A subject of the hiring process...

Independently of Isaac (as in he didn't know I'd do this), I was writing a blog on the hiring process.  However, now that he's done so first, I'm going to use it as a thing to reply to, as I feel I have something to add.  In particular, I'm going to talk about the experiences I have had hiring, being hired and being semi-reinterviewed in the 10 years I worked near/with/for/against/whatever with Isaac.  I'm editing out some of the experiences to protect other people (who interviewed really badly, and making this as 'my personal view' as I can).  So let's start at the beginning...

My first time I meet Isaac, he was leading a different team, in the same lab, working very different hours (testing in shifts), but I saw him once a week or so.  Now I don't know who came up with the idea, but they decided to do 'testing' for the testers in the lab to see where their strengths were and where their weaknesses were.  Each test lead wrote questions and tests were given to about 100 employees.  I believe I lost points on 3 questions.  The one question I recall being bitter about was "You have a screen with 8 widgets, 2 buttons (cancel, save), and each widget has 4 states.  How many tests would you run?"  I worked for a small look and feel group and so I answered "1".  I backed this up by the fact that I'd run one automated test that checks all of the UI positions of the elements, that all the elements were standard controls and that no text was truncated in English.  That is exactly how we were writing tests at the time.  I also noted when more languages showed up, I'd write more tests, one additional for each language.  Needless to say, I was marked down on that answer because they wanted a total number of states you could test.  I note this because I think it is a mistake to attempt to "Grade" your employees without really considering what they do and that context.  In other contexts, my answer would have been different.  If I recall right, Isaac specifically said it was a stupid idea, and that if the leads didn't know their own people's strengths, that was a problem unto itself.

A few years later, I am looking for a new job and I interview at the first place I had gotten an interview opportunity with, and there sitting on the other side is Isaac.  We chatted about the old days for a few mins and what I had been doing since.  He mentioned another guy I had worked with at HP was working there.  At some point, he started in on the interview.  He asked me to test a login page, which was odd considering most people asked about testing a pen.  Isaac did take notes, and I did try to look at them, but I don't recall actually seeing anything but sort of set of check boxes with skills.  SQL came up at some point, and keeping in mind I had mostly been doing black box hardware/software testing, SQL was not something I had done day to day.  I explained this but noted I had played with a very light version of SQL for an open source project.  I noted it didn't support stored procedures, so I didn't know how they worked, etc., but I could do a simple select/insert/delete/update.  He had me demonstrate it and I think that was the end of the interview.

I won't go into the second interview other than to say it was a round robin with 5 guys in a 10x10 room with a table in it.  Yeah, not the most fun I've had and maybe worth a different blog post.  Oh, and I was hired.

Isaac continued to do all the first interviews, and so I didn't get to experience much of his technique or the people he said no to.  However, I can speak to the people we had a second interview with.  Keeping in mind, the average time between hires was 9-16 months, we did a lot of interviews.  I will mention only the style and some highlights.  We used a round robin technique and each of the QA Engineers would ask a question, with occasional follow up questions.  Some people had signature questions, like "You have a 2 gallon bucket and a 5 gallon bucket and you need to get 3 gallons of water..." or Randomly pick a phrase from the resume and ask about it in detail.  Isaac did not do those things as best I can recall.  Isaac mostly asked questions to see if he could find any value the person might be able to give.  Ask an automation question.  They fail.  Okay, what about critical thinking...?  What sorts of learning do they do?

We had almost all duds, and on occasion I do recall that "Why did you okay this person?" looks.  More often than not, the candidate was meh enough that I can get that Isaac hoped they might study up, but they didn't.  On rare occasion, we found someone who just bombed the second interview after doing well on the first with no reason for the change.  As interviews are just as much 'keeping the wrong people out' as they are about 'getting the right person', we might have missed a person or two who was good but had a bad day.

I should note, I write this with little fear that someone will use these notes in an interview as I would thinking it a good thing they read blogs if they prepped that way.  I see all research valid for preparing for an interview up to asking someone internally about the position.  That being said, I don't plan on giving all of our specific interview questions here, in part because I change up my questions based upon the candidate and how well they do on some area.  Sorry for the digression.

After the round robin, we would all think a little about it and sort of talk through the good and bad points.  If anyone said no, it was a no.  There were only one or two times when only one of us said no.  We did all take context of the position in mind, but we also all were aware that times change and the person we interviewed had to be able to adapt some.

Since then, I think the interview process has changed a little based upon the company and how practical it is.  That is to say, in a company with 30 testers, only 5 or so might actually interview the person.

I do want to make some additional comments, things that don't fit well into the narrative, but are equally useful.  I have on occasion look at Isaac's interview notes, and sometimes I find interesting little bits I miss.  One of the big ones is 'temporal' observations.  Like "Hesitation", or "Long Pause" that he will note, showing that someone thought about their answer.  He also would write down weaknesses to observe if they improve in the next interview.  I never get to see if that happens, so often when we consult about a person, we depend on Isaac's input of 'what improved'.  Sometimes we would consult Isaac before an interview about the person, but not always.  I'm not sure if the data is worth the bias or not.  Last but not least, sometimes LinkedIn or Google is consulted about a person to see what they want to share.  I have never used Facebook or any social data for an interview and as far as I know, nor has Isaac.

In perhaps a part 2, I may go over how I conduct a second interview rather than the structure.