4 ms·
Where I work, an interview is a full day thing. I'm pretty happy with how it works: After going through an initial resume screening and phone call, you show up
by jff 13y ago
Where I work, an interview is a full day thing. I'm pretty happy with how it works:
After going through an initial resume screening and phone call, you show up on-site in the morning.
You then give a presentation about some recent work you've done. For those fresh out of school, it's generally about their grad work.
Then you have a series of 1/2 to 1 hour interviews through the day, mostly with people who were at your talk that morning.
The individual interviews tend not to be the Google-style "please implement a data structure for XYZ on the board" sort of thing. Rather, we'll ask about things from your talk or your resume that interest us. We might describe some work we've done here, to hear what you think about the problem, how you might have solved it.
A lot of what we're looking for is how well you're able to communicate your responses. We also want to get a feel for personality, how well you work with others and how well your personality will interact with the people here. I believe this place is actually pretty diverse, and I like to think we don't fall into the "culture fit = 20-something white male" trap; however, some of the restrictions and circumstances of the work we do may make some people unhappy and we'd like to avoid that.
We also pick two people to take the candidate to lunch. This is supposed to be a chance to talk more about life in the area and what it's like to work here, although honestly a lot of that comes up during the regular interviews.
After all the interviews are done and the candidate leaves, the interviewers get together, share their impressions, and say whether or not they recommend hiring. The hiring manager then makes the final call.
It's not really suitable to everywhere, I'm sure, but I'm pretty happy with it.
- sergiotapia 13y agoSounds like a gigantic waste of time if you're applying somewhere other than Google, Facebook, or any of the "Big Tech Firms".
- jff 13y agoWell sure, smaller places might not even be able to muster enough people to do that many interviews. It ends up taking about as long as a Google interview, but it's not just debugging assembly on a whiteboard. We tour you around the site, talk about what you'd be able to work on, etc. The interviewers are selected from several different but related groups so you hear about a lot of different work going on. One of the facts of research life is that you'll spend a good chunk of time talking to people and presenting your work--it's the price you pay for being able to choose what you work on. This interview process seems to help select for people who work well in that environment.
- psuter 13y agoWhere do you work, if you don't mind me asking? This sounds a lot like the interview process for research/academic positions; if you've made it to the interview day, there is really no reason to doubt your technical skills anymore, and the interview becomes more about finding out whether you would find your place and collaborators to work with.
- jff 13y agoIt's for research, specifically at an FFRDC. I don't believe there's any sort of "establish your technical skills" portion. My hiring process was a bit unique because I had already worked as an intern for 3 years, but as I understand it the usual process is 1) hiring manager finds the best resumes, 2) hiring manager does a phone interview with those people, and 3) hiring manager invites a few of the best prospects out. The real technical skills part is the presentation. If you can give a good, 40 minute talk about what you've been working on, you've already put yourself in a good place.