How to Interview Engineers
I&#x27;ve performed interviews and phone screens for years and out of all the techniques I&#x27;ve tried all of them typically end up with me thinking I&#x27;m doing it wrong. Basic domain questions, problem solving, white boarding, white boarding along side the person helping them out, coding in an IDE, take home projects. As of today, in Kansas City, I&#x27;m looking at around 4% pass rate, and close to 90% utter face palming failures.<p>I check my ego at the door, I try to make the person as comfortable as possible, small talk, help them out as much as I can, provide them with answers or explanations when they get something wrong. I&#x27;ve never asked an algorithm or data structure question, I&#x27;ve rarely asked a patterns question. Most people can&#x27;t answer basic every day questions.<p>Overtime my goal in interviews turned into making sure the interviewee left with more domain knowledge than when they came in hoping it will help them do better somewhere else.<p>Ended up creating a pre-screening service that asks the same basic questions and in the end provides the user with a study guide based on how they answered. Currently piloting with two local recruiting companies and I&#x27;m finding the same similar statistics of failure&#x2F;success. Maybe that makes me the issue :)