. I walked out of that interview having learned a few new things about my field. A couple of them have stuck with me over a decade later. And the guy was a grizzled veteran who was the lead on some massive mainstream video games I pretty much guarantee you've heard of. He used to code them in Assembly, even. He's probably the most knowledgeable programmer I've ever met. I've never had anyone try going over actual code with me since, in probably a couple dozen interviews, and I don't understand why. It seemed very effective."