

ASK HN: How to hire good employees? - stanley

I run a small web design &#38; development company that deals mostly with small-businesses and local colleges. We're about to open our first office and would like to bring in two or three developers to help with the workload. Most of the work we've done so far was outsourced to out-of-country developers, so this would be the first time we're hiring inhouse developers.<p>We're planning to recruit from the local colleges, we're in NYC so there's no shortage of CS/engineering schools. I've put together a list of questions and talking points that I want to cover during the interview, but it's difficult to assess whether or not they are sufficient.<p>Can anyone recommend good reading material on proper interviewing processes? Any advice you can provide would be appreciated.
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tonystubblebine
What about the people you used to outsource to? There's nothing that matters
like the ability to produce and having people work for you on contract is the
best way to test that.

The test-type questions I've seen have been almost entirely useless. When I'm
asking questions now I mostly ask what about someone's goals and what I'm
judging is whether I have a company and position that can meet those goals.

~~~
tb
How do you figure out if the candidate is going to be able to meet your goals
though?

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tonystubblebine
If it's programming then have them do some programming. My least productive
hire kicked ass on the math questions that another programmer asked but did
poorly on the practical programming project.

