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Discussion on: What I Look for During an Interview

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budyk profile image
Budy • Edited

that Trait 4: Honesty did the trick for me....I always ask a candidate to tell me the scale of their technical skills (eg JavaScript, PHP etc) between 1 to 5...

when they write 1 or 2, I know they not so skilled but they are likely to be honest..when its 3, I'll find out if its a "safe" zone where they tend to lie about their capabilities...when its 4 or 5..I'll give them a lil test

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brewsterbhg profile image
Keith Brewster

Y'know, I've never thought about asking candidates to rate themselves on a skill scale, but that's a great point!

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rossdrew profile image
Ross

I would likely end up not hiring anyone who ranked themselves at the top of any skill scale I provide. I asked (at a presentation) Bjarn Stroustrop how he would rate his C++ skills on a scale of 1 to 10. He said 6 and he invented the language.
If any good programmer is being honest with themselves, they'll likely always rank themselves slightly above average I find.

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aminmansuri profile image
hidden_dude • Edited

That's the problem with this sort of question.
If you ask me to rank myself.. I'll say something and you'll interpret all sorts of things.. but who knows if your ranking system is the same as mine.
So I find this sort of question meaningless.

Best ask the person what they are best at and then measure that somehow. Like asking them what they did in the past or asking them to show you something or you showing them something and see if they can follow.

But trick questions can be tricked, and rarely are reflective of anything.

People have wide backgrounds.. so there's a wide range of skillsets.