> Some people still stubbornly refuse to look for help.
The thing is that some people might feel that they will get assessed lower if they look for help rather than come up or even luck into a solution.
Despite making it abundantly clear to candidates that they should take the test(s) as a pair programming sessions, we had candidates struggle with some basic stuff and not ask questions. They just kept trying things while getting more nervous.
A lot of people would feel that it might be held against them. The thing is a lot of people under pressure will forget the basics
One thing I’ve had help melt the pressure on both sides of the table is a laugh. I’m fortunate enough to be able to sort of slice through tension and get a rise out of most people.
Stressing exactly what you’re looking for, that you’re not perfect either, that there’s no one solution, and letting them know things can be collaborative has been helpful too.
Let’s ping pong off each other and see where we get, I mean that’s what we’d be doing in the day to day right?
To this end I’ve sat down and added new questions to the interview guides at my previous position because I was concerned that any person asking the same question over and over again would really start to be biased towards some sort of “ideal” solution.
But there’s really nothing like a good laugh to put people at ease.
After one interview I mentioned that I felt I did a good job of interviewing because I could usually help relax the tensions which generally gets the best out of people and someone said that they didn’t think they’d ever gotten a laugh out of someone during an interview.
Thank you for doing this!
I'm doing several processes now and it's so unpleasant and stressful just before the interviews, that taking some weight off of it is really helpful.
We did a bulk interviewing round a couple years ago and the person I fought hardest for thought she flunked the interview because she had to dump into the debugger to figure out why her code was broken.
Going into the debugger is precisely why I picked her over several other people. People struggle with crap there is no value in struggling with and it doesn't make you a stronger coder to keep banging your head against the wall. It makes you stupid or a masochist. And I hate dealing with code written by masochists. Stupid people usually write code that is broken in obvious ways. Masochists prefer torture.
The thing is that some people might feel that they will get assessed lower if they look for help rather than come up or even luck into a solution.
Despite making it abundantly clear to candidates that they should take the test(s) as a pair programming sessions, we had candidates struggle with some basic stuff and not ask questions. They just kept trying things while getting more nervous.
A lot of people would feel that it might be held against them. The thing is a lot of people under pressure will forget the basics