This is a rant coming from my latest interviews. In the past I wrote about my approach to interview candidates for developer positions, I must apologize as I used to be really hard and harsh while doing so while also focusing on not the best qualities; this was almost 10 years ago. A few years ago I saw my practices change completely and start asking different types of questions and looking for different kind of things with better results and was able to build a very strong team.
Currently I've been on the other side of the equation and even though multiple houses have also changed the way they do interviews I still see some of the practices that I'll try to avoid.
I understand the need of the hiring manager to assess the qualities of the candidate and also I understand the pressure and frustration from the interviewee as it is required to iterate, sell ourselves and also prove that required qualifications are met.
Interviewing is hard on both ends and can be exhausting, both ends need to convince the other party that they are a match and that there is a win win situation in a very short time. Not everybody has the luxury to run extensive or multiple filtering sessions. From the hiring end there might be a deadline to close the position or an monetary limit to what can be offered. While on the candidate side, depending on a lot of factors, there could be pressure to accept any offer while doing parallel interviews with multiple organizations.
Let's face it, whenever a person is actively looking for a job then it means that the same person is knocking at multiple doors at the same time. But also when an open position is posted multiple people will apply immediately. Unfortunately the side with more leverage or options is normally the hiring organization and not the individual that is consuming his or hers available runway money.
Therefore the best any candidate can do is almost always work in their virtual persona and public profile so it gets higher on the rank of candidates for the first contact in the desired organization. Then is back any claim on the CV with actual experience and concrete examples and results in the past.
Having said all this now I know I need to bump up my public profile, hence this rant and blog, and put more work in public places.
Will probably revisit this a few weeks down the road