

The Reverse Phone Screen: Call Your Potential Employer And Interview Them - martincmartin
http://www.martincmartin.com/blog/?p=144

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Zolt
I am in a position to interview applicants for development positions. I still
chuckle when I think of an interview I had last year...

I knew within the first few minutes of this interview that this guy was not
for us. He was coming out of a DOS development background (if my memory serves
me correctly it was Clipper or FoxPro). The guy had no recent development
skills and was telling us he would ramp up quickly for our .NET / SQL needs.
The interview lasted about 20 minutes when I asked the question "Do you have
any questions for us?"

He said "as a matter of fact I do". He opened a folder and pulled out a sheet
of questions. It was obviously printed from a website. It was questions like
"Why would I want to work for here?". "Please describe to me what job I am
applying for?", etc. I thought to myself, "fair enough, I will take the time
to answer these questions honestly even though most of them were covered in
the previous 20 minutes."

When he got to the end of list, he flipped the page to another full page of
questions. My head jerked, my eyes opened wide and I shook my head a little.
He informed me don’t worry, I don’t plan to ask all of these, which he then
proceeded to ask all of them. It was questions like, what do you use for
source code control? What do you use to track bugs? Do you practice Agile
development? My long winded sheet-1 answers quickly became one and two word
answers for sheet two.

It was when he flipped the page to page three I lost it. My elbows hit the
table, I let out a big SIGH and asked "there are more questions?" I couldn’t
believe he had the nerve to ask more questions after the sigh I let out, but
he did.

I don’t recall exactly how I wrapped it up, and I tried to stay somewhat
professional, but more less informed him he was not the right guy for the job.

For our business, development skills are important, but do not account for
everything. I would say client interaction and people skills rank right up
there.

~~~
rdrimmie
There's probably elements of his personality that aren't being relayed
properly, and I definitely agree that personality a key elements for a hire.

But your presentation of this story suggests astonishment that someone coming
to you for the honour of a job on your wonderful team would have the nerve to
care a lot about the environment in which he was working.

The example questions you bring up seem like perfectly reasonable questions to
me and I'd be loathe to work somewhere where the manager didn't want to answer
them. You'd maybe be surprised by how many places don't use source control at
all, or don't have any kind of development methodology, let alone Agile.

~~~
smokinn
But there's a big difference between asking those questions yourself because
you care enough about them to remember what they are and just handing a sheet
or reading from one that was clearly printed off the internet.

~~~
msluyter
I agree, and the problem isn't the necessarily the number of questions or even
the types of questions per se, it's that the choice of questions and the
ordering demonstrate a lack of coherent thought. To exaggerate:

"What web frameworks do you use?"

"Django"

"Ok, so what languages do you use?"

or perhaps:

"What is your development process like?"

...answer...

"Do you use any agile methods?"

In both cases, the second question should at least be largely hinted at by the
answer to the first. Somehow, people think they should ask certain questions
so they do, whether or not they really understand the answers.

------
javery
Back in 2001 I was working at a little pre-press/imaging shop and I decided I
really wanted to go work for a top-notch MS shop in town. I was the only
developer and was pretty sure I wasn't going to grow unless I surrounded
myself with great developers.

But I didn't know where, so instead of going to monster.com I just searched
for all the Microsoft partners in the area and cold-emailed them to see if
they were hiring or interested with a quick little bit of information about
myself. I ended up with two interviews, both with great shops. I ended up
taking a job at G.A. Sullivan (later bought by Avanade) and was thrilled.

Neither of the places I interviewed with had job openings posted and I never
posted my resume on monster or other sites.

To this day I think this is the best way to find a job, seek out where you
want to work. Don't wait them to come to you or find you online.

~~~
gvb
Absolutely!

Maybe I'm not as good as I think I am, or maybe I'm too honest, ;-) but my
resume+cover letter has never made it through the HR gauntlet. I almost always
have found an email address of someone inside that is associated with the
position I'm interested in and sent them a cover letter email and resume. I
have _always_ gotten an interview by doing an end-run around HR, but never
through HR.

FWIIW, I see the same thing at my place of employment. When we have had big
projects and were in serious need of more engineers (including HR giving
rewards to employees for recruiting new hires), the new hires almost all got
hired through a personal recommendation to a manager, doing the end-run around
HR (in some instances, HR did not give the reward because they already had the
resume on file and never acted on it).

~~~
tjr
I once applied for a job working with a particular group, going through
standard HR process. I heard nothing.

About two months later, I saw an identically-worded opening with the same
group. This time I contacted the manager of the group directly. I quickly had
an interview, and was moving in to my new office in a matter of weeks.

------
pmichaud
Depending on the culture, this could work really well, or really badly. I
guess the type of person who would use this technique wouldn't want to work at
the type of company who wouldn't want him to, so maybe it's a good filter.

~~~
Periodic
It's also something to consider carefully if under a lot of pressure. It could
scare away employers that may not be great, but would be better than nothing.

The immediate response when I mentioned this to a friend was that some
companies might not "like you wasting their employees time while they are at
work", to which I responded that I would probably not enjoy working there.

~~~
strlen
In a fast growth company engineers spend a lot of their time on hiring (phone
screens, multiple in person interviews, "selling" after the interview).
Candidate "screening the company" after a phone screen, but before an
interview actually _saves_ engineering hours that would be wasted interviewing
a person who won't take an offer.

~~~
TheSOB88
But would they realize that? Tightass companies are tightass.

~~~
strlen
"Tightass" companies typically don't get to fast growth, either.

------
coliveira
Try to do that with a big technology company and you will get nowhere. E.g.,
at Google nobody knows where you will be working before you really start.

This may work well for small/medium sized companies, where they really care
about who is being hired. Most big companies don't care, they just attract
people to work under their predetermined conditions.

~~~
holygoat
Heh. I had this conversation with a Google recruiter (paraphrased):

GR: "Hey, you seem perfect for a position I have in mind. Want to chat?"

Me: "Sure. What's the position?"

GR: "Well, what do you want to work on?"

~~~
RyanMcGreal
I understand that people at Google are allowed to work on whatever project
they want, at any time. If an employee working on project X decides they want
to switch and work on project Y instead, they just inform their manager and
then make the switch.

If you assume that:

a) people are most productive doing something they're passionate about; and

b) the set of Google employees is smart and creative enough that what they
want to work on is probably the right thing to work on;

then this is probably the optimum method of allocating developer resources.

~~~
adamhowell
Before I arrived I was told that it used to work somewhat this way way back
when. But while I was there it did not -- for the simple reason that it
doesn't scale and just isn't practical. Gmail can't take on a dozen new
engineers every week, nor can it lose a handful of crucial engineers.

You're encouraged to move on to another project every 18 months or so, but I'm
pretty sure that doesn't happen too often, either.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
You've shattered my dreams. :)

Thanks for the clarification. The ad hoc manner in which many projects roll
out at google, it almost seems as though they're still following the previous
method; but I suppose that it could also be a function of management deciding
to jump when a 20% project bears fruit.

------
mcantor
I don't know about actually calling before your in-person interview, as some
companies may find that somewhat presumptuous, but many of these questions
would also be excellent for the "Do you have any questions for us?" part that
comes at the end of most in-person interviews.

~~~
angelbob
You know, if I was going to have a single unifying principle to me improving
my conditions at work over the years, it would be "be presumptuous" :-)

~~~
scorchin
I'm considering this frame of mind at the moment.

I currently have a job, but am looking for work elsewhere at the moment. I'm
tired of the dysfunctional way we schedule, speak with clients (lack of
respect from head of company) as well as the way we treat our best assets
(developers).

In my search I'm trying to figure out as much as I can about a company before
I apply and being presumptuous may just help me find that illusive "perfect"
job.

Thank you for stating this in this post.

------
zb
A note to the author/submitter: It's Gantt, with two 't's, and it's not an
acronym.

Pedantry aside, it's important because assuming that it is an acronym obscures
its Taylorist origins.

~~~
martincmartin
That's good point; thanks!

