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I was at a place that had been around for 20+ years, but needed to grow fairly quickly. So they systematized their hiring process. The focus was on generalist

by pfranz 7y ago

I was at a place that had been around for 20+ years, but needed to grow fairly quickly. So they systematized their hiring process. The focus was on generalists both because a lot of their technology was written in-house (it predated the commodity, off the shelf, solutions). It used the theory of the off the shelf solutions, but often had a different name or a slight difference. But the major reason they wanted generalists, like you say, was so they could move people around as-needed. Much of the industry was either specialists in their studies, or specialists in that they knew a specific software package. It was interesting to interview people who had very in-depth knowledge of one thing, but completely oblivious to even the basics of other areas.

Terretta 7y ago
You’re right, and it can get worse. Certain focused industries such as financial services employ what they call “subject matter experts” aka “SMEs”. Turns out most are “solution matter experts” as in, only know how the particular wonky solution works as installed at their company unchanged since it was installed 10 - 15 years ago.
uwuhn 7y ago
Do any specific interviews come to mind? I'm curious what sort of questions you asked, since I am a specialist :)
- pfranz 7y ago
  This was all about 10 years ago and it definitely lifted some of the trends with interviewing at places like Microsoft, Google, etc. There were 3 areas; technical, personality, and critical thinking. The criticism I noticed from interviewees grew further down that list. The job involved user support, which was the personality portion (it wasn't just "team fit"). Critical thinking had some of those abstract, problem solving questions tech companies were notorious for, but also had a mix of actual issues encountered. Here's my defense for the critical thinking questions since I know it's a contentious topic here; I'm evaluating how they asses and troubleshoot something. Often, actual technical problems get caught up in the minutia or domain specific parts. So abstracting it and even removing all of the tech keeps people from getting hung up on that. I hate "trick" questions, but sometimes would ask one to see if they were thinking towards optimization or non-traditional. It's actually deflating if they already know the answer. I never cared if they got a result, I'd often move on if it took too long. I felt the most criticism towards the technical questions. Many of them were more technical than really ever came up on the job. I think it's good to find the limits of a candidate's knowledge, but not ding them for it. An example would be doing stuff with pointers when the job is 100% in a scripting language. Sure, ask them if they know the basics of pointers, sure maybe once in 5 years they'll troubleshoot a bug that might need obscure knowledge, but I would hope that would get triaged and passed around instead of expecting everyone to deal with the 1% case.

by pfranz 7y ago

Terretta 7y ago

You’re right, and it can get worse. Certain focused industries such as financial services employ what they call “subject matter experts” aka “SMEs”. Turns out most are “solution matter experts” as in, only know how the particular wonky solution works as installed at their company unchanged since it was installed 10 - 15 years ago.

uwuhn 7y ago

Do any specific interviews come to mind? I'm curious what sort of questions you asked, since I am a specialist :)

pfranz 7y ago
This was all about 10 years ago and it definitely lifted some of the trends with interviewing at places like Microsoft, Google, etc. There were 3 areas; technical, personality, and critical thinking. The criticism I noticed from interviewees grew further down that list. The job involved user support, which was the personality portion (it wasn't just "team fit"). Critical thinking had some of those abstract, problem solving questions tech companies were notorious for, but also had a mix of actual issues encountered. Here's my defense for the critical thinking questions since I know it's a contentious topic here; I'm evaluating how they asses and troubleshoot something. Often, actual technical problems get caught up in the minutia or domain specific parts. So abstracting it and even removing all of the tech keeps people from getting hung up on that. I hate "trick" questions, but sometimes would ask one to see if they were thinking towards optimization or non-traditional. It's actually deflating if they already know the answer. I never cared if they got a result, I'd often move on if it took too long. I felt the most criticism towards the technical questions. Many of them were more technical than really ever came up on the job. I think it's good to find the limits of a candidate's knowledge, but not ding them for it. An example would be doing stuff with pointers when the job is 100% in a scripting language. Sure, ask them if they know the basics of pointers, sure maybe once in 5 years they'll troubleshoot a bug that might need obscure knowledge, but I would hope that would get triaged and passed around instead of expecting everyone to deal with the 1% case.