From: tfj@apusapus.demon.co.uk (Trevor Jenkins)
Newsgroups: misc.jobs.misc
Subject: Strange Interviewing question
Date: 12 Oct 92 14:36:02 GMT
Organization: Job hunters use Parachute


In article <i7oHsB1w164w@cellar.org> toad@cellar.org writes:

> tfj@apusapus.demon.co.uk (Trevor Jenkins) writes:
> 
> > Your girlfriend may have meet someone with as strange an interviewing style
> > as me; it is also possible that she just meet an incompetent interviewer.
> 
> > By the way, "how do you debug a program" is the ONLY question that I'll ask
> > in an interview that I base my hiring recommedation upon.
> 
> Well then, perhaps this guy's girlfriend met YOU.  Judging a candidate on
> one question, no matter how comprehensive, is ridiculous.  Considering this
> question to be comprehensive is just plain bizarre.

I dont THINK it was me that interviewed her. :-)

As to your observation that my question is "ridiculous" and basing a hiring
decision on ONE question is "bizare". You are correct on both counts. In
mitigation however I plead that I KNOW what my bias is (and having stated it
here so does everybody else) whereas most interviewers are unaware of their
own bias when they make the choice. Perhaps more importantly the candidates
haven't figured out who the interviewer will be and havent tried to find
out something about the person so that they can gauge for themselves what
the bias is likely to be.

> 
> > What I have found odd is that in the five or six years that I've been
> > involved in interviews and the 100s of interviews that I've given I've
> > never gotten a student with a computer science or computing degree to give
> > me a sensible answer;
> 
> And you still haven't gotten the clue that perhaps your expectations are
> incorrect!

My expectation is simple in that I expect a cogent and reasoned argument as
the answer. The (supposedly) better qualified the computer scientist the
poorer answer I've been given. I suspect that I'm expectating a computer
science graduate to be have been taught some skills so the failure is with
college or university that they attended rather than the students
themselves. 

> Still, perhaps it's a good thing; all those students aren't going
> to have to WORK with you.

It just so happens that when I'm on the interview panel it is rarely for
someone who will work with me. (Immediately alongside or below).
 
> Also, I think Washington, D.C. should be destroyed.

It was! In the pre-season game the 49ers stomped on them in the dying
minutes of the game. I know I was there. :-)

> thoughtful conversation:

Definitely however in all your comments you missed picking up on the one
illogical point I made in the original reply which is how do I decide when
to ask this "once-and-for-all" question?

I ask LOTS of questions. I go into an interview very well prepared. I know
what I'm going to ask; why I'm going to ask it and what I'm looking for in
the reply. The "debugging" question is intended to search out critical
judgement rather than pat answers hence its value as the deciding question.
There is one other piece of information I expect prospective candidates to
know which is where I got MY computer science degree from. :-;

By the way, if I GO for an interview myself I prepare as comprehensive a
list of questions as I have pre-prepared when I'm on the hiring side of the
desk. I may not always know what the bias of the interviewer is but I'm not
going to give them the opportunity to rule me out because of a technical
gaff. This leaves it to the imaginary stuff like:

        I dont have green hair
        I'm not a Nam vet
        I didn't attend an Ivy league college
        I cant speel
        I'm not a woman
 
-------------------------------------------------------------
Trevor Jenkins                                   Radio: G6AJG
134 Frankland Rd, Croxley Green, Rickmansworth, WD3 3AU
email: tfj@apusapus.demon.co.uk
phone: +44 (0)923 776436
Newsgroups: misc.jobs.misc