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Me: ...So do you have any questions for me? Instead of trying to "expose" these people for supposedly over-representing their competence in some skill area X m

Me: ...So do you have any questions for me? Instead of trying to "expose" these people for supposedly over-representing their competence in some skill area X mentioned in an ancillary way on their resume (relating to some job they had N years in the past), you might want to try just asking them a simple normal, human question first: "So was this something you go to delve into the internal workings of? Or did you just use an API for some small task?" If it's the former answer, then fine -- drill away into the internals. If it's the latter (which is by far the more typical case -- the way things go in most dev environments), then you can just say "That's fine", and look for some other bullet point to zoom in on. Or if in fact X is a major requirement for you -- you can say "That's fine, but we're really looking for people who have done at least a fair amount of X here. But we thank you very much for taking the to talk with us." Either way -- there's no reason to go into snark mode and assume these people are frauds or idiots just because they don't have a lot of detail to offer you. The bottom line is that unless they mention X as some major skill area, you pretty much have to assume that it was just another random thing they were forced to learn that day (you know, to keep their jobs). And unless it's mentioned in a way that would suggest they spent a significant amount of time on it, of course they aren't going to remember very much beyond the most superficial aspects of how it works.

sheepmullet 12y ago
"The bottom line is that unless they mention X as some major skill area, you pretty much have to assume that it was just another random thing they were forced to learn that day" If you call yourself a data scientist but don't know a lick of statistics then you are the one being misleading. You can't just pick this stuff up overnight. It is a bit like claiming you are a systems developer but then in the interview you don't know a thing about pointers or what the heap is. If your actual knowledge of systems development is "I wrote a python wrapper around a c library once" then representing yourself as a systems dev is intentionally misleading your interviewer.
- dreamweapon 12y ago
  If you want to find out if a candidate knows "a lick of" statistics, try asking about something generic, like confidence intervals. But he didn't do that; instead he grilled them on the default partition scheme for algorithm X. Which (unless the candidate advertises themselves as having significant experience in algorithm X) is about as useful as asking them if they know the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.
  - grayclhn 12y ago
    You are seriously underestimating the importance of deep statistical knowledge in some of these jobs. In the example, the candidate wasn't grilled on the default partition scheme; he or she was grilled on the partition scheme that was used. If someone thinks that's an unimportant implementation detail, why would you ever want to hire them?
    - dreamweapon 12y ago
      You are seriously underestimating the importance of deep statistical knowledge in some of these jobs. In some of these jobs, maybe. But the person I was initially responding to wasn't looking for someone with "deep statistical knowledge"; rather, he was looking for that species which goes by the trendy, loosey-goosey catch-all moniker, "data scientist". And if you're going to put "data scientist" in a job title -- with no further qualifications -- then you had better understand that it's nearly useless as a description of anything (beyond a few colloquial definitions floating about, which there's still no real consensus on). If on the other hand, you want an "MS/PhD background in Machine Learning and/or Statistics, or equivalent work experience" then that's fine too, of course -- just put it in the job description. It's really quite easy to do, and it will save everyone tons and tons of time (and grief). In the example, the candidate wasn't grilled on the default partition scheme; he or she was grilled on the partition scheme that was used. If someone thinks that's an unimportant implementation detail, why would you ever want to hire them? Again, it matters to the extent that they, themselves, emphasize it as a core skill area. When someone simply says "did $foo using X" in some project description, I personally don't read anything more into it than that.

sheepmullet 12y ago

"The bottom line is that unless they mention X as some major skill area, you pretty much have to assume that it was just another random thing they were forced to learn that day" If you call yourself a data scientist but don't know a lick of statistics then you are the one being misleading. You can't just pick this stuff up overnight. It is a bit like claiming you are a systems developer but then in the interview you don't know a thing about pointers or what the heap is. If your actual knowledge of systems development is "I wrote a python wrapper around a c library once" then representing yourself as a systems dev is intentionally misleading your interviewer.

dreamweapon 12y ago
If you want to find out if a candidate knows "a lick of" statistics, try asking about something generic, like confidence intervals. But he didn't do that; instead he grilled them on the default partition scheme for algorithm X. Which (unless the candidate advertises themselves as having significant experience in algorithm X) is about as useful as asking them if they know the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.
- grayclhn 12y ago
  You are seriously underestimating the importance of deep statistical knowledge in some of these jobs. In the example, the candidate wasn't grilled on the default partition scheme; he or she was grilled on the partition scheme that was used. If someone thinks that's an unimportant implementation detail, why would you ever want to hire them?
  - dreamweapon 12y ago
    You are seriously underestimating the importance of deep statistical knowledge in some of these jobs. In some of these jobs, maybe. But the person I was initially responding to wasn't looking for someone with "deep statistical knowledge"; rather, he was looking for that species which goes by the trendy, loosey-goosey catch-all moniker, "data scientist". And if you're going to put "data scientist" in a job title -- with no further qualifications -- then you had better understand that it's nearly useless as a description of anything (beyond a few colloquial definitions floating about, which there's still no real consensus on). If on the other hand, you want an "MS/PhD background in Machine Learning and/or Statistics, or equivalent work experience" then that's fine too, of course -- just put it in the job description. It's really quite easy to do, and it will save everyone tons and tons of time (and grief). In the example, the candidate wasn't grilled on the default partition scheme; he or she was grilled on the partition scheme that was used. If someone thinks that's an unimportant implementation detail, why would you ever want to hire them? Again, it matters to the extent that they, themselves, emphasize it as a core skill area. When someone simply says "did $foo using X" in some project description, I personally don't read anything more into it than that.