August 9, 2012 at 11:38 am
FunkyDexter (8/9/2012)
Wierdest interview I ever has was only about my second job after finishing my degree. The boss turned up an hour late and the only thing he seemed interested in was whether I liked Frank Zappa. I did, so I got the job. In hindsight I wish I hadn't accepted it as it turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. Still, you live and learn.I have an unusual interview technique I use which some here might find unreasonable but I'd defend it to the hilt. I get two sets of lego containing exactly the same pieces. I sit in one room with a pretty random shape pre-built out of one set of lego and have the interviewee sit in another room with the other set - connected by hands free telephones. The interviewee can ask any questions they like and they've got 20 minutes to build the shape I pre-built, which is waaay too short a period for them to actually complete the task (it takes alot longer than you might think). This is actually a great test because it reveals so much about the interviewee that I believe is crucial to a good programmer. Particularly around the "softer" skills I'm typically looking for. Do they panic? Do they give up? How do they communicate? Do they ask open and closed question to understand the problem? Do they make assumptions or fully clarify the goals up front? Do they take a methodical aproach? Do they think logically and try to break the problem into smaller chunks? I'm not cruel, I lay the basic premise out in front of the interviewee before hand and what my expectations are. I tell them they probably won't finish and I just want them to get as close as possible.
Technical skills are pretty easy to test for, you just ask some technical questions. And knowing your syntax off by heart isn't really what makes a good programmer, it's about having a flair for problem solving. Those soft skills can be damn hard to test for and this is the most effective way I've ever found to do it.
The first thing I'd do is ask for specs. If there were no specs, I would ask if you always require developers to work without specs. Depending on that answer, I may stay and play the game, or, I'd walk out. If I stayed, I would then ask you to take a pic of the lego and email it to me. I am interviewing you as much as you are interviewing me.
August 9, 2012 at 11:53 am
Sounds like a reasonable technique to me. Assumes 3D mental imaging skills that some people might not have, and which probably aren't applicable to most DBA/dev tasks, but that itself as a barrier would be easy enough to false-negative out of the test.
Just to be clear, I'm looking for a successful completion of the task or even how close they get. I'm looking at how they aproach it it. To be honest, I always thought it was impossible to complete in the timescale although one guy did get awfully close once. He completed a model but a couple of the bricks were miss-orientated. Damn close though. I put him forward but the budget got cut back just before we made an offer. I think that sucked and I hope he found something else decent.
20min seems long to me
I'd have thought so too if I hadn't tried it out on one of my team members first with no duration to see how long was reasonable. It took him over an hour but he did end up getting it exactly right. At the 10 minute stage most people are still establishing which bricks have actually been used. 20 is actually surprisingly tight.
Eventually I tried something that made him stop. He told me they'd had this problem and couldn't solve it, going through almost everything I'd done until that last thing. Was an interesting experience
That does sound like you got fleeced for some free consultancy.:-D By the way, I've got a position available for a particularly talented c# programmer with a deep understanding of the data binding model. It's imperitive that you know how to implement the iBindingList interface to give a source that will remember the persistance state of it's members, allow filtering and sorting and handle any generic type. This question will be purely to test your knowledge at interview and is in no way connected to the fact that I've been banging away at this for weeks now! There's definitely be a job at the end of it. Honest. You can trust me.;-)
The first thing I'd do is ask for specs.
That would definitely win you points as would asking for a picture. An insistence on ALWAYS having a spec (not sure you're saying you always need one though) would lose you points. To me a good developer needs to be able to investigate a problem themselves when the situation demands it. As often as not the customer genuinely cannot spec what they want because they don't fully understand the problem themselves and on those occassions I want someone with a much more rounded skill set than just the ability to follow a set of instructions. Any developer who ever tells me they don't feel they should ever have to speak to a user gets counted out immediately. Specs when possible, flexibilty when not.
August 9, 2012 at 12:39 pm
jasona.work (8/9/2012)
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (8/9/2012)
I had a strange interview back in the Novell 3.11 days where a guy kept asking me questions about digging into a particular problem scenario. As I'd answer with things to check or look at, he'd provide the results and explain what didn't work and we'd go on. I asked questions, and some he answered, some he couldn't.Eventually I tried something that made him stop. He told me they'd had this problem and couldn't solve it, going through almost everything I'd done until that last thing. Was an interesting experience.
So they did this: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2006-05-06/[/url]
to you?
Almost. They'd worked around the issue, but it always bugged the guy, so he kept the scenario as an interview question.
August 13, 2012 at 2:46 am
Lowell (8/7/2012)
I had a similar interview like laurie had years ago; they were interested in whether I knew vb6, ADO and whether i knew javascript; the questions had a couple of techy questions, but the end of the interview was "can you start tomorrow".
I took the same interview as Laurie, two or three weeks' before, with the same two interviewers. "Do you know the difference between an inner join and an outer join", "Yes", was the interview. We spent the rest of the allotted time talking about photography. That was the second gig Laurie and I worked. The first was Bravissimo about 4 years ago. Oh, and this is the third, he sits on the same run of desks. The interview wasn't particularly interesting for this one. A fairly rigorous online test followed up a week later by a phone chat about hobbies. Prior to the phone chat, I'd attended an interview with a DM company only a half-hour walk from home. That one was offerred too but the offer came through a day after the offer for this job. Here's the unusual bit - the agent said they'd like me aboard but wanted to haggle over the quoted rate, even though I was putting more on the table than the list of requirements. I'm hoping to discover if it was the client, or the agency scrabbling for a bigger percentage.
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August 14, 2012 at 6:49 am
I just don't get the "shock" interview mentality. My boss did this to one of my co-workers. He brought him in for an interview and about half way through spun around in his chair (he was sideways to the guy) and started bouncing a ball of the wall and catching it. He did this for about 10 minutes.
That shows a complete lack of respect. I would have (politely) told him so and ended the interview. I would not be comfortable working for someone who can't look me in the eye and gives the appearance of being bored.
August 14, 2012 at 7:07 am
Scott Arendt (8/14/2012)
I just don't get the "shock" interview mentality. My boss did this to one of my co-workers. He brought him in for an interview and about half way through spun around in his chair (he was sideways to the guy) and started bouncing a ball of the wall and catching it. He did this for about 10 minutes.
That shows a complete lack of respect. I would have (politely) told him so and ended the interview. I would not be comfortable working for someone who can't look me in the eye and gives the appearance of being bored.
I believe that you shouldn't leave so early. It might be disrespectful and he might know it, but you might have to deal with people like this on any job. If it's a test, they should let you know before they ended the interview, if they don't telll you anything you can point that out and leave.
Never take the first impression as the absolute truth (no matter if it's good or bad), most of the times you can be wrong.
August 14, 2012 at 7:10 am
No matter how the interview goes, I always try to get offered the job. At least I have the option to take it or leave it, & it's good practice (for me) to try & deal with anything that comes my way.
Having said that I've never had any really wierd 'tests' myself...
August 14, 2012 at 7:38 am
Never take the first impression as the absolute truth
I'm going to have to disagree. Interviews and first dates are very similar. In order to avoid wasting everyone's time when there's a solid pool of applicants (both employers and employees) you need to cut to the chase. If something rubs you the wrong way, you should bail out.
Now if you really need the gig, you could always do as Luis suggests. Suck it up and take it. Try to be patient and tolerant. Start looking for something else on day 1. My thought is any qualified person should always be "looking" even if there's a lower likelihood they'll tab something else.
All that being said, please tell me we have some more of these. This thread started off really strong. I know more of you have some weird stories.
Edit: grammar.
August 14, 2012 at 7:42 am
+1
There must be more good stories out there..
August 14, 2012 at 7:47 am
Scott D. Jacobson (8/14/2012)
Now if you really need the gig, you could always do as Luis suggests. Suck it up and take it. Try to be patient and tolerant. Start looking for something else on day 1. My thought is any qualified person should always be "looking" even if there's a lower likelihood they'll tab something else.
I didn't suggest to accept the job, just to let the interview to finish. You should try to speak with some of the employees or find some references from somewhere else. As they have said, at the end of the interview you can accept or decline the offer.
You could have the best interview in the world, they can show you amazing things but it could be a simple illusion (been there) or it could be the other way around.
August 14, 2012 at 7:54 am
Come to think of it, I've had a couple other odd ones:
About 20 years ago I went for an interview in Bristol (England) & the 'office' turned out to be a few rickety desks in the changing rooms at the old Eastville football stadium which had recently become disused. I ran a mile from that one....
Another one was at Heathrow airport for FoxPro. The company was a US freight handler & the local boss didn't like the US software, but they wouldn't change it - so he had 'ReFoxed' it. This product produces FoxPro source code from compiled code. The trouble was he had an older version of ReFox than FoxPro & it reproduced code it didn't understand as hexadecimal strings - of which there were quite a lot! I didn't follow that one up either...
I got a job at a marketing company in Soho, London. They didn't mention it in the interview but they expected me to handle any network issues too! I got the hang of Small Business Server quite quickly, but I was stumped when the network went down & I was supposed to fix it. One of the girls said 'Jasper used to hang the router out of the window'. I discovered the router was on top of a radiator! Sure enough, it all started working again after about 5 minutes hanging out of the window.
August 14, 2012 at 8:09 am
You could have the best interview in the world, they can show you amazing things but it could be a simple illusion (been there) or it could be the other way around.
Good call. I've been there too. My last job before my current turned out that way. There were also some complete fallacies about the job presented in the interview. Job ended up being a nightmare of moving targets that were impossible to hit. To this day when I mention the organization locally (where it carries quite a bit of cachet) people always say "oh that must have been so cool!" Then I regretfully recall my experience for them and the reaction is usually "man that stinks".
August 14, 2012 at 8:15 am
I got a job at a marketing company in Soho, London. They didn't mention it in the interview but they expected me to handle any network issues too! I got the hang of Small Business Server quite quickly, but I was stumped when the network went down & I was supposed to fix it. One of the girls said 'Jasper used to hang the router out of the window'. I discovered the router was on top of a radiator! Sure enough, it all started working again after about 5 minutes hanging out of the window.
:Wow: +1. This. This actually led to knee-slapping laughter. Keep 'em comin' guys and gals.
Edit: spelling. I really need to preview my posts more often.
August 14, 2012 at 8:18 am
I didn't suggest to accept the job, just to let the interview to finish. You should try to speak with some of the employees or find some references from somewhere else. As they have said, at the end of the interview you can accept or decline the offer.
You could have the best interview in the world, they can show you amazing things but it could be a simple illusion (been there) or it could be the other way around.
Of course, whether I stayed to finish the interview would depend on the circumstances.
Do I need the job? Is this the guy I would be working for? Did the job sound great up until this time?
August 14, 2012 at 8:34 am
Few years ago I've had very strange interview. I was asked all kind of strange questions that had nothing to do with my ability to work as a DBA. At first they asked me if I can show them my high school grades. I told them that I have no idea where to find my high schools grade. They asked me few times how come I'm not able to find my high school grades with me (at that time I was already over 30 year old, and high school was a very remote memory). I told them that I'll might be able to find my grades from college, but I don't think that I'll be able to find a report card with my high school grades. After that I was asked about my typing ability - How fast do I type? do I have mistakes and typos? etc. At this point I started thinking that I got to the wrong interview and asked them if this is the interview for the DBA position. The answer was yes. After few more questions that had nothing to do with databases and programming, I told them "thank you, no thank you".
At another interview that was very strange I was asked many technical questions but none of them was about SQL Server. At first I was asked about UNIX. They asked me about 10 questions about UNIX and for each one of them I replied that I don't know UNIX at all. After that they started asking me questions about DB2. Again I replied that I never worked with it, and don't know the answers. They just kept asking more questions about DB2. When they realized that I told them the true and I don't know how to work with DB2, they asked me questions about few other technologies. The only thing that I was not asked about was SQL Server. Of course I didn't get that job.
Adi
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