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Phred needed a job, and we were hiring, woohoo! Because we knew him through a mutual friend, the interview process began casually, with a “get to know you” cup of coffee. After the initial meeting, he submitted his resume — and it was anything but ordinary. Rather than using Microsoft Word or PDF format, Phred’s resume was in YAML, a text format that techies use for configuring computer environments. This sent a strong nerd-cred vibe that piqued our interest.
Instead of giving Phred an arduous series of coding exercises at a whiteboard, as is all too common in my industry, we sent him home with a programming assignment. The task was to select and solve a few specific math problems in code. In Phred’s words:
“It was not simply a test of my ability to write programming solutions to math problems. Rather, the goal was to have me demonstrate my development process from end to end:
– How I work with problem requirements and decide what to do;
– How I use version control;
– How I architect and develop a solution;
– How I test and document my work.”
“Afterwards, I was invited by the team to join them for a formal code review. This was a great experience because it let me scope out the personalities and expertise of my future team (and vice versa), and enabled us all to get a feel for exactly what it would be like to work together.”
Phred found his interview experience to be both reasonable and rigorous but also, relaxed and humanizing. And today, I am happy to report that Phred is a valued member of the team.
As a technical manager, I’ve interviewed hundreds of people over the years. And, I’ve been on at least two or three dozen interviews myself. While my experience roughly follows industry norms, my opinion is that the usual tech hiring process is failing companies. The whiteboard test — a go-to tech interview prop — is unapologetically biased and filled with arbitrary limitations. With too much emphasis on candidates’ pedigrees and performance under pressure baked into the process, we’re likely ruling out great candidates while letting in less qualified ones!
Is tech hiring broken? More than a bit! But we can fix it. At the very least, it may be time for an attitude adjustment.
As an industry, we’ve seen several iterations of the Tech Interview:
Interview 1.0. If you’re over 30, you’ve almost definitely experienced this. The typical HR department screens tons of resumes. Hiring managers sift through those that get past the buzzword filter, pick a few that look interesting, and conduct phone interviews. Successful candidates troop in for a day of conversations with engineers from the team, leading to one offer, or sometimes zero offers. In interviews done poorly, candidates are asked the same questions over and over, with savvier job seekers using information gained in the first hour to game the system to their advantage in the second hour. If interviews are done well, you can build a good — maybe even great team.
Interview 2.0. I like to think of Interview 2.0 as “Google-style” interviews. Well documented on the Internet, these…