5 ms·

This is almost exactly how I hold interviews, except they are usually < 1hr. I ask a person to tell me about a recent project and then keep asking more detaile

This is almost exactly how I hold interviews, except they are usually < 1hr. I ask a person to tell me about a recent project and then keep asking more detailed questions about things until one of us hits our limit of understanding. No gotcha questions or random trivia. I only ask questions about something they claim to have done. Occasionally I'll ask a category question like, "Have you done any work with multi-threading?" And if they say yes, I ask about that project. I've found this technique to be extremely successful. It's possible I may have had some false negatives, but I've never had a false positive. Everyone I've recommended for hiring has been successful.

onion2k 5y ago
Everyone I've recommended for hiring has been successful. It's possible you're good at spotting good people, and rejecting bad people, but it's also possible that hiring is just easier than you think it is, and most people are capable of doing the jobs you hire for. You have no way to tell if you'd have the same result just hiring people by picking random resumes. Maybe negatives are just rare.
- Consultant32452 5y ago
  It's unlikely that hiring is easier than I think it is, because I think it's pretty easy. The people who think it's hard are the HN consensus and the large corporations we keep reading about coming up with these convoluted interview standards/metrics.
vineyardmike 5y ago
> I've found this technique to be extremely successful. It's possible I may have had some false negatives, but I've never had a false positive. This is the impossible problem with hiring. Every interviewer wants to minimize false positives (they're expensive!), but every interviewee thinks they're a false negative.
- Jensson 5y ago
  Which is funny since I bet most who thinks they are a "false negative" also would claim to have "impostor syndrome". Anyone with impostor syndrome would view themselves as a true negative.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    > I bet most who thinks they are a "false negative" also would claim to have "impostor syndrome" I don't think this could be true? If you think you don't belong/deserve the job (imposter)... why would you think you deserved the job (false negative).
lordnacho 5y ago
Same here. I've never had a dud in terms of ability when doing a technical chat interview. People who don't know how things work will hit a wall in this format, it's not actually that easy to BS what your thoughts on the CPP memory model are. The fear of BSers seems to be what holds people back from this approach though, and I can see that it wouldn't work for certain non technical fields.
wiseowise 5y ago
> I've found this technique to be extremely successful. That's just survivorship bias waiting to explode. Also, they're successful by some arbitrary metric that is applicable only to your company.
- Consultant32452 5y ago
  It's entirely likely I will one day hit a false positive. I've been on the hiring team for every employer I've had for the last 15 years and have hired dozens of people.

onion2k 5y ago

Everyone I've recommended for hiring has been successful. It's possible you're good at spotting good people, and rejecting bad people, but it's also possible that hiring is just easier than you think it is, and most people are capable of doing the jobs you hire for. You have no way to tell if you'd have the same result just hiring people by picking random resumes. Maybe negatives are just rare.

Consultant32452 5y ago
It's unlikely that hiring is easier than I think it is, because I think it's pretty easy. The people who think it's hard are the HN consensus and the large corporations we keep reading about coming up with these convoluted interview standards/metrics.

vineyardmike 5y ago

> I've found this technique to be extremely successful. It's possible I may have had some false negatives, but I've never had a false positive. This is the impossible problem with hiring. Every interviewer wants to minimize false positives (they're expensive!), but every interviewee thinks they're a false negative.

Jensson 5y ago
Which is funny since I bet most who thinks they are a "false negative" also would claim to have "impostor syndrome". Anyone with impostor syndrome would view themselves as a true negative.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  > I bet most who thinks they are a "false negative" also would claim to have "impostor syndrome" I don't think this could be true? If you think you don't belong/deserve the job (imposter)... why would you think you deserved the job (false negative).

lordnacho 5y ago

Same here. I've never had a dud in terms of ability when doing a technical chat interview. People who don't know how things work will hit a wall in this format, it's not actually that easy to BS what your thoughts on the CPP memory model are. The fear of BSers seems to be what holds people back from this approach though, and I can see that it wouldn't work for certain non technical fields.

wiseowise 5y ago

> I've found this technique to be extremely successful. That's just survivorship bias waiting to explode. Also, they're successful by some arbitrary metric that is applicable only to your company.

Consultant32452 5y ago
It's entirely likely I will one day hit a false positive. I've been on the hiring team for every employer I've had for the last 15 years and have hired dozens of people.