4 ms·

The biggest problem here is that I don't see a clear way how do you assess organizational skills of a candidate?

by piranha 13y ago

carlob 13y ago
The company I work for holds a summer school every year. And while I understand this does not apply to most tech jobs applications, I can assure you that after three weeks working together with the students we get a pretty good idea of who can organize their thoughts and divide problems in subproblems. So maybe the key would be to test technical skills for a while longer than a half hour quiz.
seanmcq 13y ago
Ask them to write an essay.
- RivieraKid 13y ago
  From my experience, ability to write good essays doesn't have especially good correlation with programming ability.
  - lukeck 13y ago
    I agree with you to an extent but I guess it comes down to how you judge a good essay. I wouldn't expect a literary masterpiece but if the candidate can convey their intended message in a clear, unambiguous and concise manner, I'd take that as a fairly good indicator of decent organisational skills.
sitkack 13y ago
Have them refactor a 200 line program and then discuss with them why they did what they did. Or given the same codebase have them add a feature and some form of testing. There are many ways to simulate in a highly compressed manner the typical tasks of a programmer without resorting to algorithmic puzzles.
- vog 13y ago
  As a side note, these kinds of tasks are also pretty common in at my university in the practical computer science courses. Often, you aren't supposed to write a big thing at once, but you are given some partially working code, with some incomplete set of test cases. You then have to finish the implementation, and you are also encouraged to add more test cases. I found it especially interesting that the test cases were incomplete on purpose - you are supposed to understand and solve the given task, not just to blindly write some code that happens to pass a given set of tests.
shin_lao 13y ago
Try to solve with them a problem you currently have. If the candidate is adding value, it's a good sign. It doesn't mean you shouldn't assess the candidate's technical skills.
- mtdewcmu 13y ago
  I'd like that kind of interview. When I get asked to solve a problem that's totally artificial, the type of question that's designed for interviews and programming competitions, it throws me off track. I feel like I'm trying to read the interviewer's mind to know what criteria I'm being evaluated on. With real-world problems, there's no mind-reading necessary. It's easy to imagine what type of solution would get the job done. Plus, hearing a real problem would actually be interesting, and perhaps break some of the tension from being scrutinized.
llemiengre 13y ago
Talk about the organizational struggles at his previous company.
bsaul 13y ago
that's something i closely relate to verbal expression. the first thing you need to structure are your thoughts. so i simply ask them to describe to me a system they've previously built. if the language is clear, then so are the thoughts and so most likely will the code be.
- RivieraKid 13y ago
  Are you really sure that this isn't a myth? I often have problem expressing myself, finding the right words, but I am quite a good programmer.
  - bsaul 13y ago
    Well, it's probably not equivalent, but it's a good hint (aka : you can't express clearly something that isn't well structured in your mind). Plus, it also let me test verbal skills themselves, which is extremely important as soon as you're working in a team. Another way of looking at it is that "finding the right word" often means find the good "fit" between abstract concepts shapes or feelings, and a construct of known language items. That's precisely what you're doing as a developer.
    - RivieraKid 13y ago
      Ok, so it's based on reasoning full of assumptions that may be wrong, not on empirical evidence. For me, it's quite hard to think aloud when solving some problem, because it forces me to translate what goes in my mind into words, which is quite distracting, I cannot fully immerse into the problem.
      - bsaul 13y ago
        I suppose you're more a "tool" developper than a "business process automation" one. In the latter, you very often have to talk through the problem with your customer. But it is an assumption indeed... Only it is based on my personnal experience. As for the comment mentionning google developpers, the ones i see are good enough verbally to talk about their jobs at google i/o.
davidcuddeback 13y ago
I ask candidates a high-level design problem. So far it appears to be an effective way to identify engineers who can decompose a problem into smaller, digestable subproblems.

The biggest problem here is that I don't see a clear way how do you assess organizational skills of a candidate?

by piranha 13y ago

The biggest problem here is that I don't see a clear way how do you assess organizational skills of a candidate?

The company I work for holds a summer school every year. And while I understand this does not apply to most tech jobs applications, I can assure you that after three weeks working together with the students we get a pretty good idea of who can organize their thoughts and divide problems in subproblems. So maybe the key would be to test technical skills for a while longer than a half hour quiz.

seanmcq 13y ago

Ask them to write an essay.

RivieraKid 13y ago
From my experience, ability to write good essays doesn't have especially good correlation with programming ability.
- lukeck 13y ago
  I agree with you to an extent but I guess it comes down to how you judge a good essay. I wouldn't expect a literary masterpiece but if the candidate can convey their intended message in a clear, unambiguous and concise manner, I'd take that as a fairly good indicator of decent organisational skills.

sitkack 13y ago

Have them refactor a 200 line program and then discuss with them why they did what they did. Or given the same codebase have them add a feature and some form of testing. There are many ways to simulate in a highly compressed manner the typical tasks of a programmer without resorting to algorithmic puzzles.

vog 13y ago
As a side note, these kinds of tasks are also pretty common in at my university in the practical computer science courses. Often, you aren't supposed to write a big thing at once, but you are given some partially working code, with some incomplete set of test cases. You then have to finish the implementation, and you are also encouraged to add more test cases. I found it especially interesting that the test cases were incomplete on purpose - you are supposed to understand and solve the given task, not just to blindly write some code that happens to pass a given set of tests.

shin_lao 13y ago

Try to solve with them a problem you currently have. If the candidate is adding value, it's a good sign. It doesn't mean you shouldn't assess the candidate's technical skills.

mtdewcmu 13y ago
I'd like that kind of interview. When I get asked to solve a problem that's totally artificial, the type of question that's designed for interviews and programming competitions, it throws me off track. I feel like I'm trying to read the interviewer's mind to know what criteria I'm being evaluated on. With real-world problems, there's no mind-reading necessary. It's easy to imagine what type of solution would get the job done. Plus, hearing a real problem would actually be interesting, and perhaps break some of the tension from being scrutinized.

llemiengre 13y ago

Talk about the organizational struggles at his previous company.

bsaul 13y ago

that's something i closely relate to verbal expression. the first thing you need to structure are your thoughts. so i simply ask them to describe to me a system they've previously built. if the language is clear, then so are the thoughts and so most likely will the code be.

RivieraKid 13y ago
Are you really sure that this isn't a myth? I often have problem expressing myself, finding the right words, but I am quite a good programmer.
- bsaul 13y ago
  Well, it's probably not equivalent, but it's a good hint (aka : you can't express clearly something that isn't well structured in your mind). Plus, it also let me test verbal skills themselves, which is extremely important as soon as you're working in a team. Another way of looking at it is that "finding the right word" often means find the good "fit" between abstract concepts shapes or feelings, and a construct of known language items. That's precisely what you're doing as a developer.
  - RivieraKid 13y ago
    Ok, so it's based on reasoning full of assumptions that may be wrong, not on empirical evidence. For me, it's quite hard to think aloud when solving some problem, because it forces me to translate what goes in my mind into words, which is quite distracting, I cannot fully immerse into the problem.
    - bsaul 13y ago
      I suppose you're more a "tool" developper than a "business process automation" one. In the latter, you very often have to talk through the problem with your customer. But it is an assumption indeed... Only it is based on my personnal experience. As for the comment mentionning google developpers, the ones i see are good enough verbally to talk about their jobs at google i/o.

davidcuddeback 13y ago

I ask candidates a high-level design problem. So far it appears to be an effective way to identify engineers who can decompose a problem into smaller, digestable subproblems.