Do You Tell a Job Candidate How Badly They Did? 702
skelter asks: "I have been lamenting with friends in the industry about interviewing woes and the candidates that we find. Consider a hypothetical job candidate comes in after some how making it through screening. In the team technical interview they prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that not only is he (or she) not as adequate as he thinks he is, but has demonstrated that he is a danger to any code base. Do you tell them? Quietly step away, usher them out and say nothing? Play with them on the whiteboard the way your cat plays with injured mice? Should you leave them as their own warning to others? Is there any obligation to guide them to gaining real experience? Can you give them any advice or is it all liability?"
Liability, of course (Score:1, Informative)
And yes, it means that you really can't provide constructive criticism. Frankly, it's not your place to provide such criticism anyway. Just because a candidate is not appropriate for your position doesn't mean they aren't competent for another.
I suggest that you talk to your HR department and get the answers to these sorts of questions.
Hey look, it's the Prima donna developer! (Score:1, Informative)
Hey look, it's the Prima donna developer! Your code must be PERFECT! All of your opinions are CORRECT!
Chances are you aren't qualified enough to really tell if "he is a danger to any code base".
Really, it sounds like you want to talk about how your sills are utterly superior to the job candidate.
(I'm not a developer, but I deal with your types wayy too often).
Re:True Story (Score:3, Informative)
The number painted on the side of the General Lee was 01
Re:Depends how much of a dick you are... (Score:0, Informative)
Re:Depends how much of a dick you are... (Score:2, Informative)
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo [wikipedia.org], http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit [wikipedia.org], and http://www.native-languages.org/iaq23.htm [native-languages.org]
Eskimos, or Esquimaux, are terms used to refer to people who inhabit the circumpolar region, excluding Scandinavia and most of Russia, but including the easternmost portions of Siberia. There are two main groups of Eskimos: the Inuit in northern Alaska, Canada and Greenland, and the Yupik of western Alaska and the Russian Far East.
The term Eskimo can include the Alutiiq, Inupiat, Sug'piak, and Yup'ik Eskimo populations of Alaska, and the Yupik population of Eastern Russia. The speakers of the Yupik languages self-identify as Eskimo [1], but the majority of the Native population in the Canadian Arctic and Greenland prefer to be called "Inuit", or to a smaller extent Inuvialuit, and most find the term Eskimo highly offensive.
The original poster was right as the Inuit are indeed a subset of Eskimos. You are also correct in that Inuit dislike the more generic term of Eskimos. So it's more like africans disliking being called blacks.Re:Discrimination? (Score:3, Informative)
Particularly so if the employees in question are "overqualified" (and thus probably much more competent than the average worker). These are the people you want to keep, because they perform an order of magnitude better than your worst performers (Mythical Man Month), yet cost less than twice the amount.
Re:Be kind rewind.... (Score:3, Informative)
-nB
Re:Depends how much of a dick you are... (Score:2, Informative)
>> They're applying to me, I don't owe them anything, right?
Wrong. Often as not, you applied to them, through your representative the recruiter. That recruiter may not appreciate it when word gets around that he/she/you waste people's valuable time.
Re:Depends how much of a dick you are... (Score:3, Informative)
No (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately it seems to be the bozos and flatlines and know-nothings who are vindictive. Much safer to give no feedback for someone who's clearly a waste of oxygen.
I've told people who seemed good but weren't good matches, "Look, you'd be better off doing X, Y or Z, rather than what we need at the moment." But the clearly unqualified get a polite letter or phone call and that's it, no matter how much I want to say "If you were flipping burgers, I'd cross the street and eat at Taco Hell."
Re:Not a word! (Score:5, Informative)
Ask this question. (Score:2, Informative)
A common interview question is: "Do you have any questions you'd like to ask us?" Much of what the nice people who want to help a candidate want can be done if the interviewee asks a simple question:
"What qualities do people who have been most successful at this job display?"
You can answer that in a way that highlights what the candidate needs to work on. Your answer is not about this candidate but about people who were successful at the job. You are not judging the candidate's qualifications but explaining the job. It is easier to be clear about this if the candidate is the one who has phrased the question this way. So if anyone here is applying for a job and going for an interview, memorize this question.
I actually am a lawyer. However, this answer does not create a lawyer-client relationship with anyone who reads it. You should rely for legal advice only on an attorney you have retained and who has a professional duty to advise you after becoming familiar with the facts and the law of your situation.
This might be applicable to the UK only (Score:2, Informative)
Alas the UK is rapidly following the US as a litegous society and so we now have to take care with what we say as you never know how the other person will behave, which is a shame really because I was a fan of giving feedback when asked.
Re:Pass the trash... (Score:3, Informative)
I've known a lot of people who think they can program (search for 'PaulaBean WTF' for a rough example) when instead they can barely scratch the surface. These people need to fail to get a job because of these obvious lacks in skill - nobody would accept a carpenter who could barely make a lame stool. If people don't call them on their obvious fraud they'll just keep trying until they find a dumb HR person. But if they get caught maybe they could reassess and either fix the deficits the interviewer noticed, or at least pick an industry they qualify at a little more.
Re:carefull not to crush them (Score:3, Informative)
First of all: Tell people they haven't got the job, in a letter preferably. Nothing worse then not knowing. If you have critisism, disguise it and make it in regards to other candidates (the successfull applicant showed a much stronger knowledge of xyz). Chances are they know their skill shortcomings but occasionally they won't and you have to be sure that you don't critisize something so heavily it destroys them.
Ok, so the interviewer wasn't tactful, but in all honesty, he was doing you a favor by pointing out your weakness. Now you've got something to work on. Like it or not, the job market is competitive. And, it's not the function of an interviewer to coddle everyone that comes looking for work. If you can't compete, you'll end up staying at the bottom of the food chain. It's often those same skills that are necessary to ask for a raise. If you can't be convincing, and assertive, few employers are going to give you what you (may) deserve. Now that you've got the job, be happy that you've got a boss who will tell you where you stand. It's really much worse having one that won't, or who lies to you.
Re:Be kind rewind.... (Score:2, Informative)
Link on change to minimum wage [state.ny.us]
Re:Depends how much of a dick you are... (Score:1, Informative)
I'm not sure who decides the scoring system but every single field you fill out and every single buzz word you put down counts for some number of points. If you don't meet a threshold set by the HR department your application gets dumped. If you write down "Windows 9x" and I write down "Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows98SE, WindowsMe" you would get 1 point and I would get 4 points.
For the hiring process that I ran I got someone from my department to score the applications, then HR went through and "rebalanced" the scores which shifted a few applicants rankings around in a way that pushed an older person beyond the interview-worthy threshold and pushed a better qualified candidate below the threshold.
During the actual interview it's a crap-shoot. HR has to approve every single question that gets asked so you have to be really careful in how you design them. I have interviewed for 3 different jobs at a state agency, for 1 of them the interviewers obviously knew nothing about IT and were just looking for buzzwords so they could award me points. The other two interviews had a mix of IT and non-IT people asking questions.