Master the Hiring Game — Lessons Learned from Interviewing a Hundred Software Engineers
Do any of these stories sound familiar?
I asked him, “Can you give me a summary of your background and what you think makes you a good candidate for the job?” He then babbled on and on for 25 minutes. We had five minutes for follow-up questions.
She was typing every time I asked her a question, so I started asking Google the same questions and proceeded to listen to read, verbatim, from the top answer from Google on several of them.
I asked him about a specific skill on his resume, to which he replied, “I don’t have experience with that. The recruiter told me to add it.”
These are all true stories from my hiring journey over the past five years. I have spent those years building two teams of Software Engineers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. I interviewed over a hundred people during that time and now manage a successful team of 15.
I’ve learned a lot along the way like the best person on paper or the best programmer is not necessarily someone you want to hire. Almost everyone embellishes their resume, at least when they first start out. And, you cannot motivate an unmotivated person.
