So I was approached today by my boss, who asked me to assist with an interview.
Now, I've taken part in my share of interviews, though up until this point, it had always been on the interviewee side of the conference table. I've had some interesting ones, but for the most part, I think I interview pretty well. Sometimes I talk too much, but that's a nervous habit thing.
Heh, I can still remember an interview I had with the Mac support group at HP. Now, before I get crucified by all those that know me, and are familiar with my opinion of Macs (Steve Jobs is the Antichrist, but I suppose that's the subject of another blog), I want to qualify this paragraph by admitting it was for a blue badge job.
For those of you reading this that are not familiar with the contractors life at hp, the actual HP employees were issued an ID badge with a blue border, as opposed to the orange or brown border of the SCC's. What that meant in the workplace was that it became next to impossible to get fired. Seriously. I mean you always hear about some guy 3 departments removed getting escorted out for surfing porn during work hours, or about somebody smuggling Post-it's out in coat pockets. But I don't recall anyone I worked with actually saying they knew someone first hand that had been dismissed. Though, I can remember one individual, who was by no means the top performer of the contractors in Department X, change nearly overnight, with the receipt of a blue badge. Metrics changed from 6 hours logging calls to perhaps 3 or 4 a day. Not 3 or 4 hours, but 3 or 4 calls a day. It was difficult to receive a pink slip from these guys.
However, I do recall one person getting the boot during my tenure on the 2nd floor of building 4. I wasn't privy to all the nitty gritty details, but something about hacking during his shift. The rumor I heard included a bank calling HP and questioning IT about the repeated intrusions. Totally hearsay, grain of salt required.
In any event that interview definitely gets filed in the "what were you thinking" drawer. But I digress...
Back to the point, I was asked to assist on this interview, with no outstanding instructions. I asked some generic questions, provided some what-if's and chatted with this fellow to gauge his technical agility. Then, I filled my boss in with my impressions. I get to do it again this afternoon.
For those of you who conduct interviews a fair amount, do you have any advice on what direction to go for the technical aspect of an interview (I work for an IT support company)? For those of you who are interviewed on a regular basis, what are things you liked or hated about a particular interview? What can I avoid during an interview to not look like a chump and still get a good honest assessment of the technical aptitude?
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2 comments:
One good question I always like as a General Manager, is:
"As a employee with my team, what skills can you provide to help us achive our goals and what skills do you want to build on while you are with us?"
Great open question. Also shows quick thinking on the job and how the person feels about themself.
I realize this is way past the point of relevance since this post is several days old, BUT my old Adecco manager had a Java question he asked every person he interviewed for a software engineering position. I was never in that category so I don't remember what the question was, but it was a "Say I want to do this in code, how would you do that in javascript?" thing. So the answer, to someone experienced with javascript was easy, but not so easy that anyone who read a "Java For Dummies" book would know the anwser. So I guess that's the trick. Find a question that would become your favorite IT interview question. A quick, concise one that tells you volumes about how knowledgeable the potential employee is. Not BS-able. For IT, I don't really know what that would be either...Maybe what would the subnet mask need to be for these two IP addresses to be able to communicate...(although IPV6 will invalidate this eventually) or say a manager needs a 10-workstation isolated network with the following abilities - how would you do it. I dunno. Just a thought. Finding that one question that only experience knows the best answer for.
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