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Comment by justin_vanw | Hacker News Reader

Yes I think you are right, buuuut...

Lots of times the initial screen is done by someone totally non-technical, and they are asking questions from a sheet and judging whether you are saying what is in the answer field for their sheet. This is super stupid, but I have seen it, usually when some headhunting firm is deciding whether to add your resume to their database which they pull resume's from to send to clients.

The moral: Don't use headhunting firms, because they will basically never send you a decent candidate. In the very rare cases where they by pure luck do send a good candidate, this is rarely worth the dozens of crap candidates they have sent you (not to mention that they will try to push candidates on you if they think they can get away with it).

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My past initial screen was hilarious:

  - I see that you worked for a consultancy firm on your previous job. Do you
    have experience working with clients?
  - Yes. My client at the time was XXX Bank where I was involved in foo bar
    baz...
  - So you don’t have experience working with clients.
  - What? Yes, yes I do. I worked and interacted with them on a daily basis,
    with meetings and the like.
  - Okay. Do you have experience with databases?
  - Yes. Mostly Oracle and MySQL. Some postgresql. I’m also quite comfortable
    with NoSQL databases such as Redis and MongoDB.
  - Good. Do you have experience with programming languages?
  - ... Yes.

Some codility tests and interviews later I was notified I was not getting an offer due to lack of first hand experience with AWS (previous interviewers were apparently fine with that, but this one saw it as a red flag, although it was not listed as a requirement in the job offer).

Definitely a good call for both ends, as this was one of those modern companies where everyone are supposed to be friends, play with nerf-guns and have after work drinks. I think I’m too old for that.

For the record, it feels good for once being rejected on lack of technical merits rather than failing some “culture fit” interview. A trend that is giving me the worst interview streak of my career and is making me consider a change of profession.

Yep on the first point. I was once asked to bend a comically large paper clip out of pipe cleaners. Next I was to solve some physics questions.

This was for an analyst job at a bank.

Some recruiters/recruiter agencies can be pretty good though. I've had interactions with those that let me surprised at their skill and knowledge.

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