Episode 14: Interviewing and Recruiting

by Imran Kasam & Steve Ledwith

This episode was published on 3 September 2020 and is approximately 59 minutes long. This episode made possible by Glow Your Soul and Anchor.fm.

Overview

Join us in this episode for a conversation about how to interview, recruit, and find the best people for your team. We’re not sharing a secret site, or a special code for Indeed. This is all about the process. We talk about how we approach the task, and share examples from more than twenty years in software management.

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Show Notes & Selected Links

An interview is essentially a structured conversation where one participant asks questions, and the other provides answers. In common parlance, the word “interview” refers to a one-on-one conversation between an interviewer and an interviewee. The interviewer asks questions to which the interviewee responds, usually so information is offered by the interviewee to interviewer – and that information may be used or provided to other audiences, whether in real time or later … read more on Wikipedia

Things to think about when starting your recruiting process

  • What roles are you trying to recruit for?
  • What constitutes a good engineer or resource?
  • How do you institute culture?
  • Use of recruiters/headhunters
  • Contract vs direct hires
  • Blended team - onshore/nearshore/offshore
  • What do you need to build?

You have a lot of options to build a team!

  • Internal referrals
  • Contingent labor
  • Full time
  • Folks looking to change roles
  • Off-shore partnership companies
  • Near-shore partners
“The location of a resource should not be a deciding factor in todays recruiting environment!”—Steve Ledwith

How do you decide what to look for when staffing a project?

  • Do you have a long ramp for the project? Think about full time.
  • Is it a short term project you need done? Think about a contractor.
  • Not sure what you’re going to have? Find a contract-to-hire resource.

When working with off-shore resources, consider:

  • Up-front costs, or hourly costs will likely be cheaper
  • Management and project overhead will be increased
  • The time to prepare an off-shore resource to be successful will take time and input. Always.
“Resources are an exchange of energy and money.”—Imran Kasam

15 min: The Interview Process Know what you want to achieve when interviewing. Have a plan going into the process.

Interview process

  • Culture questions
  • Technical questions
  • Skills test / practical test

Culture / Fit Questions

  • If you could add any feature to the programming language you use the most, what would it be?
  • Show me a cool project you’ve worked on. How did you do it?
  • Tell a story about something you did that ended in a catastrophe.
  • You are required to work with a huge chunk of code and you have no idea how it works and there’s no documentation and no tests. What do you do?
  • Which books would you recommend as a must-read?
  • What source control do you use?
  • Tell me about some (programming/technical) issues that you feel passionately about.
  • What are a few of your favorite development tools and why?
  • Do you find any particular languages or technologies intimidating?

Technical Questions / Skills Tests

  • Technical Inteview Thoughts
  • Skills test
    • Find a test which makes sense for your company, role, etc.
    • You’re not trying to get the interviewee to write you a functional program
    • A couple of stories which make sense for a project and a real world example
    • Something the candidate can complete in less than 4 hours
  • The test provides a baseline to review all sorts of activity by the candidate
    • See the code, how they built the small application
    • Shows the thought process, creativity, etc.
    • Allows for questions about the output from the candidate and leads to a great conversation
  • If you’re going to give a skills test, make sure the test allows the candidate to showcase the skills you’re looking for.

29 min: Imran tells a story about asking interviewees to tell him how to bake a cake!

Check out An Introduction to Systems Thinking and Wicked Problem Solving by Drawing How to Make Toast.

Jump ahead to the story about Magnets at 14:55.

Interview Pro Tips!

  • Take a lot of notes!
  • Ask every candidate the same questions!
  • Listen to the answers, listen for key words, phrases, patterns.

Tricky or Gimick Questions in Interviews

Critical Thinking is a Great Skill!

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. - From Critical Thinking dot Org

How do you know the right candidate?

  • What are you looking for?
  • What sort of person do you think will be successful?
  • Does the candidate need to have solved everything you’re trying to do?
  • Does the candidate have the right expeience to be successful in the new role?
  • Does the candidate have the ability to make tough decisions?
  • Is the candidate willing to learn?
  • Do you see relatable experiences in the candidate?

43 min: Myths in Interviewing

  • Have you ever rejected a candidate because their resume was more than one page?
  • Did you reject resumes because they weren’t on fancy paper?
  • Did you reject resumes on fancy paper where the watermark was wrong?

Things to Consider when Submitting your Resume

  • Typos are a red squiggle, and a red flag. Proof read.
  • Is a cover letter required to get in the door?
  • A follow-up email, or note, is required

You are much more than your resume. Make your online content available.

  • Show your Linked In profile
  • Show your github, or community profiles
“I'd like to spend an afternoon with you doing what you love the most, as your interview.”—Imran Kasam