Saturday, September 23, 2006
Interesting read from Joel.
Interviewing and hiring
That's one difficult thing.
There is a lot of literature on how to prepare for an interview. I am sure most of us would have assumed that we are talking about the person being interviewed. How about preparing and grooming folks to conduct good interviews? I haven't seen much effort being invested on that front frankly.
This is one of the things we should focus on, preparing the next rung of interviews. In that direction, we have recently started an initiative in our project team. We call it the Interviewers Club and there are two objectives:
1. Prepare and groom the next rung of interviewers.
2. Ensure consistency in the quality of the interviews being conducted.
Achieving the first will contribute to the second objective.
In our first brainstorming session we discussed the various technical areas covered in an interview. The discussions indicated that most folks considered certain areas as key and typically covered those in most interviews they conducted. Hence, we compartmentalized these areas as: Key interview areas [KIA] and Specific interview areas [SIA].
Following are KIAs identified:
Datastructures and their applications
Algorithms and time complexity
Threading concepts
Platform awareness
OOPS
Some of the SIAs identified were:
C/C++
JAVA
J2EE
Design patterns
Database/LDAP
etc.
The basic idea is that if you find the candidate good in KIAs, then proceed with discussions on the relevant SIAs. More posts will follow as more sessions are conducted.
There is a lot of literature on how to prepare for an interview. I am sure most of us would have assumed that we are talking about the person being interviewed. How about preparing and grooming folks to conduct good interviews? I haven't seen much effort being invested on that front frankly.
This is one of the things we should focus on, preparing the next rung of interviews. In that direction, we have recently started an initiative in our project team. We call it the Interviewers Club and there are two objectives:
1. Prepare and groom the next rung of interviewers.
2. Ensure consistency in the quality of the interviews being conducted.
Achieving the first will contribute to the second objective.
In our first brainstorming session we discussed the various technical areas covered in an interview. The discussions indicated that most folks considered certain areas as key and typically covered those in most interviews they conducted. Hence, we compartmentalized these areas as: Key interview areas [KIA] and Specific interview areas [SIA].
Following are KIAs identified:
Datastructures and their applications
Algorithms and time complexity
Threading concepts
Platform awareness
OOPS
Some of the SIAs identified were:
C/C++
JAVA
J2EE
Design patterns
Database/LDAP
etc.
The basic idea is that if you find the candidate good in KIAs, then proceed with discussions on the relevant SIAs. More posts will follow as more sessions are conducted.
Labels: hiring
