Job Interview for IT Pro: Guide for HR Managers
hrtechnology.info
hrtechnology.info
Savy candidate will pick a hobby that will make him look good anyway. (Don't mention metal or rap, don't mention you actually don't have one, don't mention stereotypically girly hobby, do mention reading and that single robot set you bought and build five years ago.)
"Oh yeah? What's your favorite scale?"
"Uh what?"
"Can you tell me your favorite major triad?"
"..."
interviewer assumes person is lying because their level of enthusiasm and knowledge doesn't match up to their expectations of what a "true piano hobbyist is" when really person just likes to play chopsticks on the piano or lookup yt videos on how to play pop songs
But honestly, there is an expectation of some level of competency/knowledge when trying to "claim" a hobby, because people consider a hobby as something you involve yourself in at more than a surface level.
Would you call yourself a polyglot because you know how to say "I love you." in eight different languages? Would you expect others to consider you multilingual? Probably not... There is some floor level of expectation before people would say you can "speak" a language and would consider you multilingual and a single phrase doesn't cut it for most people.
If someone tells me that they like to play a musical instrument - I'd first gauge their level of ability "What songs do you like to play?" followed by their knowledge of music theory "Could you show me a `Gm sus4 7` chord in the second inversion?" or a more basic "What are the 12 notes in Standard Western notation?"
No. In fact, the very definition of a hobby refutes this. A hobby is purely anything you have taken interest in for mere pleasure or to fill leisure time. Hobby's synonyms are pastime, leisurely activity, leisurely pursuit, etc. There should be no expectation of mastery.
Now if I said I am a piano practitioner, I would assume some knowledge.
> If someone tells me that they like to play a musical instrument - I'd first gauge [...]
And this list of criteria you gauge will vary from person to person, and interviewer to interviewer, which is exactly why approving/rejecting candidates based on their hobbies is unreliable at best.
By the way, your listed criteria of what someone being a musician is would exclude Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Paul McCartney, Kurt Vile, Tony Williams, Danny Elfman, Eric Clapton and Tom Morello, just to name a few.
I don't care much for definitions - because dictionaries are often years or decades behind how words are literally used.
In this case it's a matter of breaking expectation - and not because the statement is "wrong". The statement would be correct but goes against what people are expecting when they ask such a question.
If someone were to tell you "My hobby is drawing." what do you first imagine? Perhaps not hyper realistic graphite drawings but you're probably imagining something with at least a mediocre level of talent. Decent proportions, an understanding of depth, at least the basics! How surprised would you be if they showed you a bunch of crudely drawn stick figures that look like a three year old drew them? Would you think they were pulling a joke on you?
If someone says "I'm a programmer" would it break your expectations to find out that they can only write `=SUM(A2:B2)` into an Excel spreadsheet? How many people do you think would disagree that they are "a programmer" if that is the extent of their programming talent? Do you think that would be a majority of people or a minority of people? If someone put on their resume that they had 8 years of programming experience and failed to mention that it was only with Excel functions would you count that against them when hiring them? Would you consider it manipulative or shady? It's the equivalent of saying "I handle financial transactions for a multi-billion dollar company." when you're a cashier at McDonalds. Factually correct, but you better only be saying it in jest or you would be considered a manipulative asshole.
By the way, my listed criteria did not exclude them. The first judgement is one of ability - all of them would pass as musicians by that alone.
I don't care that you don't care for definitions. Words have meaning, whether you care about them or not.
The whole premise of your anecdotes are based upon your experience and the way your brain operates. That's the definition of bias. That's the reason why dismissing someone based upon your perceived lack of mastery of their hobby, something by definition is something someone does just for fun, is horrible for any sort of hiring needs or purposes.
Telling me "I do this as a hobby" and "I am this" are two completely different statements.
Words literally have definitions that change over time, in context, from different groups of people, in different regions, and literally sometimes don't literally mean what is literally written in a dictionary. Pointing to a dictionary and saying "This is what this word means" is completely ignoring how communication works unless you're trying to get two people to agree upon a definition of a word.
The only good a dictionary is for is saying "This is the definition of the word I am using." Neat. I'll stick with the way everyone around me uses the word, dictionary be damned.
>Telling me "I do this as a hobby" and "I am this" are two completely different statements.
The implications of the statement matters.
>It's the equivalent of saying "I handle financial transactions for a multi-billion dollar company." when you're a cashier at McDonalds.
I play the Beethoven Sonata's I play well. I'd have to answer with dunno to all those questions. My piano teacher did have a professional jazz pianist as a student, because he wanted to learn some more traditional techniques.
Yesterday I went to a class of a famous Brazilian percussionist. When I asked him about whether there is a dictionary of the rhythms, so I can at least look them up, he said, dunno, if you want to learn get close to people that know, learn and practice.
But as the GP said, if I knew that was the expectation I would prepare for it and try to control the interview.
All the people I interviewed with I was still in the university did have top grades, but were otherwise terrible engineers. You're basically looking for those people.
If that famous Brazilian percussionist was instead a shitty percussionist with no rhythm - would he still be famous? Would he even be considered a percussionist by other people?
I have a feeling I'm either making my argument poorly or people are trying to read between the lines and missing my point.
Also, plenty of people are shitty at their pastimes.
Am I hiring:
(a) A programmer
(b) Someone who considers themselves a programmer
>Also, plenty of people are shitty at their pastimes.
I'm not arguing against that. My argument is (a) vs (b).
I'm doing that tonight, and I dunno if I've met more that a couple who know what sus chord does. And I'm talking about folks who make their living from music.
Also if you're a professional, by definition, you're not a hobbyist.
In any case, if my hobby is something I am not comfortable to talk about with strangers (because they are likely to make weird gueses for example), you are not entitled to that information.
I rock climb, listen to jam bands, and play video games. They're all very real hobbies I could pass any reasonable test on, in the bizarre event that someone considered it appropriate or worthwhile to "test me" on my own hobbies.
But I certainly don't think all three of those hobbies are interchangeable in an interview setting. The article talks about the question having a 'catch', so apparently the author agrees that they weren't asking the question in good faith - there were specific hobbies that were better!
I've been doing quite well. I e been watching Bob Ross, and started painting things I find o. Reddit...
The goal is to be able to paint butterflies and unicorns, but I'm currently on trees and mountains and clouds..
But it was a hopeless question either way. The 'catch' bit just means the author should have known it was a terrible question. I have trouble imagining the candidate who wouldn't try to guess which hobby is most interview-friendly and talk exclusively about that.
Isn't that exactly the job for those two positions?
There's also similar case with guys whose positions are described as "evangelists" - some of those guys have been doing conference talks for so long that they cannot go past "hello world" stage for any technology that they claim to be experts in.
It's one part of the job. But they can't talk to tech people because they don't seem to know anything real.
Especially one guy sounds like he read a book "Enterprise Architecture for Dummies" and now he repeats words like "Integration patterns" but he can't give you a straight answer when you want details.
It's a really weird situation.
And I think this is rather unfortunate as recruiters seem to be short term employees. I also find that the level of professionalism by recruiters to be extremely lacking - they often take weeks to get back to people, many seem unable to compose business emails. They send emails that begin with "Hey" and don't bother spellchecking. Many don't seem to have any technical knowledge or actually understand what's on a candidates CV. I have had them fail to call at a scheduled time, many don't send out calendar invites. Dealing with recruiters overall is a pretty miserable experience.
HR on the other hand is something that you can get a degree in. HR people seem to be longer term employees at companies, they seem to do things in a consistent and predictable manner, and seem to be quite professional in their communication.
I realize this is anecdotal and there are of course wonderful recruiters who have a good technical grasp and are very professional but the majority of my dealings with recruiters over many years now has informed me that these are the exceptions.
It seems there is no minimal set of qualifications to become a recruiter and shouldn't this one of the most important roles at a company that needs to grow to succeed? They are also kind of ambassador for the company in the sense that they are the first point of contact for a candidate.
Am I minority in this opinion? Or is there not actually a recruiter problem?
They try to satisfy the business need with a low-risk hire with an excellent value proposition while satisfying the requisite legal and other important 'stuff' like healthcare, onboarding, exit interviews, snacks.
That aside, I've seen resumes printed in Comic Sans make it through HR to the technical pre-screen.
What department are recruiters part of if not human resources?
I assume they're referring to third-party recruiters
In an org chart though yes recruiters are likely to be part of the HR department but they are not the same HR that you go to when you have a problem with a paycheck or health insurance.
I wasn't referring to third party recruiters but I have a suspicion and maybe someone could confirm this that many recruiters are actually contract workers - 3 months, 6 months etc and not regular employees of the company despite having a company email address. The reason I suspect this is that at most of the tech companies I have worked at recruiters seem to come and go at an alarming frequency.
To me, it's a strong signal that the company doesn't understand software development and is trying to shoehorn it in like every other department. That's generally something that seeps into all facets of the workplace, and you find yourself wasting time arguing over locked-down machines, workspace standardization, common spaces, dress codes, etc.
Interview "advice" like this is a good example of why HR shouldn't be in the early process. I mean, seriously, hobbies?
PS. I agree there's a huge recruiter problem, but I don't think HR is the solution.
Do you have a low credit score (maybe through no fault of your own, e.g. medical bills)? Do you have a "checkered" past -- maybe many years distant, now, with a solid track record in between?
Do you not test as "mainstream" on psychological evaluations?
These are all things that can stop you from getting to the next step in the hiring process, at an established company implementing the ever vaunted "best practices". (Which, when widely followed, can really only ever be the "standard" (some might say, mediocre) practices.)
HR doesn't evaluate your true professionalism. They just make sure you don't deviate too far from standard.
One reason actual teams and hiring managers sometimes have to put significant effort into fighting their own HR. Or deciding whether doing so is worth the risk to their own jobs and standing.
P.S. Yes, I'm pretty cynical about HR -- the result of long experience.
This month, I've watch HR at another large, established institution (this one focused on healthcare) take the easy way out of letting a supervisor and her favored push out a better employee, instead of investigating what's really going on (which, given the nature of the job and all the client interfacing and record-keeping, wouldn't be that hard to do).
HR there appears to actually have started picking up on what's happening (truly abusive behavior by this supervisor and her cronies, lying, and borderline neglect of their own jobs -- foisting their duties onto the underdog employees). Nonetheless, it's easier to accept a forced resignation than to try to address the team problem. Which will fester until something really goes wrong.
Or, if HR there is good at its job, within the scope of what they're willing to do, until they can build enough of a case/impetus against this supervisor to force her out, on their terms and timeline.
Even if they do that, they've let at least two of their best employees get screwed over, in the meantime. Go, HR! /s
As always, as an employee, HR IS NOT YOUR FRIEND. They take care of themselves, and the institution. You only win if it's the easy win, for them. Or with lawyers.
The best candidates will actively seek out places that are selective, because that's a reasonably good proxy for the average quality of your future teammates. Obviously there's a difference between "selective" and "hazing" in an interview, but "selective" when done fairly is usually a positive indicator.
The problem is that it is difficult to know if a company is constructively selective, or if other variables dominate. You present the variable of self-selection, which definitely exists for some companies and positions.
Back to the original point, many people can be turned off when companies try to talk up their selectivity and maybe rightly so. Candidates don't have infinite time so there needs to be a higher $ reward for time invested applying to extra-selective organization (higher expected value), and they might have experience that shows this self-assertion is more arrogance than reality.
Swinging too far in the other direction to claim "we hire anyone!" can also turn away good candidates or attract people without the necessary skills.
Why is HR at the front end of the process, and not the back? If all goes well on the technical side and the team approves, shouldn't I then be moved on to meet the Human Resources department so they can ask the usual? I get that they should be involved, but in what capacity really?
I don't want to hear about others' at the workplace, and no one needs to know about mine.