2 ms·

Lets look at the "Ideal interview" examples, it doesn't look like any of those involved asking technical questions (e.g. coding on the whiteboard)? The trouble

by iam 15y ago

Lets look at the "Ideal interview" examples, it doesn't look like any of those involved asking technical questions (e.g. coding on the whiteboard)? The trouble is that unless someone is highly referred from a technical coworker you trust, it's going to be hard to know in advance if you have the technical chops or not. Anyone can write down on their resume they've done A, B, C and are well-versed in X, Y, Z. They might even be able to talk the talk. But when it comes to writing code they might completely freeze or write something that would make college students blush. Finally, the time is limited (could be 45 mins, could be 1 hour) during the interview, and the most important thing in most peoples minds is technical chops. That's why I'll usually start out with that (unless the candidate was referred or seems highly qualified, in which case I'll merely get into that later), since it could just weed out the candidate before getting very far. With your regard of "Convince me why I want to work at your company," I think that only happens once a candidate has proven to be worthy. At least in my last company we would be in "sell" or "buy" mode for a candidate (sell meaning we try to convince him/her to join, buy meaning we try to convince ourselves if he/she should join) and it would start out in buy mode. There's nothing worse than interviewing and hiring a candidate with a great personality than just finding out he/she couldn't code their way out of a paper bag. That being said, I do dislike interviews where they spend the entire time just asking technical questions as it should be obvious after one or two, so a particular balance needs to be sought.

__mharrison__ 15y ago
Where did I advocate not asking technical questions? In the ideal situation, you've already looked at my code, and know the work I've done from the recommendation. (Note I said "highly recommended"). WRT convincing. Sure you start off in buy, since you're hiring. But you should be open to the thought that a great candidate probably has other great options on the table, and they need to vet those out. Ideally you would provide them that opportunity.
- iam 15y ago
  Right, as you said the technical question is unnecessary if they've already looked at the code. Which would be pretty hard unless the candidate kept his/her code up somewhere (linked from the resume) or had former coworkers essentially vouch for his/her code quality. And even if the candidate does have the code up, not all interviewers would bother spending the time to look at it. At the end of the day I think it is based off some kind of reputation on whether or not people believe in the technical chops enough to skip asking the candidate the question. And it's really hard to draw the line between belief and sloppy interviewing where they simply forget to ask. I wonder, in your cases where you experienced the ideal interview, which factors do you think contributed to it?

by iam 15y ago

__mharrison__ 15y ago

Where did I advocate not asking technical questions? In the ideal situation, you've already looked at my code, and know the work I've done from the recommendation. (Note I said "highly recommended"). WRT convincing. Sure you start off in buy, since you're hiring. But you should be open to the thought that a great candidate probably has other great options on the table, and they need to vet those out. Ideally you would provide them that opportunity.

iam 15y ago
Right, as you said the technical question is unnecessary if they've already looked at the code. Which would be pretty hard unless the candidate kept his/her code up somewhere (linked from the resume) or had former coworkers essentially vouch for his/her code quality. And even if the candidate does have the code up, not all interviewers would bother spending the time to look at it. At the end of the day I think it is based off some kind of reputation on whether or not people believe in the technical chops enough to skip asking the candidate the question. And it's really hard to draw the line between belief and sloppy interviewing where they simply forget to ask. I wonder, in your cases where you experienced the ideal interview, which factors do you think contributed to it?