Interview Questions 3

[oharab]

I have been asked by my boss to help in the interview process for a new member of staff. This new person will be mainly helping me develop MIS systems using Office, asp & vbscript as well as supporting existing ones.
I don't think I want someone who is already a whizz at coding and knows it all already, I'd rather have someone like me who has an aptitude for it, without necessarily having the skills yet, in the same way I started. I had no formal IT training, just 1 day course on VBA, and the rest I have just taught myself.
I have been asked to produce an exercise that will discover this the hidden skills in a person that we can develop.
What sort of exercise do my esteemed tek-tippers think I should try?
I was thinking of asking for some psuedo-code for an everyday task to discover logical thought processes, but was wondering what you guys think.

Cheers

Ben

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Ben O'Hara

http://www.RobotParade.co.uk

"Where are all the stupid people from...
...And how'd they get so dumb?"
NoFX-The Decline
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[oharab]

Wow, seems like I stirred up a whole load of thoughts & feelings I hadn't anticipated!
To start with, I'll say I didn't take anything as a flame, if expressing an opinion in a reasoned, non-threatening way is a flame, then I've upset a lot of people in the past!!!

Perhaps I was being too judgemental in my original thoughts. Of course I won't be disregarding anyone just 'cos they've got some skills already, but I don't want to disregard people if they don't have the skills yet. I am more after someone who can problem solve, think logically and will be able to develop the skills over time.
I trained as a teacher, but found out I spent more time on my pc than I did preparing lesson plans, so decided that teaching wasn't the best job for me and really wanted to be in IT. I will always be thankful to the people who took a gamble on me with no official PC training, and gave me a chance to prove myself by giving me the job. I guess this is my opportunity to give another person the leg up I got back then.

Thanks for the debate guys, it's been interesting reading. Thanks also to those who contributed questions.


Ben



----------------------------------------------
Ben O'Hara

http://www.RobotParade.co.uk

"Where are all the stupid people from...
...And how'd they get so dumb?"
NoFX-The Decline
----------------------------------------------

 

[TimRegester]

The worst question I was asked was

"Describe your life since the age of 9" at which point I relaxed, either this guy was a complete idiot or was trying to test me out, if it was the latter I should probably give him a one word answer if it was the former he wouldn't understand it but I wouldn't want to work for him.

So my reply was

"Interesting"

A mate of mine was asked right at the end of an interview after the "have you anything you wish to ask me?" bit

"What is your greatest strength?"

His reply was

"giving snappy answers to off-the-cuff questions"

 

[rudejohn]

oharab and company-

First, don't be ashamed to say you want someone "new." If you hire a well-versed programmer at low salary, do you think he'll stick with your organization when/if the economy turns around? For an entry-level position, I would always prefer someone with low to intermediate skills because they'll be around longer.

Next, here are some resources for interview questions. The first is compiled at my alma mater.

http://www.indiana.edu/~libpers/interview.html

http://www.techinterview.org/

http://jobsearchtech.about.com/cs/techinterviews/

Some of these questions stink, some of them are tired, and some of them are great. Adopt the ones which best fit your organization and the people you are looking to hire.

RJ


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RudeJohn
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[jwenting]

And always remember that the interviewee is testing you at the same time you're testing him.
(s)He'll try to figure out what answer you want to hear and give that, especially to questions that have little relevance to the immediate technical skills required.

"are you willing to travel" is one such. Of course you say "yes" when asked that, else you're almost guaranteed to not get the job if it would involve occasional travel.
Someone inexperienced might not know the correct answer to such questions of course, but anyone who's been through the mill a few times (and especially people who've been to courses for surviving job interviews and outsmarting HR people) will know.
HR people know this but ask anyway, some of them probably hoping to catch a lie.

THE most important thing to you (right after technical skills and a willingness to learn) is whether you have a gut feeling you can work well with the other person.
If that (in intimate relations you'd call it 'magic') isn't there the person may not be the correct one for the job. This is incredibly hard to define, and especially explain to someone that he was passed over "because we think you wouldn't fit in our team" which is such a bland rejection message that it's become useless.

 

[lionelhill]

also, if you choose to use questions from a site, I do feel that the discussion that the question brings about, and how you listen and interpret the answers, are as important as the question: the right question asked and interpreted wrongly is as bad as a useless question.

e.g.: On the 2nd site suggested by rudejohn there is a loops-in-linked-list question that is now probably fairly well known. Someone who replied about it mentioned how their interviewer steered them through the problem to discuss related problems. This was probably quite educational for all concerned, and required as much thought of the interviewer as of the interviewee. That sounds like a question used well. If, on the other hand, you simply pose the question and tick the box pass/fail, it's not likely to be very informative.

Some of the questions seem pretty evil, too. The one about 23 prisoners and 2 switches took me overnight to solve, and judging by the posted "solutions" (I looked this morning!), I'm not desperately below average.

 

[jwenting]

Your points are very valid.
Sadly usually such tests and questions ARE taken as ticks to points only.
Score under 80% (or whichever arbitrary number) and you're guaranteed not to be hired.

This is especially true when the selection process is outsourced (in whole or part) to a recruitment agency instead of being done by the company who is hiring themselves.
The people the applicant is talking with don't know the first thing about the questions they're asking, they just check whether the answers given match a list of possible answers they have been handed (most likely printed in the same book that provided the questions).
Such tests were extremely common in the 1990s and are still not gone though "assessment centres" are now the rage, which take it to another level by not testing your technical skills but looking purely at interpersonal skills and creativity in random areas, and derive a verdict for your suitability for the job from that (how my ability to interpret a cubistic painting is indicative of my ability to fix a bug in a Java program is beyond me. I'm quite good at the latter but have no clue as to the first ).

 

[lionelhill]

If it's any consolation a computer analysis (then the absolute latest, cutting edge thing), just before I left school, said I'd be a good wig-maker.

How on earth do you establish whether the future employee is going to be a good colleague (the "magic" thing you mentioned) if the hiring process is outsourced? Hopeless, utterly hopeless....

 

[jwenting]

One ex-colleague went through 3 rounds of internal interviews in the company he applied to.
After those 3 rounds everyone was happy he was the right man for the job, and they told him so.
The last hurdle was the mandatory assessment center (yes, they knew they wanted him. Corporate procedure you know?).
That assessment center concluded he was not suitable, which was deemed more important than the impressions based on technical skills and personality as found by the internal recruiters (including his future project manager and colleagues, as well as HR people) and he was not hired after all.
I myself was several times dismissed on the basis of the wording in his resume. While he was suited for the job at hand, taken literally he was lacking the right papers (years of handson experience but the requirements list a Phd and I only have Ba. Never mind my practical experience more than compensates, but someone whose only guideline is a checklist to be signed off on can't make that judgement).

Yes, outsourced recruiting can never work. Yet companies are blindly going by its recommendations.

 

[rudejohn]

One counter-point: I agree 100% that outsourced hiring stinks, and that you can't have a "check-mark" approach to your incoming employees.

But take the other extreme: interviewers adapt the interview based on the person's qualifications and their "feel" for the candidate. OR maybe you have two or three interviewers, some of them are really personable and one of them is a real hard-nosed, black-or-white individual.

Then when two people walk out of the interview: one says "wow that was fun" and the other says "huh? they really drilled me! how unfair!" you have now opened yourself up to discrimination, preferential treatment, etc. Although the "checkbox" approach does NOT always identify the best candidate for the job, it does make sure that everyone is given a level playing field.

That being said... you indicate that you people have gone through many of these "check box" interviews. So have I. But they're always the first-round interviews. That's the whole idea behind having two "rounds": really get to know the few candidates who pass the check boxing.

~RJ


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RudeJohn
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[CajunCenturion]

jwenting --> years of handson experience but the requirements list a Phd and I only have Ba. Never mind my practical experience more than compensates

And in your years of practical and hands on experience, what have you actually added to the Body of Knowledge in Computer Science, or Information Technology, both being unique and original contributions to the industry that qualifies you for a compensatory Ph.D?

Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[oharab]

Thankyou all for your thoughts and ideas.
in the end, we didn't get anyone without the technical skills that was interested, but had a few people with experience of VB & Access.
The test we decided on in the end was to give them a short section of code that we use here every day and ask them to comment it as if they had written it. I was looking for them being able to understand what the code did and could follow the code through.
Annoyingly not one of them added a header comment, which I was kinda expecting, as it's somthing I've been brought up doing.
There was also an analysis part of the test, using excel, which all of them bombed on! All we were looking for was some simple sum type formulae, with a bit of charting and reformatting, but these guys were trying to create custom functions and automate the filter and stuff. I guess they were trying to impress with technical ability, rather than really looking at what the question wanted.
Again, thanks for all your thoughts, was most helpful.

Cheers

Ben

----------------------------------------------
Ben O'Hara

http://www.RobotParade.co.uk

"Where are all the stupid people from...
...And how'd they get so dumb?"
NoFX-The Decline
----------------------------------------------

 

[strongm]

>all of them bombed...rather than really looking at what the question wanted

Of course, if all of them bombed maybe the question wasn't right...

 

[jwenting]

I have the experience to survive in the real world, which is quite unlike any academic ivory tower...
Theories are all nice and shiny, but knowing what works and does not work in a real production environment (rather than in a lab experiment) is more important once you step outside that lab.

Thank you.

 

[strongm]

But we still need the lab people. Otherwise we'd have no nice, shiny new toys to play with...