In general I find the tech hiring process reasonable. There are a lot of things about it that can be fixed, but I find myself agreeing with Joel’s remarks from class that there is no such thing as a perfect hiring process. While whiteboard interviews can be stressful and may not have much to do with the actual work that is done on the job, I think they are a reasonable way to evaluate new grads going into industry. As long as the greater the focus is on how we work and communicate when trying to solve problems rather than the solution itself, I think companies can get a fair assessment on how you will work on a team. The typical questions asked are especially fair for new grads as they generally cover data structures and algorithms that we should have learned in college. I think it gets a little more blurry when we talk about interviewing industry veterans, as the focus should be on their experience rather than concepts they learned back in college. One concern with big tech companies is that I feel they do not seem to pay much attention to anything beyond technical skills in their interviews. I have been through an interview process that was four back to back whiteboarding interviews. I think I got a few quick questions about some of the technical stuff I worked on in my resume, but none of it felt behavioral. The Cracking the Coding Interview book talks about passing the “Can I have a beer with this person” test, which means whether one can work with this person, and I feel without a behavioral portion of an interview you are missing an important examination of one’s ability to work on a team, a necessary skill for software engineering. The other unfortunate reality of the hiring process for many tech companies is that while there are a lot of students that want jobs at such companies and apply to them, there are probably not even enough people at those companies to look at every application, much less give everyone a chance to show their skills at an interview. So just getting through the gate and even having a chance at an interview can be a result of luck and seizing opportunities. Connecting with the right people at career fairs and going to conferences can do wonders (if I could tell my incoming-freshman self one thing it would be to go to every conference you can go to), so like most professional industries, getting hired is not just the result of applications and interviews, as there are many other factors that go into it. Careerwise, I have been really blessed to go to Notre Dame, as the school encourages and provides resources for being proactive in your career search. However, many talented people with a lot of potential do not get as much resources or support but are definitely qualified for the tech industry. With that in mind I hope that hiring processes involve a deeper search for talent than simply looking at school names, as Bui reference when talking about his time at Eau Clare. Hiring people from the same schools carries the risk of having a lack of diversity and further giving future students from those schools a greater advantage thanks to alumni connections.
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AuthorMarcos Salamanca Archives
October 2019
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