5 ms·
Just talk to the person, ask them about projects they’ve worked on, problems they’ve solved etc. you’ll learn far more about them that way than getting them to
by padjo 4y ago
Just talk to the person, ask them about projects they’ve worked on, problems they’ve solved etc. you’ll learn far more about them that way than getting them to put on a dog and pony show at a whiteboard!
- galoisgirl 4y agoWhy not both?
- padjo 4y agoOpportunity cost and candidate experience. I think an extra hour to talk will give me more information than watching them balance a binary tree. For many people the stress of the leetcode session is just awful, I don’t think it’s a nice thing to inflict on someone if you’re ultimately going to disregard the outcome anyway!
- goodpoint 4y agoThere are candidates that can talk circles around many questions and yet can't really write code.
- AlexTWithBeard 4y agoTalk to the person and you will (1) hear a lot of bullshit and (2) filter out a ton of good but not really silver-tongued candidates. P. S. I hate coding interviews.
- sdevonoes 4y agoIf you hear bullshit, then that's easy: you filter out such people. Not really silver-tongued candidates? Well, what's the problem? Unless you are looking explicitly for silver-tongued candidates, you should ignore this "trait".
- padjo 4y agoRight and it becomes your job to spot bullshit and bring people out of their shell. It’s not easy to do that, but who said hiring was easy!
- varjag 4y agoTechnical interview might not bring people out of their shell but sure helps filter out bullshit.
- padjo 4y agoDoes it though? Often times all it tells you is that this person probably saw this question before.
- varjag 4y agoWhile it's probably diminishing returns at discerning the levels of ability, it's very reliable at filtering out complete bullshitters.
- wiseowise 4y agoYes, it does. It shows that they at least shown an interest in this kind of thing.
- lentil_soup 4y agoit only shows that the person has an interest in solving leetcode problems, though
- jgilias 4y agoI've found that it's relatively easy to figure out if someone is bullshitting. It just takes some work on your end by researching the candidate's application a bit deeper, thinking about relevant questions beforehand, and then drilling down during the conversation. I've hired 'non-silver-tongued' candidates this way, as well as filtered out people who were bullshitting. The key is to actually have a conversation, instead of just letting them produce canned stories and responses. But, yes, this is more work on the recruiting side. As a side note, I totally get it why large organizations would use Leetcode though. It does help filter out false positives if you're willing and able to bear the cost of passing on many good candidates.
- tecleandor 4y agoYep. I've found that you can give someone enough rope to hang theyself. If you let them explain their processes and ways of working, most of the bullshitters will out themselves :D
- davedx 4y agoYou can also ask them programming questions when you talk to them. "What is a binary tree" will filter out most of the bullshitters. None of this stuff is rocket science. We have a responsibility not to be lazy when interviewing people.
- pcan77 4y agothis is 99% of interviews in literally every other field ever.
- stevekemp 4y agoI have to say this is how I've always interviewed people - I tend to be optimistic and assume people don't lie about their skills and experiences. So when I've been asked to interview people I mostly want to talk about projects, hobbies, and general things about developing, debugging, and the process by which people solve problems. I don't want to know if you can do specific things, if you can't you'll learn, but I do want to know if I'm gonna find it easy to get along with you, if you seem like an interesting person, and if I can stand being in a small room with you for 7 hours a day. I suspect this is just another kind of bias, but I've had good results.
- 1ark 4y agoGreat to hear this. We use a similar approach, we sometimes get flattery in the form of "this was the nicest interview I ever had". I believe in human centric approach (the golden- and silver rules), and if they have the fundamentals right, technical skills etc. they can learn the rest on the job! Quickly too. And stay working for many years, low turnover, more cost effective. I thought that is one reason there are the standard 90 day trial period. Instead a lot of time is spent in interviews finding the perfect candidate (which doesn't exist).