Interviewing and Hiring by Tom Van Vleck
“Let’s take a break from talking to people. Why don’t you have a seat in this empty office, and write a small program. Use any language you want to. The program can do anything you’d like. I’ll be back in about 30 minutes, and ask you to explain the program to me.”
…
It seemed reasonable, if the job was programming, to ask people how they felt about actually doing some. And sure, it caused interview stress. We allowed for that in our evaluation; but the job was going to be stressful at times too, and we needed people who could enjoy it. The important thing was not what the candidate wrote, but the account he or she gave of it.
…
And you’d be surprised how many people couldn’t do it. Couldn’t write a simple program and talk sensibly about it. They’d huff, and bluster, and make excuses, and change the subject, rather than actually write some code. “Oh, I think of myself as more an architect than a coder.”
A very worthwhile read. I discussed some of these ideas in: Hiring the Right Workers.
Related: Find management improvement jobs – Signs You Have a Great Job … or Not – Management Training Program
January 26th, 2007 at 7:39 am
[...] Interviewing and Hiring Programmers. Curious Cat Management blog shows that sometimes a simple test is all that’s needed to weed out the potentials from the poseurs. [...]
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Malcolm Gladwell presented at the New Yorker conference on the Challenge of Hiring in the Modern World. As usually, he provides some great thoughts…
June 5th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
In the information technology field the standard practice is to include a large number of basically irrelevant skills as requirements. And then managers wonder why they don’t get decent applicants…