I am currently looking for a new Team Lead. I interviewed a guy yesterday who performed well in a soft skills interview and so this was his tech interview with a senior dev and myself. He was doing OK at first. As the questions got a little more nuanced, there were these pauses. Eventually, he got flustered and asked to resume later.
We agreed to this since he said he'd been dealing with a production issue for several hours before the scheduled time (I had offered to reschedule at no detriment to him before we began but he insisted on doing it then).
The developer and I met after this first interview and discussed his answers. We both thought he was "googling" (we are older people, stuck in the past).
Later that day, back on another call with this guy, my senior dev starts typing my questions into ChatGPT and getting back essentially the answers he's giving us. I start with more nuanced questions and he's done. He just kept reiterating platitudes could not explain why he was saying them, etc.
I felt bad for him, he was trying to get a job beyond his technical knowledge. But ultimately, this was dishonest and I would have found out very quickly he was not ready for the job.
If anyone is wondering, I gave him a chance to tell me why he was pausing for so long before answering and why his answers didn't seem to directly address my questions and he just insisted he was NOT pausing (he was, for up to 30 seconds at a time). It was generally just a really disappointing experience for all of us, I would imagine.
We agreed to this since he said he'd been dealing with a production issue for several hours before the scheduled time (I had offered to reschedule at no detriment to him before we began but he insisted on doing it then).
The developer and I met after this first interview and discussed his answers. We both thought he was "googling" (we are older people, stuck in the past).
Later that day, back on another call with this guy, my senior dev starts typing my questions into ChatGPT and getting back essentially the answers he's giving us. I start with more nuanced questions and he's done. He just kept reiterating platitudes could not explain why he was saying them, etc.
I felt bad for him, he was trying to get a job beyond his technical knowledge. But ultimately, this was dishonest and I would have found out very quickly he was not ready for the job.
If anyone is wondering, I gave him a chance to tell me why he was pausing for so long before answering and why his answers didn't seem to directly address my questions and he just insisted he was NOT pausing (he was, for up to 30 seconds at a time). It was generally just a really disappointing experience for all of us, I would imagine.