Why are technical interviews still alive?
We have a problem Houston. Is it about space? The people behind them might as well be. No, we’re talking about the age of technical interviews.
I mean, I get it. Why would anyone hire a coder when the person doesn’t even know basic coding? But when questions are the stuff of a 5 second Google search — we’re going problems. I’ve been asking people about their interview processes and some questions they ask in tech interviews.
The answers are not pretty.
As someone who’s on the recruiting side, I’ve learned very quickly that smarts, knowledge, and even friendly personalities are not what makes great companies nor make great hires. When it comes to recruitment only one thing matters. And that is:
Culture.
All the questions and processes should be built around that single ideology. Unfortunately, most of us are LAZYYYYY and don’t like change. The conversation with companies typically go like this.
“Why did you ask a set of random tech questions?”
“Because *insert tech company* did it and are successful.”
You can’t see it. But I just face-palmed. Tech companies. Supposedly one of the most innovative industries is going with the mob mentality. So let’s say Mindy is coming to interview for a front-end developer with my company. We sit down, do some ice-breakers, throw in some laughter for good measure, and now the dreaded moment you’ve all been waiting for: the tech interview. I ask stuff like
“How do you declare a class in Javascript?”
or
“What is the difference between null and undefined?”
or
“Where can you put Javascript tags?”
I can keep going on and on. And if you’re thinking it, yes these are real questions. Mindy regurgitates answers back at me as I try to pretend I’m also bought in on the program.
Now best case scenario is that Mindy can’t answer any of them so immediately I know she doesn’t know basic tech. Then YAYYY the tech interview worked at filtering great candidates!
Or did it?
What did I learn about Mindy’s thinking process? What inspires and drives Mindy to write front-end code? Why this company? Sure, we can ask those in the behavioral interivew portion. But instead of thinking that technical and behavioral are two distinct things it really should be thought and executed as a collective one. The best way to see how a person works and meshes with a company is having them actually work at the company. Set them up with a small task or part of a sub-group of a front-end team. Take the time and money to train them, integrate them into your system, and essentially intern them for a few days or weeks. Although it sounds like lots of work, you’d be surprised at how good of a true test it is not only for your company but for the interviewees themselves to get a feel of what your company is all about.
Based on our current models of interviewing, people are training themselves to answer questions almost as if taking a test. There are centers of career development at almost every university training kids to nail tech interviews. There has already been a push to change the educational system to move away from testing. So why are companies doing it too? The simple answer is: it’s easy to do. There’s a system. There’s a process. Changing all of that is hard and takes money and time. But remember
people are excited to be contributing to your company — not going through 40 rounds of interviews.
Then get them to contribute ASAP! If we’re invested in our talent let’s cough up some time and money to bypass the whole technical interview and be innovative with how we evaluate candidates.
