Comment by Zolt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Zolt | Hacker News Reader

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I am in a position to interview applicants for development positions. I still chuckle when I think of an interview I had last year...

I knew within the first few minutes of this interview that this guy was not for us. He was coming out of a DOS development background (if my memory serves me correctly it was Clipper or FoxPro). The guy had no recent development skills and was telling us he would ramp up quickly for our .NET / SQL needs. The interview lasted about 20 minutes when I asked the question "Do you have any questions for us?"

He said "as a matter of fact I do". He opened a folder and pulled out a sheet of questions. It was obviously printed from a website. It was questions like "Why would I want to work for here?". "Please describe to me what job I am applying for?", etc. I thought to myself, "fair enough, I will take the time to answer these questions honestly even though most of them were covered in the previous 20 minutes."

When he got to the end of list, he flipped the page to another full page of questions. My head jerked, my eyes opened wide and I shook my head a little. He informed me don’t worry, I don’t plan to ask all of these, which he then proceeded to ask all of them. It was questions like, what do you use for source code control? What do you use to track bugs? Do you practice Agile development? My long winded sheet-1 answers quickly became one and two word answers for sheet two.

It was when he flipped the page to page three I lost it. My elbows hit the table, I let out a big SIGH and asked "there are more questions?" I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to ask more questions after the sigh I let out, but he did.

I don’t recall exactly how I wrapped it up, and I tried to stay somewhat professional, but more less informed him he was not the right guy for the job.

For our business, development skills are important, but do not account for everything. I would say client interaction and people skills rank right up there.

There's probably elements of his personality that aren't being relayed properly, and I definitely agree that personality a key elements for a hire.

But your presentation of this story suggests astonishment that someone coming to you for the honour of a job on your wonderful team would have the nerve to care a lot about the environment in which he was working.

The example questions you bring up seem like perfectly reasonable questions to me and I'd be loathe to work somewhere where the manager didn't want to answer them. You'd maybe be surprised by how many places don't use source control at all, or don't have any kind of development methodology, let alone Agile.

But there's a big difference between asking those questions yourself because you care enough about them to remember what they are and just handing a sheet or reading from one that was clearly printed off the internet.

I agree, and the problem isn't the necessarily the number of questions or even the types of questions per se, it's that the choice of questions and the ordering demonstrate a lack of coherent thought. To exaggerate:

"What web frameworks do you use?"

"Django"

"Ok, so what languages do you use?"

or perhaps:

"What is your development process like?"

...answer...

"Do you use any agile methods?"

In both cases, the second question should at least be largely hinted at by the answer to the first. Somehow, people think they should ask certain questions so they do, whether or not they really understand the answers.

That is not the impression I got. The interviewee read the questions off of a worksheet. That indicates to me that 1) these are not actually his questions, and 2) he does not actually care about the answers.

Sounds like the biggest problem with this guy was the not-smooth way in which he asked you all of these questions.

A better candidate would have found ways to work them into the conversation to appear natural.

You are correct. I am a very humble business owner (of 12) who recognizes, appreciates and praises my employees’ skills. I find it humbling that out of all the businesses "out there" they choose to work for me.

It comes down to two things. If he went about the questions differently, I would have answered all three sheets with a lot of thought and care (like I did on sheet one). It also was, that he could not read my signals and start wrapping things up. If he could not read my obvious signals, there is no way he could interact well with our clients. I have noticed over the years must clients will not inform you if you are speaking in lingo over their heads.

On a side note... let me share another story... my FAVORITE story...

I come from humble beginnings. My dad was a union work for a city and did his 40 hours per week. I started my business nine years ago on October 30th. My dad asked at our Thanksgiving dinner, "What are you doing again?" in front of our twenty or so guests, knowing darn well what I was doing since I was talking about it for a month or so. I said "Dad, as I already told you, I will be creating websites, assisting companies in database development, helping them install workstations etc... He responded, "I just don’t know" my dad had a business, you have to deal with taxes, lawyers, payroll, finding work etc etc... you are just better off working for somebody else...

My response... and it was without hesitation... "You are exactly the type of person I want to hire!". I don’t think he found it as funny as most of our guests.

It wasn’t until last year that he visited our office space (7,000 sq/ft) that reality sank in that his son has been somewhat successfully and he started to tear up.

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