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It’s not generally the responsibility of the person doing the technical screen to also obtain signal on past experience. At a company with recruiting process th

It’s not generally the responsibility of the person doing the technical screen to also obtain signal on past experience. At a company with recruiting process these fall on different people specialized in the specific interview types. I’ve done an average of 2-3 interviews a week over several employers for the last 12 years, so over a thousand interviews. I’ve also defined much tech interview loop for my current employer and usually interview from junior IC up to manager of manager roles. I’ve never asked for candidate resumes because I don’t want to bias myself. I’m not saying it will always, always happen, it’s just, it overwhelmingly will.

HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
If you don't have a resume, do you still ask about candidates experience? Many people can talk a good game and come across well but still be useless (e.g. hard fail on the simplest of white board tests). I haven't done interviewing (on company's side of table) for a long time, but my main tack was always to go over projects on resume, focusing on last 5 years, and drill down to see if they could fluently talk about them, draw architecture diagrams, justify choices, etc, etc. I you don't ask about past experience (= same as having resume), then how do you even know what the person's experience consists of? Useless cog, or tech lead? Highly agentic or passive, etc?
- arcticbull 2y ago
  Maybe we were talking past each other a bit — for the specific technical portion of the interview where you are assessing coding ability (the thing you can leetcode to practice for), the resume doesn’t really add much value and can serve to bias the interviewer. There is usually an experience and goals interview where a manager interviews the candidate to see if they would make a good fit for the team. That definitely involves a resume and a discussion of past work experience with the objective of confirm if they’re a cog or a tech lead :) It can be important to split them up especially if you’re relying on more junior technical interviewers to validate coding skill. They won’t always know what they’re looking for yet along this axis.

HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago

If you don't have a resume, do you still ask about candidates experience? Many people can talk a good game and come across well but still be useless (e.g. hard fail on the simplest of white board tests). I haven't done interviewing (on company's side of table) for a long time, but my main tack was always to go over projects on resume, focusing on last 5 years, and drill down to see if they could fluently talk about them, draw architecture diagrams, justify choices, etc, etc. I you don't ask about past experience (= same as having resume), then how do you even know what the person's experience consists of? Useless cog, or tech lead? Highly agentic or passive, etc?

arcticbull 2y ago
Maybe we were talking past each other a bit — for the specific technical portion of the interview where you are assessing coding ability (the thing you can leetcode to practice for), the resume doesn’t really add much value and can serve to bias the interviewer. There is usually an experience and goals interview where a manager interviews the candidate to see if they would make a good fit for the team. That definitely involves a resume and a discussion of past work experience with the objective of confirm if they’re a cog or a tech lead :) It can be important to split them up especially if you’re relying on more junior technical interviewers to validate coding skill. They won’t always know what they’re looking for yet along this axis.