This blog may not be what you think it is.
If you are looking for tips to give you a leg up as a job candidate, you’ll likely want to move on. This is something entirely different. Don’t worry, suggestions on interview prep are ubiquitous and books easy to find.
This site addresses the cult of failure on the other side of the table where the interviewer sits, a cult that worships at the feet of worn-out traditions and poor technique. If we do this right, we think we’ll be helping the cause of interviewee and interviewer. Both job-seeking engineers and their prospective employers are unhappy about the job interview experience, and the poor retention that results. The good news is that there are ways to dramatically improve all of this, which we can apply if we'll merely pause and think.
Engineering Hats
A key moment that triggered the tragic sequence of events resulting in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster was a glib suggestion to a concerned engineer to “remove your engineer hat and put on your manager hat”. When it comes to interviewing, too many of us have removed our engineer hats. We hope you’ll put them back on, and commit to engineering your interview process just as much as you do your products.
You may be wondering, is it possible to engineer an interview process? Why this title for this website? The term is aspirational, much like "software engineering", which also is as much art as science. While focused on interviewing soft skills mainly, the steps we advocate here are similar to those taken by a product engineer, involving closer examination of existing technique, studying topical state-of-the-art research, recording and analyzing data, and streamlining and fool-proofing processes, all in the pursuit of improving outcomes.
Veering Off the Existing Body of Work
Many books, articles, and blogs about interviewing engineers are written by people that are experienced interviewers only, with little understanding of what it’s like to be an interviewee and what matters to them. There are many resources written by non-technical MBAs dedicated to marketing your organization, sourcing potential candidates, and attracting top tech talent via branding, and that is not our primary focus. Other things that are of only secondary importance to our purposes here might be:
guiding software managers that need to build teams quickly in finding high-performing application developers
the art of crafting clever technical interview questions and analyzing the responses received
teaching you how to scale your growth in a transitioning company and become a better business manager astride that growth
Look elsewhere if that is the assistance you need. Instead, this is more of a primer on high EQ interpersonal communication for those just getting started in engineer interviewing, haven’t received good training in the mechanics of conducting an interview, are mostly practiced in the poor techniques of tradition, or would like to avoid common pitfalls.
We'll ask the question of why the interview process itself in the engineering and technology industry must be so terrible.
We'll break down the common points of pain and failure in much of the recruiting-interviewing-hiring sequence of events, point out poor techniques, coach proper use of language and terminology, and bust a few myths.
We'll present a logical and engineer-centric view on the way recruiters can represent companies and roles to candidates so that your interviews are better conditioned to find the right fit for you.
We'll conduct surveys and share the information from real engineers and managers that explain how those with the most at stake perceive the hiring process as both interviewees and interviewers.
We'll promote simple concepts that are designed to help you engineer your own custom interviewing experience to make it more effective and enjoyable, instead of rushed, untargeted, and disorganized.
We'll offer a few ideas on training staff for more meaningful interviewing, retaining your good people, and reducing turnover.
Rather than try to strictly define the process for you, we merely emphasize the need for organizations to put some effort into leveraging best practices and discover the process most fitting for your situation. The important thing you should take away is a clear understanding that interviewing and hiring are critical business processes, and your company should stop wasting so many resources doing them poorly.
Terminology Notes
Note that throughout this site we will follow industry trends in using the term “engineer” very broadly to cover all of those domain experts that contribute to the broader mechanical, electronics, computer, and software engineering industries, including people that are not technically engineers. Please read developers, designers, architects, testers, mathematicians, programmers, scientists, technicians, analysts, managers, field support reps, and so forth.
We hope you enjoy the journey and learn a little something along the way.
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