
How to judge raw smarts of a developer candidate? - lucasgonze
I have had success hiring junior developers who I thought were exceptionally intelligent, even when their experience didn&#x27;t make them the best candidate. I&#x27;d like to continue hiring with this strategy, but to be more deliberate about identifying intelligence.<p>How do I judge?
======
karmakaze
I have had similar success stories and a few that accidentally came through
the process.

It helps if you can be more specific and not use loaded terms like
'intelligence'. If it was a single metric placements would not be so complex.

Here are some things I look for: intrinsic interest/self-starting, logical
reasoning, high-level or conceptual thought processes, abstract or
mathematical mental models (e.g. non-procedural thinking), open-
mindedness/lateral thinking/connecting non-adjacent knowns, algebraic/symbolic
representations and manipulation.

That doesn't even make up half though. A larger part is more about how they
actually go about working day-to-day. Are they easy to talk/disagree with?
Show continued interest in learning or content to apply what they know? Can
work on longer projects to completion? Do the necessary boring stuff.

A good team needs mostly the latter qualities and a few members that can
sometimes be the 'cooks' in the restaurant.

------
surfallday
>>who I thought were exceptionally intelligent

what made you think that?

------
kadonoishi
Standardized test scores, grades, degrees, ranks of the degree-granting
institutions.

Is this hard? Or are you asking how to judge when you don't have access to all
the metrics normally used by admissions committees for this purpose?

