I recently sat in on an interview for the first time. It was an interesting but slightly uncomfortable experience.
When you are in an interview as a candidate you are focussed on the questions and thinking of your answers. As an observer though it's hard to not feel pity for the candidate if they get stuck on a question or give the wrong answer. Or if your co-interviewer gives a bitch of a question which you know they will have little chance of giving a good response to.
Still it was good experience and it also gave me some small experience of how people can tend to put a lot of waffle and padding in their CVs..
The point that I'm stuck on is what to ask them to do to test their aptitude in the absence of any or little previous work experience. I guess you want to give them some intelligence tests or problems to see their problem solving skills, ala the infamous Microsoft tests. What I looked for myself was a passion for software but the candidate seemed a bit like a rabbit caught in headlights by that point in the interview so they stuck with the safe answer which was a disappointment to me as I was really hoping they might be a passionate candidate. Passion for software or learning would really impress me if I was interviewing someone again. Although I guess someone can fake passion if you don't probe too much and get into a nerdy conversation with them. When I say passion I suppose I really mean nerdiness. Obsession with technology. And do you want a nerd who wants to work with the coolest new technology if the job you're hiring for is some boring bread and butter application which has nothing new or interesting about it?
If anyone is asked if they want to sit in on an interview I would definitely recommend it. It shows you aspects of both sides of the interview process that you might not have thought of before.
Posted by Cokane at February 11, 2004 02:32 AM