02: The Hiring Process

Whiteboard interviews are not an accurate representation of a programmer's skills; they measure a person's ability to memorize algorithms that are rarely used in a professional job. In his article, Sam Phipen also voices his negative opinions of whiteboard interviews and unsolvable coding problems. Instead, he suggests technical discussions as a means of showcasing ability to communicate with a colleague and think through problems, which is what an employee would be doing on a regular basis.

Google uses a unique hiring process. The first part of the process involves a work sample test, which directly tests engineering to technical skills that would be used on a day to day basis on the job. The second part is a general cognitive test, which has right and wrong answers, rather than hypothetical or possible answers that the interviewer can decide for himself/herself. Finally, Google asks a series of behavioral and situational interviews. While the hiring process is tricky because of an impossible goal to determine a person's workability and personality in a very short amount of time, the combination of these interview methods can give a decent understanding of the person. The candidate meets their potential manager and someone he/she would be working with. Finally, Google gets an employee from a completely different part of the company to interview the candidate as a disinterested interviewer, a person who would only be interested in keeping the hiring process high in quality. Google uses these variety of techniques to make the hiring process a more holistic gauge on the potential success of the candidate as an employee.

I am not a computer scientist. I am studying electrical engineering, so I never had a whiteboard interview or impossible coding challenge. However, the hiring process, regardless of major, has the same flaws. For the internship, and ultimately full time job I recently accepted, the hiring process started with a written application, which most do. Then, I had a computer-generated video recording interview. This interview asked me standard behavioral questions such as "Name a time you failed," "Discuss the success of a project", etc. I had thirty seconds to prepare an answer and two minutes to answer; it lasted thirty minutes. The final round interview was a technical discussion of sorts with a young professional in the job for which I was applying. He asked me basic electrical engineering technical questions and helped guide me if I was unsure of the answer. Also during this interview, we spoke about career options and his academic and professional journey. Overall, I thought the interview process was relatively satisfactory, as hiring processes tend to go. The first part of the process allowed me, as the candidate, to creatively answer mundane questions, which allows a company to gauge a sense of personality and the candidate's ability to reflect on oneself. The last interview gave the interviewer a way to evaluate my technical knowledge, and even see when I was able to accept that I did not know certain answers. The technical discussion allows for communication with another person while also testing technical knowledge. I think that if a person can prove that he/she knows how to learn and can effectively and respectfully interact with others, then knowledge can be learned and picked up on the job; that is the most important part of the hiring process.