Interviewing Candidates

*Scowling face*
So, why do you think we should hire you?

We have recently gone through a string of interviews trying to find the perfect candidates for our company's vacant positions.  When I go through this exercise, I like to pay as much attention as possible to the what's going on and absorb as much as possible.  Interviewing is not a magic ability only endowed to a select few, it is a skill which takes practice to cultivate.

When I interview -- if there is any inkling of them doing programming I typically start off with something like the FizzBuzz problem.  What I typically see is either someone nails the FizzBuzz, or almost gets it, or they can't tie their shoes.  If they nail it or almost get it I move on to some stuff associated with their field -- whether its QA or SE etc.  I don't tend to spend too much time in their technical area as a lot of that can be branded into their brains the night before.  After that I have a short sheet with  SQL queries on it and ask the candidate to tell me if they are good or bad and why.  None of the queries are good, and they all send DBA's screaming into the forest at night.  Finally I enter into questions like the following:

• Explain a mistake you recently made and what you did to correct it.  Also what will you do to keep from making that mistake in the future?
• What makes a good (x)?
• Tell me about a time when you realized something was critically wrong and what you did after that?
• What new technologies are you excited about with regard to (their profession)?
• What is the most innovative thing you have implemented?
• What would you attribute your success to?

I could go on.. What I am generally trying to do here is get a gist of whether or not they can demonstrate a capacity to learn and adapt.  Past that they need to demonstrate the ability to work with others and be part of a team.  Ego's are really a rampant part of IT for some reason.  Somebody thinks they can code an app and suddenly they are a god to be worshiped.  It's wonderful that you can write code, but my five year old nephew can do that.  Working with others can be one of the more difficult aspects of working in IT. and It can eclipse even the most difficult of technical problems.  I attribute my success to that of the team of individuals I work with -- without them I cannot achieve my goals and be successful.

And since I wouldn't ask someone to do something I wouldn't do myself:

create procedure FizzBuzz 
as
begin
   declare @i int = 1, @string varchar(20)
   while (@i <= 100)
      begin
          select @string = ''
           if (@i % 3 = 0)
           begin
               select @string = @string + 'Fizz'
           end
           if (@i % 5 = 0)
           begin
             select @string = @string + 'Buzz'
           end
           if (@string = '')
           begin
             select @string = @i
           end

           select @string
           select @i = @i + 1
       end
end