- Jun 30,2008
- In: Geeky, Management
The Interview Process
I just recently had the opportunity to interview with a new company and it was amazing. Why was it amazing? It wasn’t because it was easy but because it was intense! I think a person can judge how much they will enjoy working for a company based on how hard they have to work during the interview process.
When this company told me that their four man chain-interview was common practice I was definitely intrigued. You’re basically competing for the priviledge to mingle and work with other great minds on a challenging project. While it is true that an interview doesn’t always reflect the real productivity and value of a potential employee, you can definitely learn a lot about the person with a simple conversation. Of course, the result of an interview also depends on the interviewer and their experience in field. There is definitely a difference between getting interviewed by a project manager and a fellow developer.
People seem to seek interviews for different reasons as well. The first one obviously being to quickly find a new job. Others interview without the intention of accepting an offer at all. They might just be curious about what kind of experience and knowledge you need for a new position. Or maybe you just want to evaluate your skillset to see if they still meet market demands. Interviewing with another company doesn’t necessarily mean you’re unhappy with your current job!
In the end, tough but relevant questions are what interviews should be all about. You get to discover what your weaknesses are and at the same feel some validation for all the hardwork you’ve done keeping yourself current with the latest technologies.
What are some of the good and bad experiences you guys have had while interviewing for a job?
Maybe share some tough problem solving questions you have been asked. I enjoy those.
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Tags: interviews, job, new job, problem solving questions
Comments: 2 comments
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noah
June 30th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
I’ve always thought it would be a good test of a person’s learning and problem-solving abilities for one part of the interview to be to model (a part of) a domain in ORM. Assuming the interviewee knows ORM.) That domain would have to be dragged out of interviewer who should be acting like a nontechnical domain expert. Ideally, the domain would be the real domain of company. I think of it as a kind of live fire exercise for how well a person can dig into the domain they would have to deal with were they to be hired.
This may not be as applicable to every job, but if I were interviewing someone to do the kind of job I do, I think it would work great.
Mike Gromer
July 1st, 2008 at 7:21 am
I designed a small database in one of my interviews. Was different from all the rest because of that. I had no intention of working for the company because I didn’t want to be in Office Space, but their interview process was very technical and if I was interviewing a candidate, that’s how I would proceed. I was surprised at the amount of companies didn’t really ask many technical questions in the interviews.
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