

What not to do during an interview - bratfarrar
http://dandreamsofcoding.com/2014/06/29/interviewing-is-hard/

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EdwardDiego
> Don’t suck at something you say you’re an expert at

This one. If you say you are expert/advanced at X, we will check for some
level of competence. It's amazing how many candidates with CVs claiming
'advanced SQL skills' don't know about the existence of the HAVING clause. An
exaggerated CV is a very easy filter.

~~~
andrewstuart
I agree that people shouldn't exaggerate their skills but you need to be
cautious about how you go about proving that they do not. It's easy to prove
that someone is clueless by quizzing them about specific technical details or
syntax. You will of course find something they do not know, but are you really
trying to prove your own cleverness by catching them out? "You say you're an
expert eh? We'll let me prove you're wrong and I'm smarter cause I'll ask
arcane technical facts till I find something that shows you're not an expert!"

~~~
EdwardDiego
> I agree that people shouldn't exaggerate their skills but you need to be
> cautious about how you go about proving that they do not. It's easy to prove
> that someone is clueless by quizzing them about specific technical details
> or syntax.

I agree, which is why I gave GROUP BY HAVING as an example filter for
'advanced' SQL skills (especially as my team manages data warehousing and
analytics).

It's not a minor implementation detail, it's the major tool for filtering on
aggregated values - something like 'find customers who have purchased two more
products in one month' can either be done as a query of an aggregated sub-
query, or as one query using HAVING to filter for customers with a COUNT(*) >
2.

Again, this is only for people claiming advanced skills, and it's not that an
'advanced' feature. I don't expect every developer to know about SQL:2003's
window functions, but HAVING has been around since at least 1992.

I agree with not asking silly technicalities, as a Java developer, knowing why
new Integer(100) == new Integer(100) but new Integer(1000) != new
Integer(1000) is an interesting piece of trivia, but using it in an interview
is a waste of everyone's time.

~~~
andrewstuart
So you're saying you think that questions on syntax are important. We'll have
to agree to disagree on that.

~~~
EdwardDiego
That isn't a question on syntax, sorry. We'll have to very much disagree if
you think this is just syntax. It's a core part of SQL that anyone with
advanced SQL skills should at least be aware of.

Syntax would be caring if they put the ORDER BY in front of the GROUP BY.

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tzakrajs
>Don’t swear

If it doesn't work out because I swear in the interview, it wasn't going to be
a good culture fit in the first place. This goes both ways.

~~~
drewying
It's not a matter of it's a culture fit or not, it's a matter of showing that
you care about the job.

We wear whatever the hell we want to at the office, but if I conduct an
interview and the interviewee comes wearing jeans and a T-Shirt with holes, I
problem will end the interview short and thank him for his time. If he doesn't
care about this job enough to even make an attempt at dressing up then why
waste our time.

Same with swearing. If you can't show to us that you care about this job
enough to use professional language for an hour then I probably won't consider
you past the first round. It's not whether we care about swearing, it's about
proving to us you really want this job.

~~~
tzakrajs
> cares enough about his job enough to even make an attempt at dressing up Why
> not be yourself and let the right role culture find you?

If my employer won't swear in the interview out of principle, we are a bad
culture fit.

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dllthomas
_" no one in her right mind will penalize you for not being immediately
available"_

Not deliberately, but depending on how bad they need to fill the hole, they
may find someone good enough that they don't bother holding out to see if
you're better...

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totoroisalive
And sometimes, no matter how much you read about interviews, you will suck at
it.

Interviews are hard for some people.

