This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz
by Ben Hosking.
Original Post: The Good Cop Bad Cop Technique
Feed Title: A Funny Java Flavoured Look at the World
Feed URL: http://businesslogs.com/WebLog/RSS.xml
Feed Description: The blog looks at using Java and programming in general as it pops up in life as a Java programmer. It will have links to interesting Java articles and resources. It will also have a lot of SCJP Java 1.5 information and links as I am currently studying
I was interviewing today at work. I remember when I first interviewed someone, not that long ago, I thought it was soo exciting, what responsibility. Then after the first one they are rather boring.
It is interesting sitting on the other side of the table and asking the questions instead of being on the end of them. It's funny really but you ask a question to usually get a small answer back which shows me you understood the topic of the question I asked. You probably don't really have to know in fantastic detail, just tick the box of knowledge. The number of different answers you can get to the same question is amazing, in fact you almost never get the same answer. The people who don't know the answer but give you a politicians answer of answering the question they want answered can be annoying. My favourite type of answer is people who mention technologies in correctly and trying to throw in keywords.
In today's interviews there was two of us doing the interview. We used the good cop bad cop technique and I got to be the bad cop. So after my partner introduced the company, bit about the job, asked them about themselves then I come in with some juicy technical questions. Things like
"what are your technical strengths and weakness"
"how do you keep up with new technology"
"tell me about a project you are proud of"
I will explain that the position we were interviewing for was an action script developer who is also okay with Flash. I have only basic knowledge of these topics but it's useful to get second opinions when interviewing and if nothing else different people come up with different questions.
We had a bit of difficulty trying to find a flash developer who is a wizard with action script. Most the flash people seem to be heavily into their designing and not so much interested in the action script.
It was interesting that although the interview told us a lot, I think we learnt the most when they showed us examples of their work, a program speaks more than a 1000 words.
The thing I found most surprising today was how long interviews take, we had three interviews and they seemed to take up most of the day.
The question I have always wanted to ask in an interview was
"is a Jaffa cake a cake or a biscuit"
although it says cake I think it is without a doubt a biscuit
Previous Topic
