
	Ask HN: Questions to ask candidates in a job interview? - traughber
I'm conducting my first interview today on the hiring side of the table. Do you have good questions you recommend asking prospects? Thanks.
======
mindcrime
I'm usually more interested in the person's passion and drive, and their
interest in continual self-development, than I am in what they know right-
this-minute. So I tend to less stuff about specific API calls, or design
patterns, or programming language syntax, etc. and more towards things like:

Why did you get into development? How many technical books did you read in the
past year? What was your favorite technical book in the past year? What did
you learn from it? What websites do you read regularly, related to
development? Do you maintain any open-source projects? Do you code in your
spare-time? Do you love programming, or do you do it for the money? Have you
accomplished anything important in your career yet? Do you want to? What would
make you feel that you have done something important? Can you hack a Gibson?
etc, etc.

I also like a few questions that probe whether or not the person actively
thinks about the various aspects of what they're doing and how they do it. So,
things like:

What's your favorite programming language? Why? If you could add one feature
to your favorite language, what would it be? Why? If you could remove one
feature from it, what would it be? Why?

... and a similar set of questions on operating systems, editors, app servers,
etc. There are no right or wrong answers, it's just about them having a
position and being able to defend it. I mean, I hate vim, but if you rattle
off a dozen reasons why vim rules, and can explain what it's pros can cons
are, I take that as a Good Thing, regardless of my like or dislike for the
tool.

~~~
hasenj
I have a note about the "books" question.

I don't read whole books, but I read lots of essays/blogs, whole chapters of
books, watch tech talks, engage in Q/A forums (e.g. Stackoverflow), follow
latest news, etc.

~~~
mindcrime
Yeah, same here to some extent.. and if somebody tells me that in an
interview, that gets more or less the same point across. I definitely like to
hear people say they read HN, participate on StackOverflow, Quora, Wikipedia,
whatever. And if somebody says "Hey, I haven't read any book lately, but I'm
watching this great set of videos on Machine Learning from Stanford" then I'm
suitably impressed.

------
mikeleeorg
I agree with bartonfink's questions. The exact questions to ask depend largely
on the role for which you are interviewing, as well as the interviewee's
background. The best questions tend to be open-ended, behavioral, and
relevant.

Open-ended meaning they shouldn't end with a Yes or No answer. They should
lead to a longer discussion that allows you to ask follow-on questions, probe
deeper into their thinking, and arrive to the core influencers of their past
decisions.

Behavioral questions assume that past performance is the best predictor of
future performance. Therefore, ask them about previous situations and how they
specifically dealt with them. There's less chance a candidate will answer with
a generic & good-sounding answer this way.

Relevance goes back to bartonfink's questions. Asking a programmer about his
favorite accounting methods is as good as asking a chef whether he prefers
Ruby or Python.

But in case you're just looking for general, all-purpose questions, here are
three of my favorites:

* How do you personally define and measure success?

* What are you doing to improve yourself, physically, mentally, or spiritually?

* In what kind of work environment do you do your best work?

In case it helps, I have seven more in a blog post (don't mean to be spammy or
SEO slimy; nofollows takes care of that):

[http://bizthoughts.mikelee.org/ten-great-interview-
questions...](http://bizthoughts.mikelee.org/ten-great-interview-
questions.html)

------
ricardo
If you've never interviewed someone before you should speak to someone in HR
group to review the types of things you CAN'T ask. Asking questions about
religion, family, health could result in a lawsuit.

Some quick examples: <http://www.alllaw.com/articles/employment/article14.asp>

------
twp
You're asking the wrong question :) It's not about what specific questions you
should ask.

The question you should ask yourself is "what am I looking for and how to I
detect this?" Only you can answer the first part, the second part follows from
the first.

When you write down a question to ask you must also explain to yourself and
the other interviewers _why_ you are asking this question.

For example, recently I've just been interviewing SysAdmins to manage a
diverse data centre. Three key traits that I believe are extremely important
for the position I've been trying to fill are:

1\. Automation: the ratio of servers to people to so high that you have to
want to automate as much as possible, otherwise you will drown in a sea of
menial tasks.

2\. Rigor: dirty hacks and unfixed bugs have a tendency to creep on you; I'm
looking for people who will go beyond hacking in a work-around and instead
take the time to fix things properly - not just reboot the machine in the hope
that the problem goes away.

3\. Debugging skills: sysadmin problems often involve subtle interactions
between multiple layers of the software and hardware stack; you need a broad
understanding and the skills to home in quickly on the problem area to be
efficient.

So, this is what I consider important. What questions do I ask?

1\. I ask questions like "how would you install Linux on 50 machines?" Burning
50 CDs is not the correct answer :-) The key is not whether they can explain
PXE/KickStart but rather whether they show an inclination to automate the
process.

2\. I ask questions where there are quick and easy work-around answers, and I
look for candidates who take the long term view and say "I'd do _blah blah_. I
know that it would take longer in the short term, but it's better in the long
term because ...".

3\. I do a debugging role play. I explain that I'm interested in how they go
about debugging a problem and then we do a role play where I describe the
first "help me!" email, they say what they'd do (e.g. I'd check log file X)
and I tell them what they find in log file X and ask them what they'd do next,
etc. It doesn't matter whether we get to the "final answer" or not, what I'm
interested in is how they think.

There are, of course, more questions. But each one is asked for a reason.
Decide what is important for you, and then ask questions that reveal whether
the candidate has these characteristics.

~~~
Jabbles
How open are you about what you're looking for? Do you put "applicants should
be able to show {Automation skills, Rigour, Debugging skills}" in your job
description? Or do you think that an interviewee would be able to answer these
questions without prior knowledge?

~~~
twp
We don't state these in the job description (perhaps we should). Rather, it's
the natural tendencies that we're looking for.

------
curt
Ask thought problems, how would you do this and why. Even ask real problems
that you're facing.

Another really good indicator is whether someone can teach themselves a skill
or talent. Did a business major learn programming on his own? Does a
programmer read about business and gain a grasp of the subject?

I always value 'doers' far more than 'thinkers' is someone willing to take
action to fix a problem, not just think about it and then ask permission out
of fear of being wrong. If someone has a highly analytical mind with developed
problem solving abilities there are few problems they can't overcome.

Another that I don't think people focus on much is, does this person's
personality meld with mine and the rest of the team. In a startup you're going
to be spending a ton of time with them, it's far more enjoyable and stress
free if everyone gets along.

------
kunley
As a joke, I have always asked interviewed admins this: vi or emacs?

Interestingly most of them had something insightful to say in a defense of
their choice, some clue on their personality.

~~~
xiongchiamiov
And if they say nano...

------
kanak
The best problems, in my experience (as an interviewee), are ones that are
based on your own experience. e.g. "Last week I was trying to do ___ because
___. How would you have done it"

It's important to realize that the candidate has had much less time to think
about it (and is in a more stressful position), but I think that questions
like these should tell you a lot more than generic "reverse a linked list"
type questions.

------
bartonfink
What position are you interviewing for? What level of seniority? What do you
need this person to be able to do for you?

~~~
traughber
An analyst role at a financial technology firm, fresh out of college. Not an
engineering role. Need a smart candidate that is willing to take on a lot of
responsibility early-on.

------
groaner
You might have seen this posted here before, but Reg offered an interesting
one that certainly opens the door to other questions that may help or give you
ideas:

[http://weblog.raganwald.com/2006/06/my-favourite-
interview-q...](http://weblog.raganwald.com/2006/06/my-favourite-interview-
question.html)

------
andrewtbham
hire them as contractor for a few months and see how they work out.

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html)

this blog from joel splosky is pretty good too... You want people who are
Smart, and Get things done. Look for passion.

------
blender
Ask a question like: How many people in Japan do you think are married?

There's no right or wrong answer really, you're just trying to get at how they
come up with a number.

A hypothetical answer: Let's see, let's say Japan has 50 million people, of
those 50 Million maybe 35 Million are consenting adults. Japan is a pretty
traditional culture so probably a large percentage of...

You get the idea.

Cheers

------
anamax
(1) The hiring manager should have told you what she wants you to learn during
the interview.

(2) You should be able to match up parts of the resume to what the HM wants.
Ask questions to see how the candidate rates.

------
forcer
keep them coming. I will be interviewing in next few weeks for ASP.NET
Frontend developer so this is very useful :)

