Wednesday, July 20, 2011

The other side of the interview table

Today I got a chance to participate in an interview for a tester position. I sat with my supervisor and followed her lead to get a feel for things.  I was encouraged to ask questions of my own, so I consider this to be a sort of career milestone.

I did some research on 'how to interview', and naturally started with Joel Spolsky's "The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing". Granted, it was not for a developer position, but it was helpful all the same.  I kept his two big points in mind, looking for 1. Smart and 2. Gets things done.

I also drew some questions from Cem Kaner's article "Recruiting Software Testers".  This was definitely a big help as well.  I was glad that I'd done the research before just walking into the room, because it was a good deal more challenging than I thought it would be.

I started explaining the first question I asked before I realized I needed to leave that up to the candidate. I also found that I was more concerned with what questions to ask than I was the answers provided. There were certainly follow up questions I could have come up with instead of moving onto the next one I had written down.

All in all, I think it was a fine first attempt and I was able to solicit some good conversion with the candidate.  Hopefully I will get more opportunities like this in the future.

Todd

1 comment:

  1. Nice write up Todd. I remember going through all that stuff too. As with anything else in life, the more you practice, the better you'll get. Sounds like a great step in your career!

    -Ron

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