5 ms·

How do you interview for any other job?

mattkrause 6y ago
It's often less...adversarial. I work somewhere in the middle of biology/neuroscience and ML. Interviews for essentially the same job (e.g., building brain-inspired robots) are hilariously different depending on how the org views itself. In a "science" organization, the interviews mostly involved talking about what I've done in the past and how I'd approach new issues (technical and behavioral). There were certainly a few probing questions about things that seemed designed to check up on claims, but my experience seemed mostly taken at face value. A coding test, for example, was skipped because an interviewer had already seen some of my code and thought it was fine. "Tech" interviewers seemed to want everything "proved" on-site during an all-day slog. I reversed strings and traversed graphs on a whiteboard. Someone quizzed me on facts and figures about the human eye (which they were reading out of the same book I learned them from). To me, this seems to test immediate recall and stamina/stress tolerance more than anything actually related to my R&D skills.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  I think adversarial is the right word for the current style of tech interviewing. It wasn't always this way. Back in the 80s when I first got into tech it was a lot more conversational and in the spirit of "we really need help, what can you do for us?". I think something more akin to a thesis defense would be better than what we're doing now. Prior to the interview have the candidate write up a description of a project they worked on and particularly liked along with a set of slides. Have the candidate send this presentation to the main interviewer who will distribute it to all of the interviewers. The interview then becomes a presentation where interviewers can ask questions about the presentation. I've seen this done in industry, but it was only when we interviewed folks who were PhDs coming from academia - I don't see why we couldn't do this for all kinds of candidates, not just those coming from academia.
mdorazio 6y ago
I interview, on average, two people a month for non- or semi-technical roles. Everything from financial analysts to contracts specialists and project managers. Interviews are generally structured to give interviewers a good idea about four items: 1) What did you, personally, work on previously that's relevant to this role? This usually means pretty in-depth discussions about previous roles and projects, accomplishments, tasks, skills gained, etc. 2) How do you approach tasks and problems at work? This is usually a combination of asking about why the candidate did things a certain way previously and how they would approach theoretical situations in the future. The goal is to uncover the mindset the candidate uses to actually get stuff done in a changing business environment. 3) How do you interact with teammates and managers? This is the concrete version of "culture fit" and includes asking about various interpersonal situations likely to have been encountered in the past as well as discussions about how the candidate would handle quirks of the office environment at the new company (ex. some companies love people to make decisions quickly on their own while others hate it and mandate team consensus). 4) Do you have the base-level skills needed for the role? This is often far more than the technical aspect. After some basic questions to establish that the candidate knows the basic processes, software tools, artifacts, and terminology, it's much more important to establish if they have the chops to actually be successful rather than a "task completed" robot. Can the candidate communicate ideas and opinions clearly? Did they previously work in a collaborative way rather than an adversarial way with teammates? Can they present findings and issues to management effectively? Have they previously worked with supporting teams and vendors outside their main role to solve problems? Etc. In most jobs the technical skill part is a small piece of what the person will actually be doing so the interview is a means to collaboratively establish if the role is a fit for the candidate as a whole and vice versa. If I only looked at technical skill and immediately disqualified people for failing concocted and unrealistic tests, I'd end up with mostly shitty candidates who aren't actually very good at the wider job.
- chapium 6y ago
  Thank you for sharing your experience.

It's often less...adversarial. I work somewhere in the middle of biology/neuroscience and ML. Interviews for essentially the same job (e.g., building brain-inspired robots) are hilariously different depending on how the org views itself. In a "science" organization, the interviews mostly involved talking about what I've done in the past and how I'd approach new issues (technical and behavioral). There were certainly a few probing questions about things that seemed designed to check up on claims, but my experience seemed mostly taken at face value. A coding test, for example, was skipped because an interviewer had already seen some of my code and thought it was fine. "Tech" interviewers seemed to want everything "proved" on-site during an all-day slog. I reversed strings and traversed graphs on a whiteboard. Someone quizzed me on facts and figures about the human eye (which they were reading out of the same book I learned them from). To me, this seems to test immediate recall and stamina/stress tolerance more than anything actually related to my R&D skills.

UncleOxidant 6y ago
I think adversarial is the right word for the current style of tech interviewing. It wasn't always this way. Back in the 80s when I first got into tech it was a lot more conversational and in the spirit of "we really need help, what can you do for us?". I think something more akin to a thesis defense would be better than what we're doing now. Prior to the interview have the candidate write up a description of a project they worked on and particularly liked along with a set of slides. Have the candidate send this presentation to the main interviewer who will distribute it to all of the interviewers. The interview then becomes a presentation where interviewers can ask questions about the presentation. I've seen this done in industry, but it was only when we interviewed folks who were PhDs coming from academia - I don't see why we couldn't do this for all kinds of candidates, not just those coming from academia.

mdorazio 6y ago

I interview, on average, two people a month for non- or semi-technical roles. Everything from financial analysts to contracts specialists and project managers. Interviews are generally structured to give interviewers a good idea about four items: 1) What did you, personally, work on previously that's relevant to this role? This usually means pretty in-depth discussions about previous roles and projects, accomplishments, tasks, skills gained, etc. 2) How do you approach tasks and problems at work? This is usually a combination of asking about why the candidate did things a certain way previously and how they would approach theoretical situations in the future. The goal is to uncover the mindset the candidate uses to actually get stuff done in a changing business environment. 3) How do you interact with teammates and managers? This is the concrete version of "culture fit" and includes asking about various interpersonal situations likely to have been encountered in the past as well as discussions about how the candidate would handle quirks of the office environment at the new company (ex. some companies love people to make decisions quickly on their own while others hate it and mandate team consensus). 4) Do you have the base-level skills needed for the role? This is often far more than the technical aspect. After some basic questions to establish that the candidate knows the basic processes, software tools, artifacts, and terminology, it's much more important to establish if they have the chops to actually be successful rather than a "task completed" robot. Can the candidate communicate ideas and opinions clearly? Did they previously work in a collaborative way rather than an adversarial way with teammates? Can they present findings and issues to management effectively? Have they previously worked with supporting teams and vendors outside their main role to solve problems? Etc. In most jobs the technical skill part is a small piece of what the person will actually be doing so the interview is a means to collaboratively establish if the role is a fit for the candidate as a whole and vice versa. If I only looked at technical skill and immediately disqualified people for failing concocted and unrealistic tests, I'd end up with mostly shitty candidates who aren't actually very good at the wider job.

chapium 6y ago
Thank you for sharing your experience.