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Interview stress and normal workday stress are completely different beasts, in my experience. Coping with one is not always an indicator of the ability to deal
by rasur 14y ago
Interview stress and normal workday stress are completely different beasts, in my experience. Coping with one is not always an indicator of the ability to deal with the other.
- jlgreco 14y agoHow are we supposed to interview candidates at all, if their interview specific stress is so crippling? What sort of things can they answer, if not at least FizzBuzz?
- UnoriginalGuy 14y agoGive them a unique programming problem before hand and ask them to bring their solution to the interview, and then discuss the solution with them. Unless they "cheat" this should give you a good idea of what they're capable of. The cheating should also show up if they cannot explain it or why they wrote it the way they did.
- jlgreco 14y agoHow far beforehand would you suggest? Would walking into the interview, handing them the problem, and then telling them that you'll come back in 10/15 minutes to "start" the interview be acceptable?
- davorak 14y agoAsking someone to solve a problem in the waiting rooms is considerably different then letting them solve the problem in their chosen environment. Probably not as stressful as durring an interview with people watching however.
- rasur 14y agoAs noted in another reply to this question, get them to bring in a project and explain it. Additionally, they could spend some time with the team they'd be working in, pairing (or whatever) with other members and really demonstrating their abilities. It's not really that difficult to get away from the whole "technical question at the interview" problem, and I'd wager that in the long-term it'd be better for all concerned.
- jlgreco 14y agoEh, maybe. Those are fine interviewing techniques, but I am unconvinced that explaining something technical you've done in the past would really be that different (from a stress-induced difficulty standpoint) than FizzBuzz.
- Nursie 14y agoThat's the whole point of the article/test - there are loads of folks (apparently) who can talk about it but not produce even this simple example when asked to. You probably don't want them.
- jlgreco 14y agoYeah, that was my take-away. Any "talk about what you have done" that gets specific enough should be susceptible to the same stress though; I cannot fathom how that wouldn't be the case.
- rasur 14y agoWhich is why I wrote the second part: Drag them in for x days, get them to work with existing staff on existing problems. If you have engaged staff, they will weed out the (clue|use)ful and reject the time-wasters.