Tag interviewing

I recently went through a job search, and I thought it would be good to do a mini retrospective on the whole experience. Overall, it was a better candidate experience than the last time I interviewed so I want to believe that the industry is making progress.

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I have interviewed 100s of candidates for software engineering positions. I’ve done take-home tests, in person challenges, pair programming with the candidates. All of them were awful experiences for me and especially for the candidate. I can only think of a single instance where a code challenge exposed a poor software engineer and I could definitely have made the same assessment just by talking to them. Lately I’ve stopped doing any software or mental puzzles. I don’t do any of that when I interview designers or QA people or HR people, so why would I be particularly toxic towards software engineers during the hiring process? Instead, I actually read their resumes (which is significantly quicker than doing interviews, asking them to repeat the same information), and then I ask them questions like: - Where do you get your tech news? - How do you learn about new technologies? - What do you most appreciate in your coworkers today? - What is a perfect workday like for you? I specifically avoid trap-style questions like “what is your greatest weakness?” or “why are you leaving your current job?” I recommend that you make a plan for what you want to learn about the candidate, e.g. “are they good at acquiring new skills?” or “do they share the same values as the team?” and then structure the interview around that. Be a non-toxic manager. Make your company look good during the interview process. Get better candidates. #jobs

Attached: 1 image Software is the only industry where the job interviews are 10x harder than the job.

Every part of your resume should help the the hiring manager answer "how will this person be impactful on my team?"

Kyle Welch (@kylewelch)Wed, 01 Mar 2023 17:26 GMT

The fact that I went to a four year university and still had to study extra for software engineering interviews blows my mind.

mewtru •ᴗ• (@trunarla)Wed, 01 Feb 2023 18:59 GMT

It’s absolutely wild that being good at interviewing for the developer job and being good at the actual job are two completely separate skills.

Madison Kanna (@Madisonkanna)Wed, 25 Jan 2023 06:43 GMT

If you're being interviewed for a job in tech, which questions do you think are good to ask because they will reveal red flags about how the company treats their people and the company's attitude to work?

Stuart Langridge (@sil)Mon, 24 Oct 2022 17:34 +0000

I've just finished reviewing a few dozen CVs and Covering Letters. Almost all of them were awful! Candidates - I beg you - make this easy for me! I have been given a fixed set of scoring criteria and …

When you feel bad about failing a technical interview, remember that the person interviewing you probably can't pass it either.

Randall (@RandallKanna)Mon, 25 Jul 2022 19:00 +0000

periodic reminder that the pressure people experience when asked to do some bullshit coding challenge in 30 minutes is not comparable to the pressures of the actual work. context matters.

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https://twitter.com/seldo/status/1528077194358009856

yeah all the people asking "but how will you know how people perform under pressure?" like, why are you putting people under time pressure all the time

shelby reliability engineer (@shelbyspees)Sat, 21 May 2022 18:33 +0000

Senior Oops Engineer (@ReinH)Sat, 21 May 2022 18:38 +0000

https://twitter.com/seldo/status/1528077194358009856

yeah all the people asking "but how will you know how people perform under pressure?" like, why are you putting people under time pressure all the time

shelby reliability engineer (@shelbyspees)Sat, 21 May 2022 18:33 +0000

Can we normalize communicating to a job applicant (whom has taken the time to interview) that you're not going to proceed with them, instead of ghosting them? I understand we're all busy but it's rude to leave people hanging when they've taken time to meet with you.

Emma Bostian (@EmmaBostian)Tue, 10 May 2022 08:11 +0000

I find it ridiculous that we make juniors prove themselves in a technical interview. And I find it ridiculous we make developers working in tech for a few years prove themselves in an interview.

Randall (@RandallKanna)Sun, 08 May 2022 02:04 +0000

If you ask me, most interview take-home assessments don't account for you being in multiple interview processes (ignoring personal commitments). And I'm pretty sure this is seen as a feature, not a bug.

Laurie (@laurieontech)Fri, 15 Apr 2022 15:12 +0000

The new “working interview,” where potential employers have candidates do tasks and assignments, for free, is an unethical scam that I hope the workforce soon refuses to partake in. The amount of hours people are putting in to do free work for jobs they don’t get is infuriating.

Brittany Bronson (@BrittanyBronso1)Thu, 14 Apr 2022 16:52 +0000

company messages to me as IC: "sorry, you don't have X years of experience in [very specific thing] so we are less interested" company messages to me as a line manager: "who cares if you have no experience in product eng? managers are managers! come manage our product eng team!"

kf (@kf)Fri, 08 Apr 2022 17:55 +0000

Fuck @raiser_bar for having their sales people say to a dear friend "I would have thought you'd want to hire the best engineers, not diverse ones" in response to being told that algo coding challenges are uninclusive and hurt diversity.

Liz Fong-Jones (方禮真) (@lizthegrey)Mon, 21 Mar 2022 15:10 GMT

Having a written step in engineering interview processes is becoming more common, especially with remote/async work. Typically along the line of write a few paragraphs answering one or two questions. Eg Amazon does this for EMs. But this below is way over the top. 👇

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/r/linux: This was the first step in the interview process at Canonical - I withdrew my application. old.reddit.com/r/linux/commen…

☁David Moreau-Simard (@dmsimard)Sat, 19 Mar 2022 19:18 GMT

Gergely Orosz (@GergelyOrosz)Sun, 20 Mar 2022 12:44 GMT

Anon tech hiring thread time ✨ Looking for work but want to keep your search secret?👀 DM me and I'll post an anonymous profile for you. Want to hire anyone featured here? Reply directly to their profile tweet w info about the job + a way to get in touch (open DMs help)

Jessica Rose (@jesslynnrose)Wed, 09 Mar 2022 15:31 GMT

Tech folks, back me up on this: technical tests and assessments for tech jobs - they're very bad for no reason?

Jessica Rose (@jesslynnrose)Mon, 07 Mar 2022 16:38 GMT

interviewer, looking at resume: i see no gaps here, you must be burned out as fuck job candidate: yes

Tom MacWright (@tmcw)Thu, 03 Mar 2022 21:43 GMT

Good morning to everyone except technical interviews 🙃

Cat Ballar (@catballar)Wed, 02 Mar 2022 15:00 GMT

Here's where I'm at. You're not testing on programming ability, generally. You're testing something else, and it's social. Take-homes? How much time and energy they have for the project. Live coding? The ability to perform in front of an audience. OSS project? Both.

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https://twitter.com/cherthedev/status/1496216234014425090

Thoughts on small take-home projects as part of the interview? I’ve been on a team that asked candidates to do this, then we reviewed the work as they explained their process. Btw this was something we already built, so we weren’t asking them to do free work for us.

Julia Gulia (@deasiadesigner)Tue, 22 Feb 2022 21:09 GMT

Cher Scarlett (@cherthedev)Tue, 22 Feb 2022 21:57 GMT

Please stop quizzing engineers on terminology in interviews It's sincerely a waste of time, this isn't school

Cher Scarlett (@cherthedev)Tue, 22 Feb 2022 20:12 GMT

[Hopefully] Ethical tech jobs megathread 👀 If you work for a non-evil (or just less evil?) tech company and you're hiring, can you let us know about it in the replies?

Jessica Rose (@jesslynnrose)Tue, 22 Feb 2022 09:07 GMT

This should be the new rule: Before arranging a job interview always ask for the salary range If they won't tell you, don't do the job interview

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https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1492931051987279873

I know I know, don't shame the victim BUT Do not start interviewing without knowing the range for the position. I always ask them first if it's not already stated. I don't have calls before that. They don't want to disclose? Skip it.

Josef Strzibny (@strzibnyj)Sun, 13 Feb 2022 18:43 GMT

@levelsio (@levelsio)Sun, 13 Feb 2022 20:40 GMT

Tech interview antipattern: interviewer springs a “so do you have any questions for us” to the candidate after a long coding session or when there are like 5 mins left. IMO this should be a whole separate, no-holds barred conversation, if the technical rounds went well.

Cindy Sridharan (@copyconstruct)Mon, 07 Feb 2022 19:04 GMT

Engineering interviews can be stressful, and not knowing what’s coming makes things worse. That’s why we’re sharing our entire process, including why we do each stage, who you'll speak to, and in some cases the exact questions we’ll be asking. incident.io/blog/our-engin…

incident.io (@incident_io)Mon, 07 Feb 2022 10:55 GMT

https://twitter.com/kyleshevlin/status/1488627825271656450

Part of this is my own fault. I pretty much only pursue roles I'm _really_ interested in. I'm pursuing one I'm not stoked about right now because "I should" and it just drains me. It's tough to be selective and then still get rejected, ghosted, or just forced to wait.

Kyle Shevlin (@kyleshevlin)Tue, 01 Feb 2022 21:59 GMT

Legitimately don't know what to do with myself today. Hiring processes require astronomical patience.

Kyle Shevlin (@kyleshevlin)Tue, 01 Feb 2022 21:38 GMT

💡 Hot tip 7 questions to ask in an interview Ask about... ✅ 1. the role ✅ 2. the company ✅ 3. the culture ✅ 4. what it will take to succeed ✅ 5. professional development ✅ 6. the team ✅ 7. next steps YouTube video with more details coming soon, link below...

Eddie Jaoude | GitHub Star (@eddiejaoude)Mon, 31 Jan 2022 10:38 GMT