Comment by tetrep | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tetrep | Hacker News Reader

> Always start off by asking the candidate, "Is this still a good time?"

Is there a better way to ask this? It would be relatively awkward for the candidate to bring up on their own, so it seems like a good idea to make sure nothing unexpected has occurred since the call was planned.

> Alright, that's enough chit chat. Curtly prod them to submit to the interrogation.

Assuming it's still good to have the call, why would you not just jump in? The call can't last forever, and I'd rather have a solid ~40 minutes of technical content with time for questions than an opening of awkward forced small talk that, especially in the context of technical candidates, there's a good chance neither of us find pleasing.

Anecdotally, I've found that most good candidates will "small talk" about the technical subject matter that gets brought up during the call, if only to appear as a person familiar with it. (Although I do get a little lucky with security related things occurring pretty regularly in the news, so it's easy to reference.)

> Always start off by asking the candidate, "Is this still a good time?"

I prefer when the interviewer reschedules the interview two or three times, calls 15 minutes late, and then asks "Is this still a good time?"

My favorite is if you then ask them a question you have to repeat yourself because obviously they are doing something else while talking to you.

I love that. Or when they audibly sigh, tap their pen on their desk, or stare out the window. These actions say, "I have more important things to be doing," and that's how you know the company is doing big, important things.

I agree. Phone tech interviews are usually low level screens to see if the candidate has the minimum technical chops to come on board. Short and sweet is what I prefer, especially since I'm usually doing the phone interview on a lunch break and would like to have some time to actually wolf down my lunch.

Collaborative code editors are an unpleasant modern addition to the interview process. Plus I'm usually writing the code in another window before transcribing it to the collaborative window, usually leaving the person on the other end of the call to wonder if I disappeared. I tend to pass these things though.

"I'm usually writing the code in another window before transcribing it to the collaborative window"

Speaking from the other end of the phonescreen line and collab editing session, that behavior looks a lot like googling and pasting in the first answer you find on stackoverflow. We use a collaborative environment because I kind of want to see you typing, sorry. I know, it's degrading, but... it's a screen, it's not designed to find out how great you are, just prove you're not going to waste our time.

Demonstrates why it is a crap way of testing people. (I often look up answers on Stack Overflow to save time/ thinking. I also answer a fair few questions on Stack overflow as well).

I agree. This comment reveals a complete disconnect between how this interviewer thinks developers work, and how they _actually_ work.

Uh, yeah, that's some bullshit, buddy. You know what we're doing? Constructing and testing our code! A lot of those collaborative editors lack the ability to run code, which makes them only good for displaying final results. Plus, we all have editors we're familiar and productive using, why wouldn't we use what works for us? Plus, copying and pasting in from Stack Overflow is an issue? Come ON, buddy, that's just a sign of a good developer. A good developer does as little reinventing of the wheel as possible. If you want to make things more challenging then just increase the difficulty level of your questions so that more Stack Overflow code will need to be found and cobbled together. But yeah, if I got shit for not literally typing live into the crappy cooperative code editor, I'd politely thank you for the opportunity and end the interview. Senior-level people don't have a lot of patience for that kind of crap, particularly the truly good senior people.

Hello, is this (Candidate)? (Assuming you can pronounce candidate's name, otherwise, try a different opening.

This is X from company Y. Is this a good time to talk?

Great, so the way this usually goes is I talk about A, we talk a little about B, I'll ask you about C, and if you have any questions D

Sound good?

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