To simulate the typical senior developers who will do interviews at the "cool" tech companies...
Be as condescending, bordering on rude, as possible. Alternatively, have a poker face most of the time and give the interviewee skeptical looks the rest of the time. You want it to be an adversarial event from the start and you hold all of the advantages.
Ask them to draw out basic data structures (linked list, binary tree, etc) on the whiteboard. Insist that the code they write on the board be 100% perfect and complete, no pseudo-code. Question them about every step with vague comments like "Are you sure about that?" and "Why did you do it that way?".
Google on "tough programming interview questions" and ask a few of them like "Find the Missing Element" or "Design a Tiny URL System". Make sure to act skeptical about their answers, even if they're right. Do this so that they question their ability and competency, maybe even to the point of triggering impostor syndrome.
Go over their resume in detail with them, questioning everything about their experience.
Abruptly cut the interview short, telling them that they don't fit the team's "culture" and have them escorted out.
I wish I was joking, but, in most cases, that's what the interview will really be like.
Sadly, many companies today take the attitude that all applicants are incompetent liars and the interview is meant to expose them. Maybe they've been burned in the past but that doesn't really excuse it.
I didn't think these kinds of attitudes and techniques were all that common but my experiences in my recent job search revealed that they are. I had this kind of experience at 5 different companies. I'm just glad I finally found a company that didn't interview in such an adversarial manner.
On one hand I can kind of sympathize with employers. Doing interviews I get get the feeling that over 50% of applicants for programming can't program. In any sense of the word either, coding, problem sovling, admin, systems, devOps, data structures, etc. I wonder if other industries are this bad.
On the other hand, there's no real excuse for being a dick. It shouldn't take long to determine somebody is at least worthy of an interview. If the applicant is simply no good I'm in favour of just ending the interview early. I suppoes the dickishness comes from people interviewing non-stop bad candidates and feeling as though they're just wasting their time.
But again, even bad candidates deserve the courtesy of being treated like actual people.
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To simulate the typical senior developers who will do interviews at the "cool" tech companies...
Be as condescending, bordering on rude, as possible. Alternatively, have a poker face most of the time and give the interviewee skeptical looks the rest of the time. You want it to be an adversarial event from the start and you hold all of the advantages.
Ask them to draw out basic data structures (linked list, binary tree, etc) on the whiteboard. Insist that the code they write on the board be 100% perfect and complete, no pseudo-code. Question them about every step with vague comments like "Are you sure about that?" and "Why did you do it that way?".
Google on "tough programming interview questions" and ask a few of them like "Find the Missing Element" or "Design a Tiny URL System". Make sure to act skeptical about their answers, even if they're right. Do this so that they question their ability and competency, maybe even to the point of triggering impostor syndrome.
Go over their resume in detail with them, questioning everything about their experience.
Abruptly cut the interview short, telling them that they don't fit the team's "culture" and have them escorted out.
I wish I was joking, but, in most cases, that's what the interview will really be like.
Your comments reminds me of the Monty Python Interview sketch. ;-)
Nothing says "I don't want to work here" more than that!
Sadly, many companies today take the attitude that all applicants are incompetent liars and the interview is meant to expose them. Maybe they've been burned in the past but that doesn't really excuse it.
I didn't think these kinds of attitudes and techniques were all that common but my experiences in my recent job search revealed that they are. I had this kind of experience at 5 different companies. I'm just glad I finally found a company that didn't interview in such an adversarial manner.
On one hand I can kind of sympathize with employers. Doing interviews I get get the feeling that over 50% of applicants for programming can't program. In any sense of the word either, coding, problem sovling, admin, systems, devOps, data structures, etc. I wonder if other industries are this bad.
On the other hand, there's no real excuse for being a dick. It shouldn't take long to determine somebody is at least worthy of an interview. If the applicant is simply no good I'm in favour of just ending the interview early. I suppoes the dickishness comes from people interviewing non-stop bad candidates and feeling as though they're just wasting their time.
But again, even bad candidates deserve the courtesy of being treated like actual people.