Why not just give the candidate a programming problem, a real computer (maybe no internet, but all tools and documentation installed), and an hour or two to solve the problem?
You can monitor their computer screen remotely, record it even for later review, and also sit in the room to watch them at work and offer guidance if necessary.
If the candidate passes these real world challenges, then you can do the soft social stuff and see if they will fit into the team.
It's amazing so many interviewers can't apply good problem solving skills to their own job, which of course is to test problem solving skills :)
It's almost as if they want to suffer and fail. We spent a decade hiring puzzle solvers, only to announce (few years back) that it's useless and must be discontinued asap. Now let's try whiteboarding classic logic problems to see if you will catch an off-by-one mistake without running it. That will work.
totally agree. actual problem solving is more informative than questioning.
but even for questions regarding prior experience - most of the "standard" job interview questions are widely known. the question being widely known doesn't make them less effective - it is up to the skill of the interviewer to ask relevant follow ups based on what the candidate says.
often, I don't even ask standard" questions. i just look at the most audacious claim on the resume and grill on that topic to figure out what they actually did.
Then i jump around from claim to claim, out of sequence, so they can't fall into the rote story of "how I got here."
I think this is a reasonably effective, harder-to-hack way to interview, unless you're dealing with a pathological liar. (so far, I haven't personally hit one.)
Do you do this with all hires, or just junior candidates e.g. recent graduates, those having taken bootcamp classes, or migrated over from another discipline e.g. "I used to be in Marketing but now I'm a growth hacker" ?
What if you have a candidate with a proven track record, perhaps lots of open source code, perhaps well known in the technology community? Isn't there a risk that grilling them on a topic might just antagonize them to the point of not wanting to join the company?
good question. if you have first hand knowledge of a candidate's qualifications, it is going to change the interview for sure. but that doesn't mean you don't need to figure out if there is a fit with your team/company.
i don't think focusing on specific details is antagonizing if it is done right.
a great candidate will embrace the opportunity to talk about their experience. it will probably be an awesome conversation for both of us. i will learn something, and they will see their experience in a new light trying to explain to someone else.
a weak candidate will stumble on details of their experience, or will be forced to admit someone else did steps x, y, or z. or that the claim is inflated.
Your "solution" doesn't address the problem in any way. That method of testing requires just as much preparatory work before it can be used in a live interview with any confidence. It's also no less vulnerable to the question being leaked.
Why not just give the candidate a programming problem, a real computer (maybe no internet, but all tools and documentation installed), and an hour or two to solve the problem?
You can monitor their computer screen remotely, record it even for later review, and also sit in the room to watch them at work and offer guidance if necessary.
If the candidate passes these real world challenges, then you can do the soft social stuff and see if they will fit into the team.