How to conduct an interview?

Jim Crafton

Wow, bonus man points, both for the audacity in admitting you actually wear one, and for lighting it on fire. Kudos to you my friend!

¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow

puromtec1

I'm sure others will chime in with the standard interview techniques..so I will add a unique 2 cents... Ask them what their favorite publication is or online forums they like and why. (If they say codeproject.com, they get 1 point)

Nemanja Trifunovic

aspdotnetdev wrote:

what is the purpose of that approach

Just to see if they are ready to give up old habbits to fit into a team :)

utf8-cpp

ragnaroknrol

1: Be armed with information. Not only do you need to know what your company is looking for but you must be able to decipher what the interviewee is looking for. Often they want a challenge, better pay than what they have, or a chance to do something new. Sometimes they want to not feel like they are the lowest form of life on the planet as they do at their current job. It is your goal to make sure they will be the new lowest form of life at your company. 2: Look professional and make notes on their own professionalism. You are trying to find a good fit for your company in case you get stuck with this sack of flesh for years. So you want to look impressive because that first impression means they will always think of you as someone not to be screwed with. If they are at ease in a suit, that means they have experience looking good and that is bad, it is an ego thing. If they look like they wish the collar was 3 inches bigger, hate the tie or can't properly do a double windsor, note it. They will be ill at ease around the suits in charge and so you don't have to worry about someone having better social skills managing to get promoted past you. With women pay attention to if they are attempting to use strategically unfastened buttons or if they seem uncomfortable with their hair. The first indicates they are willing to play the sexual tension/advantage game and so they will possibly be company climbers (heh) and the second indicates they got their hair done simply for this interview. This does indicate a willingness to do what is needed to garner attention or just look good. As with a male, go with the one that is least likely to be promoted ahead of you. 3: Check their skills with things you are familiar with. Yes, you can be clever, but if they are more clever in front of your co-workers, he is more clever when it comes to thinking of people to be in charge of such things. You want questions that a bumbling idiot can manage to open. Get them set up confidently. And then pause for a minute. The smart ones will start to worry that the hardball question is coming. The dummies will preen like peacocks. Throw a tough but not horrible question at them. See what happens. Quick thinkers will have a good response that might indicate how they would solve it even if they didn't know it right that instant. Schmoozes will have a canned response on how to research the issue if they don't know. The decent ones will try to figure it out, realize that won't happen and then talk about research.

Lost User

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

L u n a t i c F r i n g e

Jim Crafton

Maybe someone should write an article describing how to make a web service for that. Maybe with a nice shiny WPF UI.

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AspDotNetDev

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. ;)

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Don Burton

peterchen wrote:

Let them write code

Whose code? What M$ invented today or what M$ deems outdated?

Lost User

It's worth chatting to HR for guidelines. Also whether you accept or reject a candidate make that decision for the right reason. I interviewed one guy who had spent his whole caareerr leturing then realised he needed to build up some kind of pension. He wouldn't have lasted a month in industry no matter how gentle you were with him and it was painful to reject him but it would have hurt him, me, my team and the company so I had no choice.

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Joe Woodbury

The number one thing: Know WHY you are interviewing these people. Know EXACTLY what their first tasks will be and where you hope to fit them into your team. Illustration: Several years ago I had an interview where the headhunter thought and the hiring manager acted like I was being interviewed for a lead position for a product in the planning stage. Yet, the main developer was actually interviewing for a junior developer to help him polish up a product that was almost done with the core development. On the flip side, two years ago my lead and I interviewed several people that management sent us and not one was remotely qualified. Our team does hard core C++ development on embedded systems with some .NET. We were interviewing VB.NET and database programmers! Mostly nice people, but not what we wanted. One guy figured this out after about a minute and we ended up just having a nice chat about some very interesting things he'd recently done. (Two managers were there and had puzzled looks on their faces; we refrained from laughing.) During this process, we figured out a very small number of questions that told us immediately whether it was worth continuing the interview. They weren't trick questions (hate those), but questions about Win32 that only someone experienced in those areas would be able to talk about. These aren't nonsense areas, but things you do need to know about on our team (like multi-threading and synchronization.) Another, albeit risky, tactic is to argue with the candidate or cut them off; risky because I'm looking for them to argue back and force their point. How to act in those situations isn't always clear to the candidate. I don't like working for pansies and don't like pansies working for/with me. (When I do interviews, if you swear, you get bonus points. If you show up in casual dress, you also get bonus points. When I'm interviewing for a job, if you tell me beforehand that you can't find my articles on Code Project, I'll cancel the interview, and have; I hate working for dumb people.) Another interesting question is to ask something super obscure. When the candidate says they don't know, ask them how they would find out. Having said all this, it's still a judgment call. Years ago, we had a team interview. I thought we were interviewing the guy for one, fairly complex thing, everyone else thought they were interviewing him for something relatively simple. At the end, I said no since his responses seemed too academic (i.e. that he was simply repeating what he learned by lecture

peterchen

It's not about technologies, it's about how to approach a problem, how to diagnose potential problems, etc. The problems should be rather simple. Complexity of FizzBuzz[^] is usually good enough.

Agh! Reality! My Archnemesis![^]
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Don Burton

Agreed!

CaptainSeeSharp

Command him to sit down, walk around him once and sniffle once or twice, then slam a folder with his resume in it on the table and yell "WHATS YOUR DEAL!?

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Dalek Dave

Bad experience at an interview yeah? Still, with your skills, I bet you never miscount them McNuggets!

------------------------------------ I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave

J Dunlap

Jeff wrote:

Want to know something scary? The majority of comp sci graduates can't. I've also seen self-proclaimed senior programmers take more than 10-15 minutes to write a solution.

That *is* scary! :eek: I thought of several solutions in under 30 secs...

Mark_Wallace

Maximilien wrote:

If it's someone that will be working _with_ you (in your team), then you should feel comfortable with that person, usually, it takes about 5 minutes to feel you don't like a person, if it's the case, just end the interview as fast as possible and as polite and professional as possible

I've got to say that I really don't like that advice. When interviewing, you're talking to people who may be nervous, hopeful, worried, the works; but even if they've had lots of practice at taking interviews, and can approach them calmly, they will still not be in their normal state. The kind of people who would get past you, if you used such a "technique", are the bullshitters and chancers, who can talk the talk but can't code the code. The kind of people you'll miss out on are the ones who are most affected by being in an interview situation, so can't relax and be themselves. I would hope that you don't give (or follow) that advice often.

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

Mark_Wallace

The most important thing is to get them to relax. You'll know yourself that if you're tense, you'll **** up and say the wrong things, because you won't be able to think quickly or clearly enough, and there's no point in seeing how people **** up when they're tense in an interview with strangers; you need to see them as they normally operate. Things that help: 1. NEVER read questions from a piece of paper, unless you can make a joke of it ("the twats in HR always make me ask this"). 2. ALWAYS start with coffee/refreshments, away from the desk (i.e. don't get someone to bring the coffee; say "Let's go and grab a coffee first"). 3. NEVER try to talk about your own abilities/preferences/whatever; that can make the candidate feel that he has to say something about himself to compete with it. You don't want a competition; you want to see who the guy is. 4. NEVER interrupt when they're talking. It can be hard enough to get them talking openly, so don't do anything to make them clam up. If you've ever been interviewed by someone who keeps interrupting, you'll know it makes you feel like crap. 5. NEVER correct anything they say (until after the interview proper is over). Same reason as for 4. 6. ALWAYS remember your objective: you want to find the person who can do the job best, not a new best buddy -- and remember you're there for a reason, not to just chat about things that interest (the pair of) you. 7. HAVE FUN! It's a chore that you have to carry out, but it's one of those tasks that you'll do a hell of a lot better if you let yourself enjoy it. [Edited because I can't abide tpyos]

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

Mark_Wallace

Dalek Dave wrote:

Bad experience at an interview yeah?

Nah, that was his mother with his school report.

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

tom1443

I don't see much point in asking about obscure and little used language features unless your organization is at that level of sophistication. Giving a candiate some poorly written and uncommented piece of code and asking him what it does seems counterproductive to me. If you really have code like that, why would he want to join your company? Since the hiring process can be long and expensive you want to make sure that not only he is good for you, but you are good for him. The candidate needs to be able to do the work but also needs to be able to fit in well with the organization. Be honest about what you do, how you do it and what the job will entail. Then probe to make sure he is good with that. The brightest technical choice might not be the best overall choice.

T M Gray

So you can follow up with "what would your search query be?" There is a big difference between searching for "ajax problem" and searching for "modalpopupextender duplicate IDs". Formulating good searches is an aspect of good critical and analytical thinking.