The other side of the table

Two co-workers in my group turned in their resignations this week; moving onto bigger and better things, and all that. Which means that we have to churn through another batch of candidate interviews. I'm not a manager, but senior technical staff are usually involved in interviews to ensure that whoever gets hired actually knows their stuff. We get to ask the technical questions, and management gets to ask the behavioral questions, like the dreaded "list three things about yourself that you could improve."

So with a lot of interviews coming up I thought I would describe what it's like to be on the interviewer's side of the table, and also provide a few tips for anyone reading this who may be looking for a job soon. Interviewing can be almost as nerve-wracking as being interviewed, primarily because it's your responsibility to find someone that knows their stuff, and is likeable enough to work with. But also because you don't want to ask a stupid question or otherwise embarrass yourself in front of the candidate and your coworkers.

Most of my coworkers that participate in panel interviews, myself included, never read resumes before the interview, or at most quickly scan it 5 minutes prior. Where I work, resumes serve only to catch someone's attention enough to bring you in for a face-to-face interview, and to help verify your honesty. The latter point is why I couldn't care less what is on your resume; almost everyone I've ever interviewed has been caught "expanding the truth" on their resumes; it's my job to ignore what you wrote down and assault you with a barrage of technical questions that will unearth "the truth".

Many candidates, for example, will list a particular software tool on their resume. You would expect a candidate that has actually used a product to know who makes it (i.e. Microsoft makes the Windows operating system), and if they don't, it's a pretty good giveaway that they're not being totally upfront. Makes you want to say, "Didn't your Mama tell you not to lie?"

I like to ask questions with a broad range of difficulty to help pinpoint a candidate's exact skill level, which means the candidate is bound to not know at least one question. When this happens, and you know it will, try not to say, "I don't know." Instead try to describe how you would solve the problem given what you do know, even if the final answer probably won't be correct. This helps give everyone an indication of how good you are at problem solving, and is way better than giving up with an "I don't know" and watching the interviewers immediately start scribbling something on their notepads. You could even use this strategy to great effect with closed-ended questions like, "What is the maximum size of an integer data type?", by saying something like, "I don't know, but you can query the Int32.MaxValue constant to get that value."

Finally, interviewers don't like to participate in interviews any more than you do (believe it or not). Which means we would rather formulate an opinion as soon as possible, and get on to other tasks. Management-type folks are usually impressed by much-talking because it shows that you can talk your way out of a situation (I guess that's why they like it), but make it easy on everyone else (like me) by being as succint as possible. Just get to the point. I remember several agonizing interviews where the candidates responded like politicans to our questions, dodging and weaving around like verbal prizefighters, and taking at least 10 minutes for each response. They obviously didn't know what we were asking, and it took us an hour to get through a handful of questions. If you make my eyelids begin to droop, you have not made a good impression!

I'll end this post by saying that you wouldn't believe how difficult it is to find quality technical people. Almost everyone lies on their resumes, and very few people put any effort into preparing for an interview. At one point we were wondering if many of our candidates were just using us as "practice" before interviewing where they really wanted to work, it was that bad. The technical job market is incredibly robust, especially at the end of the year, so if you'll be in the market anytime soon I bid ye Godspeed!