Hiring and interviewing developers

Kyle Cordes — Sun, 21 Jul 2019 03:36:40 +0000

I wrote this as a series of tweets, but perhaps here's a better place to capture it for the long term.

I've been researching and experimenting with hiring+interviewing techniques. Might as well jump on this current “10X” bandwagon, eh? Here is some of what I’ve learned. (Context: I mostly hire software developers, but also other roles.)

No matter what words are or are not in a job posting, a large number of people who plainly do not match the job at all will apply.
~Every company hires only the best people. Mysteriously, the economy is nonetheless at only a few percent unemployment.

Many experts advocate spending hours digging into inappropriately internal details of past employers. Mysteriously, all then expect the new hire to keep their confidences.

Many experts advocate their particular style of interview as the obvious best. But anyone can go on YouTube and learn how to game any popular interview style.

Many experts’ basic idea is “past performance equals future results”. You can pay a lot of money for that advice. About a hypothetical world in which people do not grow or change.

Many companies interview software developers with doofus second-year-CS questions. Apparently they do this out of habit, because it seems to reveal little about job performance.

Time is precious. Have a time budget, and stick to it ruthlessly. Interruption may be necessary.

For technical work, do you want to hire people good at talking about X or doing X? If the latter, find a way to "audition".

Lots of applicants want to "hop on a call". Time is precious. Exchange some info first, use that to decide whether to interview. Then meet with an agenda, via a video chat for more complete communication.

Questions with one right answer aren't that useful. Questions that reveal skill and experience levels are very useful.

That's it for now. If you liked that and are a software developer with deep Angular or other web platform skills, keep an eye on our careers page. oasisdigital.com/careers

DEV Community: Kyle Cordes

Hiring and interviewing developers