3 ms·
I see it slightly differently. Interviews are meant to gather information so that you can make an informed decision about hiring the candidate (and vice versa)
by mattkrause 6y ago
I see it slightly differently.
Interviews are meant to gather information so that you can make an informed decision about hiring the candidate (and vice versa). If you already have some information, it's silly, wasteful, and a bit rude to ask for it over and over again. Suppose you got Carmack in for an interview and he flubs the programming test (maybe he's exhausted or sick or his dog died that morning). Are you really going to pass on him because he missed an edge case, or didn't see the O(1) solution? Frankly, I don't believe it.
I'm also not entirely convinced that you can have a totally "fair" standardized interview. The trade-off for being unbiased[0] is that you will instead have incredibly high variance. That imposes real and mental costs on applicants too: interviews are stressful, take vacation days, etc.
Instead, I think it's better to tailor the interview to what you need to make your decision. For a new grad, you probably do want to see some evidence that they can code. Assuming you can even get a well-established person to jump through your hoops, I'm still not sure you should. Your 45 minutes with Carmack, for example, is probably better spent figuring out if/how he will fit into the role for which you are hiring.
[0] And even...there's a lot of bias in how people prepare. I had no idea I'd be redoing a DS&A class at my first interview; I think Stanford has a whole interview prep class.