Great Interviewing! Based on Joel Spolsky’s Guerilla Guide

Sriram V Iyer

Objective of Interview

Identify people who are1. Smart, AND

2. Get Things Done

Nothing MORE, Nothing LESS!

Interview Process

• Resume Filtering / Phone Screen (OPTIONAL, Not covered here)

• Face to Face Interviews• 4-6 People interviewing

• 3 Rounds (Minimum)

• At the end of Interview, Complete the Assessment within 15 minsof Interview, with Result: HIRE or NO HIRE

• More than two NO HIRE in a panel of 6 or more than one NO HIRE in a panel of 4 means NO HIRE

Thumb Rules

• One Candidate, One to Three Interviewers

• Insist on solving it in Whiteboard (not paper)

Objective of Interview

Identify people who are1. Smart, AND

2. Get Things Done

Nothing MORE, Nothing LESS!

Smart – But Cannot Get Things Done

• Typically high academic qualifications

• Overemphasis on theory instead of actual work

• Quite Eloquent

• But cannot ship

• NO HIRE

Not Smart, but Can get things done

• Ability to solve problems by brute force

• Usually can work only in a narrow domain

• Cannot adapt

• Useless beyond a certain domain

• We need to clean up the mess, later, at a MUCH higher cost

• NO HIRE

Detecting Smart

• Flow in conversation

• Candidate shows ingenuity, intellect

• Passionate (VERY important)

• Interviewers, Do NOT:• Suppress the candidate! (Don’t talk more than what you should say)

• Ask Quiz questions: What is the third member of _FILE structure in stdio.h?

Hire or No Hire

• Only two possible outcomes of an Interview per interviewer:• HIRE or NO HIRE

• No other Outcome – Hold, May be later, Not for my team

• No Ability to Adapt => No Hire

• When in doubt… NO HIRE

• Mechanically translate anything other than HIRE to NO HIRE (e.g., Well, Hire, I guess, but I’m a little bit concerned about… => NO HIRE)

• Cost of Bad Hires >> Cost of losing a good hire

Overall Flow of an Interview

• Introduction

• Question about recent project candidate worked on

• Easy Programming Question

• Pointer/Recursion Question

• Are you satisfied?

• Do you have any questions?

Identifying Good Candidates

• Passionate

• Ability to Explain

• Leadership Role

• How fast does he solve the easy questions? (Super fast is good!)

• Pointers / Recursion – Make or break in programming skills

• “Where is the bug?”

• Sell the company in the end, even if NO HIRE

Hiring the Best

• Really smart programmers LOVE to be challenged

• Challenging them is the best way to motivate them to join us!

• The other advantage of having a challenging interview is:• Good candidates are hired

• Bad candidates will be filtered

Successful Interviewing

• KNOW / Understand the position you are hiring

• Extract the BEST from the candidate – Get him to a relaxed position (Offer coffee?, Crack a joke, Talk something general –Avoid politics, religion..)

• Remove prejudices (IIT, Way he looks etc)

Thank You!