Sunday, June 23, 2013

Interviewing - stumper questions

In the process of digging through the list of partially-completed posts, I found a link on EDN that talked about technical questions you can ask prospective employees.  Rereading that little tidbit made me think about my stint phone screening college graduates for HP in the late 90s.  The company had a long list of pre-vetted questions that I could ask these poor souls.  The questions ranged from basic EE problems ("describe how you would implement a low pass filter") to programming issues ("what is a linked list?") to twisty questions (i.e. - the infamous "water in a locked room with a dead body").

Anyway, the point I wanted to make was that in today's world it seems somewhat silly to pepper a candidate with questions like this.  I mean, if you want to check their credentials then go take a look at their LinkedIn page.  Heck, just google them.  What's more important, in the long run, is what kind of person are you hiring and how will he/she fit into the group?

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