
Ask HN: How do you screen and hire software engineers? - inspire7
I&#x27;ve recently been tasked with screening and interviewing new hires, and have run into some issues where I feel there is wasted time and effort. My first question is, are there any good books or resources for hiring that you would recommend?<p>More specifically, how do you do the following:<p>1. Find out if someone can program at all before wasting time on them. I don&#x27;t want to bring in another candidate that can&#x27;t FizzBuzz or equivalent.<p>2. Find if someone is lying on their resume. Do you have any tricks for catching incongruities and probing them?<p>3. Find out if they will be a drag on the team. Whether that&#x27;s lack of motivation and output, or sloppy code and bad communication.
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dastx
I've done some of these, and of course I've been at the other side too.

1\. If you need to understand whether or not they can program, unfortunately
you really do need to make them write some code. But don't look at the
completeness of the answer. Look at how they're thinking. Get a feel for their
understanding of the language. Do they simply know the basics and nothing
more? Do they understand how the garbage collector works (if any). These are
all means to understand how much he knows, and what his compensation may be.

2\. All the good interviews I've had (on both ends) have been simply asking an
open ended question about their resume. Ideally something I know about too and
let them talk about it. Let them speak until they're done speaking (if they
take too long, interrupt them) and then eventually ask them more about it.
Drill into his understanding. Don't attack him for it anything, just make him
expand more and more. You'll get a good feel of the depth and breadth of their
knowledge. The ones who lie on their CV usually ramble, and they become
defensive.

3\. This unfortunately I've never figured out myself. I've historically let
others decide, so I have nothing to say about this.

