3 ms·

What am I supposed to do instead of the cookie-cutter technical interview? Right now I do "Ask any question that starts with the phrase “tell me about a time w

by bcoates 14y ago

What am I supposed to do instead of the cookie-cutter technical interview? Right now I do "Ask any question that starts with the phrase “tell me about a time when”." for most of the interview. I'm trying to give them an opportunity to describe technical things they've done so I can drill into details and suss out if they're exaggerating their skill-set and/or incapable of communication. For perspective, I'm a schlub at my company they grab out of the hallway to give technical interviews, not the founder or a full-time HR guy.

csmatt 14y ago
Just came up with this, but you could ask the interviewee to teach you something programming related that he/she learned recently. That should tell you how well they communicate, can deeply show you their level of experience (and interest), and it doesn't require that they recently revisited their notes from academia. Another option would be to keep notes on programming challenges you hit (and the attempted and final solutions) while doing the job this person is interviewing for and ask the interviewee to walk you through how he/she would go about solving the problem.
- rhizome 14y ago
  The first one might be funner for people-persons, but I'd say the second approach would give you a much higher degree of confidence in the candidate's skills.
larsberg 14y ago
Completely agree with you - I frequently used to ask experienced candidates questions of the form, "tell me about one very difficult bug or performance issue encountered during your two years working on X." Unfortunately, the number of flat-out liars on resumes is extremely large. Heck, I've even seen resumes from people I worked alongside at Microsoft who now claim to have done things that I did while there. <shrug> Sussing that out is part of the interviewer's job, at least if you care about 1) whether you're hiring a liar 2) the skills that should have been gained if they actually spent two years working on X.
logn 14y ago
How about: hi, candidate, here's my laptop. I've created a guest account for you and installed an IDE with X programming language. Take some time to implement this original program I want done that can't be copied from google. I'll be back in 45 minutes and we can discuss your solution until our hour is up. Nice to meet you.

by bcoates 14y ago

csmatt 14y ago

Just came up with this, but you could ask the interviewee to teach you something programming related that he/she learned recently. That should tell you how well they communicate, can deeply show you their level of experience (and interest), and it doesn't require that they recently revisited their notes from academia. Another option would be to keep notes on programming challenges you hit (and the attempted and final solutions) while doing the job this person is interviewing for and ask the interviewee to walk you through how he/she would go about solving the problem.

rhizome 14y ago
The first one might be funner for people-persons, but I'd say the second approach would give you a much higher degree of confidence in the candidate's skills.

larsberg 14y ago

Completely agree with you - I frequently used to ask experienced candidates questions of the form, "tell me about one very difficult bug or performance issue encountered during your two years working on X." Unfortunately, the number of flat-out liars on resumes is extremely large. Heck, I've even seen resumes from people I worked alongside at Microsoft who now claim to have done things that I did while there. <shrug> Sussing that out is part of the interviewer's job, at least if you care about 1) whether you're hiring a liar 2) the skills that should have been gained if they actually spent two years working on X.

logn 14y ago

How about: hi, candidate, here's my laptop. I've created a guest account for you and installed an IDE with X programming language. Take some time to implement this original program I want done that can't be copied from google. I'll be back in 45 minutes and we can discuss your solution until our hour is up. Nice to meet you.