From my perspective (the bottom looking up), interviewing someone for a position is a hard thing. The question I hear often is, how do you know they can do what they really can do? Anyone can pad a resume and without knowing how to read through that, you are going to be stuck with someone who is just that, a resume padder.
I have interviewed at a few places in my time and here are some ideas that I have taken from them that I really liked.
- Group interview. Have everyone on the team, in the room for an informal interview process.
The reason I like this idea, is because if you have a small enough team, the person you are going to be hiring is going to be working with them a lot. At a certain point, skills are just skills. You need to be able to mesh as a group.
- Have brainteasers. One companies stance was they didn’t necessarily want “smart people”. They wanted problem solvers. So therefore they had a word problem that they wanted you to work out on the board and to show your work. This can give you a great idea on how people actually work or come to a solution.
- Build something. Have them build something that can show off skills that they profess to have. For example, have them build a AJAX blog if they say they have mad javascript skills along with PHP and MySQL. I have talked to people before and they state that they don’t like to be tested. It insults them. My stance is this is a great buffer for the employer. You get a great idea of the skills you are hiring for.
Now if they past those three tests, or a combination thereof, you have found your prime canidate. The best part about having tests, is you can compare canidates to each other so you get the very best.
I personally have been in a situtation where we hired “the best” canidate at a particular position. One week later, I noticed that that book he just bought from Borders is a book on how to do X, where X is his current job. So I asked him if he has ever done what we hired him for. He honestly told me that he hadn’t.
I hope this doesn’t happen often, but I am sure it happens more then it should.