Okian Warrior's Journal: How to conduct an interview

The recent article Job Interviews are a Nightmare provoked a few commonsense tactics that people should use while interviewing.

It occurred to me that there's no corresponding common sense for the interviewer, so I thought I'd put some notes down about that.

How to interview someone: Scan through their resume, find something they did that you know something about, and ask them a pointed question about that topic. Make the question challenging or controversial if possible: ask about an uncommon feature that only an insider would know the answer to, or ask them to explain something complicated about it or something that you don't know the answer to, or something that's not exactly black-and-white.

People like talking about themselves, it puts them at ease, and by watching them you can tell whether they present themselves as arrogant, friendly, knowledgeable, have a sense of humor, and so on. Just sit back and let their responses flow over you and get a feeling about the person. Could you work with him? Does he know how things work? Can he explain complicated things? Would he give a solid presentation? Did he get along with others? (That's a big one.)

On purpose, ask a question he doesn't know the answer to (a technical question related to your own product, for example). Can he say "I don't know"? Follow it up with "if you worked here and I asked that question, what would be your next step?" See if he knows to look on the net, if he would ask co-workers, of go to the library, or E-mail an old professor, or generally if he has skills to find out what he doesn't know. If he's lost and doesn't know how to proceed, that's a datapoint (may not be a problem for an intern, but a big problem for senior software engineer).

I had one applicant who worked on the electronics for GFI systems so I asked if I installed a GFI in my home, would it protect the other outlets on the circuit (the answer is yes, it would protect outlets further out from the breaker box). Applicant didn't know, but thought that it probably wouldn't - doesn't know the fundamental theory of the thing he claims to have worked on, probably not a good fit at my company.

Another applicant had worked on emacs, asked whether a line-based buffer or a char-based buffer would be a better software solution for an editor (in the sense of adding text in the middle of a block of characters), and got a complete list of plusses and minuses of both styles with references of other software packages that used both types... yup, an actual expert in his field. And he comes across as a little bit Aspergers, which is not a problem and his personality would fit well with the others here.

Stay away from any interview questions you find on the internet, and in particular don't google interview questions that are listed as good to ask. These are worthless, won't tell you anything, and note that the applicant *himself* can google these and their best answers. You could just as well E-mail these, they could look up the answers and E-mail them back.

Put the applicant at ease by asking him to explain something he did in the past, try to challenge him a little with your question, and use your own feeling of his behaviour to see if he's someone you'd like to work with.