Rules for a better interview process

[BigRed]

As contractors you have undoubtably gone through many interviews and learned to be more skillful than most at jumping through the hoops and answering the technical questions, but does any of it make a real difference to the quality of the team recruited? one of the best teams I worked on was a group thrown together by the agency from non technical telephone interviews and the main criteria was being available the following week. I'm sure you have worked with permies who would have never landed a contract but are indispensable. Most are old hands who wouldn't get a permanent role either these days. So, rules for recruiting a SQL DBA:

1. Telephone interviews only, helps to concentrate on the words, not the appearance.
2. No quiz questions like name the DBCC commands, popular DMVs etc. Make everything open ended such as what recent production problems have you solved.
3. Ask which forums, user groups, conferences do they participate in.
4. Ask about who's blogs they follow.
5. Do not ask HR permie questions such as where do you see yourself in 5 years.
6. Do not ask how to solve a problem which has had your IT department stumped for the last week.
7. Don't focus on some obscure rarely used skill which never actually gets used once the contract starts, if something is a major requirement say so in the job spec, otherwise don't bother with it.

If HR is so confident of their approach, ask them to back it up, what percentage of Managers rate their new recruits highly after 3 months, what's the attrition rate, how do these results compare to people recruited using different evaluation techniques?

In fact, as far as contractors go, read their CVs, give one a job, if it doesn't work get rid of them, blame the agency for not carefully filtering their candidates and/or not understanding the requirements. Force the agencies to do a proper job.

[TheFaQQer]

3. Ask which forums, user groups, conferences do they participate in.
4. Ask about who's blogs they follow.

WTF?

[doodab]

I ask what technical books they have read recently. If they can't even name one, that's a bad sign IMO.

[stek]

There should no need for interviews wasting everyones time.

while true; do brief chat, basically your sales pitch, if goes = ok then get gig, else if crap get binned, that's it. Done.

[eek]

I ask what technical books they have read recently. If they can't even name one, that's a bad sign IMO.

Surely forums, blog posts and podcasts would be a better bet question nowadays

In the .net world by the time the book is out (technical books have a lead time of 3-6 months) the technology is already half way to being replaced. In node and big data it would probably already be out of date.

[SimonMac]

I ask what technical books they have read recently. If they can't even name one, that's a bad sign IMO.

Whats a book?

[SueEllen]

WTF?

Asking about forums, blogs etc is just to check the person is likely to be interested in what they are doing.

One of the places I worked where I was permie had a project where 70% of the staff on it had absolutely no interest in the outcome. As a result the 30% who did ensured they got moved to another project or left the company.

And yes the project failed.

BTW you can read blogs, forums and mailing lists and participate on them during office hours.

[MarillionFan]

Whats a book?

It's a list of odds used to calculate the returns on betting on how long sockie accounts will last.

[BlasterBates]

Agree absolutely it´s about the CV.

The more experienced the better. It is 90% experience anyway.

Most cockups are from inexperienced guys or are developing something they haven´t done before.

An experienced guy might not know the "latest technique" but what he does do will work well.

I remember in one project where code was being ripped out because it was "too clever".

[doodab]

The guy you are recruiting went to University and got a degree in Engineering and has spent 10 years working in reputable firms on complicated systems...of course he can f***ing.
program.

You have 20 people. They can all ******* program. Which one can ******* program the ******* best?

I've seen a guy with a PhD apply for a Java job, he got 4% on the brainbench multiple choice we used for screening. Really?

I'd also say that 10 years working for "big names in IT" is no guarantee of competence. I'd add that you need to ask some technical questions (i.e. how would you do X? or explain the difference between A & B) at interview to see if the candidate actually has the knowledge he claims to have. Some people just list the technology the project used, whether they dealt with it themselves or not.