
Focus on specifics when interviewing - guiseppecalzone
http://josephwalla.com/focus-on-specifics-when-interviewing
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Bahamut
This approach screens out people who have the potential to accomplish but
haven't yet - I would never try to interview people like this for a
development role, since past experience doesn't necessarily tell me if they
can do what is needed well.

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MCRed
I don't think there is such a thing as someone who has the potential but
hasn't done it. You should always have some projects you did, even in school,
to talk about. If you haven't done any projects then your education is not
complete.

Someone who tells you how they solved a bunch of problems in a language and
context that is different from the one you're interviewing them for -- is
exactly the kind of person you want to hire.

The problems are always different.

If you can't make that conceptual leap (from how they solved problem in a
different context to how they would in your context), I don't think you should
be interviewing people, honestly. I'm not meaning to be rude, but this is the
problem that HR people and "recruiters" have.

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atom-morgan
> I don't think there is such a thing as someone who has the potential but
> hasn't done it.

I had an intern once. No coding experience but very eager to learn. That
company went under but he's now working full-time as a developer - even
transitioned into devops. That's my example of someone who showed great
potential but hadn't done it yet. He realized as graduation was approaching
that he wanted to do something else and went for it.

~~~
Bahamut
To add to this, I have not ever taken a programming class - after 1 1/2 years
in software engineering, I became a senior engineer. Previous experience
didn't really say much about me except that I took on increasingly difficult
problems & roles. I knew everything that was thrown at me though.

Smart people aren't quick to judge largely on the past - they take the
baseline that they are looking for, set out to gather evidence for and against
it, and assess on whether the criteria is met based on a wholesome picture -
the past should be a couple of data points amongst many.

~~~
majormajor
It's unclear if you'd taken on programming projects; if so, it sounds like you
would've been able to discuss them in detail.

Even with a class project, if someone was interested enough in the class that
they can tell you months later "oh, yeah, this project was interesting, we did
it with _method x_ because we'd already studied _methods y and z_ and they
weren't as well suited for _reasons a, b, and c_ "—even if those reasons were
straight from the lectures—then they're already well ahead of most university
candidates I've talked to. Most people mostly forget stuff beyond "oh, yeah,
we did it this way cause the textbook said to." Similarly for "what else might
you do with that?" type questions.

Now, if you haven't taken any classes, _and_ haven't done any software
projects for other stuff, yeah, you wouldn't have anything to talk about. But
figuring out if someone who's never touched code before is going to be able to
do it well is an extremely hard problem -- that person isn't going to make it
past any other interview method I've encountered, either.

How would you approach that candidate?

~~~
atom-morgan
> How would you approach that candidate?

One approach for me would be to find past success in other areas. Prior
interests where they started from nothing, went through the grind of learning,
and excelled. Sports, music, art, whatever. What did they gain from that and
what is their learning process going forward?

I think that's an important characteristic to have. To have pushed through the
process of sucking to being great before and the willingness to do it all over
again. It's very easy to avoid this in life.

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coldcode
That's what I try to do when interviewing programmers. I never make anyone
write code, I want to know how they think, what did they pay attention to, and
what did they learn from projects they did.

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meatysnapper
I think this approach is great. It will get you people like me who are
passionate about software and building cool things, and in general I feel like
these are the people I want to work with. If you have no emotion about things
you've worked on, that's a bad thing I think. Any silly coding or whiteboard
question I ask is a poor substitute for asking someone to talk about the years
someone has spent writing software.

Where this breaks down is in a big company where you just need to hire bodies,
and you you already have a few top-notch engineers who can build great things
and direct the unthinking, uninspired masses. At this point, you don't even
care about a person's github, because it's too much time to go look through
it, and that's too bad.

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MCRed
This is a good strategy and it's one I've employed, but what I've found a lot
of the time is that you get nothing from the candidate.

Basically you ask them questions and they give you short, often vague answers.
They don't really go into detail or talk at length.

I've found this about a lot of people in general. You can ask them three
questions and they will sorta answer one, but never illuminate anything.

I don't know if this is a sign of dim intelligence, or nervousness or not
paying attention or what.

But people who are on the ball and great communicators will do much better in
this kind of interview than people who are terribly shy-- even though the
latter might be a better employee. (spending less time around the water cooler
for one.)

~~~
derf_
This is definitely a problem. I don't think it's a sign of dim intelligence,
or even not paying attention. It may be a sign of nervousness, or simply of
being an introvert (like myself). They may still be very good people. Part
your job as an interviewer is to draw them out enough for you to figure that
out.

They may not understand what you're looking for in their answers. Did you tell
them when you asked? It was obvious to you, but it may not be obvious to them.

Once I get a few of these answers, I try to ask questions that require more
background explanation to respond to. This requires some thinking on your
part. If you've seen a project like theirs before, you can ask them how they
solved some of the problems that you ran into on your own project. "Did you
consider X? What would happen if..." If you are actively engaged and thinking,
people will respond to that, much more than if you ask very open-ended
questions like, "Tell me about X."

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danieltillett
The most important thing to focus on is yourself so you know exactly what you
want when you interview people. Too many times I have been dragged in as an
interviewer just to make up the numbers (bureaucratic game you have to play
within universities) where the real interviewers (the people who actually are
doing the hiring) had no idea what they were looking for. Most of the time it
seemed to be a pointless exercise; we would chat to everyone and then the real
interviewers would just choose the "nicest” appearing candidate.

