SPUG: Why aren't they hiring?

Patterson, David S (Pat) davidpa at avaya.com
Thu Nov 15 12:29:57 CST 2001


I've done quite a bit of technical interviewing 
(ending about 9 months ago, sadly). Personally 
I don't like to give programming problems.  I've
found that the only thing this accomplishes is to
induce a great deal of anxiety in the interviewee.
I prefer to give debug problems instead, and have
them verbalize the debug process.  I also ask them
about what their "pet peeves" are in debugging others
code.  To get at design capability, I instead have
them describe in detail the development process they
went through on a past project, and what their
top design concerns would be in tackling an abstract
problem or two.  This approach is gentler and gives
a very good indication of a person's experience, 
interests, skills, and temperment.

---
"There are three ways to get things done: do it yourself, hire someone
to do it, or forbid your kids to do it..."
D. S. "Pat" Patterson
Software Engineer
Avaya, Inc.
davidpa at avaya.com



-----Original Message-----
From: James Moore [mailto:banshee at banshee.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2001 9:55 AM
To: 'Seattle Perl Users Group'
Subject: RE: SPUG: Why aren't they hiring?


> The last time I got interviewed by an actual developer, they asked me
> such basic questions that I don't know how they could possibly have
> differentiated my answers from those of any of the other candidates.
> They had me write a "hello world" CGI script in Perl.

I'm guessing you haven't done a whole lot of interviewing as in hiring,
not
looking for a job.  You'd be completely astonished at how often people
can't
solve the most trivial programming questions in interviews.

When I ask people to write basic code in an interview (things like write
ls -R in perl or something similar) I'm looking for two things.  Can
they
write any code at all?  People who can usually look at me like "you want
me
to write what?" and then I explain that what I want them to do is take
the
opportunity to talk about how they do code development and this is a
good
hook to do it with.  The actual code written is meaningless and
instantly
forgotten.

 - James


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