Interview by Powerpoint

Let’s be honest, interviewing for jobs sucks. So far as I’ve seen there really isn’t a way around that. There are ways to make the process easier and more comfortable, but some companies insist on making it harder. These companies freely admit this, boasting that only the best work for them. I strongly disagree.

I argue that it’s actually better to have a company full of middle-of-the-road people, than all aces. The reasoning is very simple. You want processes and standards that any employee can keep. The “superhero” software engineers that I’ve met have generally done their own thing and implemented code that nobody else could possibly maintain. So, in the end they get torn apart and replaced by “dumber” code, but which is easy to understand. I’ve seen this enough times that I am convinced that only hiring the “best” is a recipe for disaster. Often companies will become internally divided into factions and productivity will suffer.

But, I digress. The main theme of this article is that of the interview process itself.

During my career I’ve sat on both sides of the interview table. Evidently I have an interview style that differs from many. While I will ask a few technical questions, by far mostly I am interested in getting a feel for the ambition of the person and their problem solving abilities. Yes, technical prowess is vital in a technical role. More often than not the employees that fail at their jobs, or get painted into a corner, can prattle off technical facts, but fail in one of two ways: They can’t get along with people, or they can’t adapt and solve new problems.

The first should be obvious. Even as a technical person you need to interact with other people. That might be other team members, customers, managers, technical writers, testers, or any number of other people. Notice that I said can’t get along with people. There is a vast difference between someone who is introverted and someone who is cantankerous. I’m speaking strictly of the latter.

The second seems obvious, but actually seems to get very little consideration. Two instances come to mind immediately. Their technical knowledge was on the weak side, but they squeaked past the standardized company interview. When it came down to it though, they had very little problem solving abilities and required a lot of handholding to work through issues that arose. So not only did their work suffer, but the work of those who had to handhold them did. In both cases these were not young college graduates, but “seasoned” engineers.

Likely because of that, and now that I am in a position to set the interview questions, I focus my interviews a whole lot more on problem solving. Asking for explanations of how they approach problems.

In two job interviews, where I was the one being interviewed, I was asked to create an hour long presentation. This was to contain my background, summary of education, examples of real world projects that I’ve worked on, my contributions, and the outcomes. The instructions specifically said they wanted a “deep dive” into the technical issues. So, at first glance this sounds reasonable. But, let’s dig a little deeper.

First, I’ve met many engineers who are horrible in front of people. They stumble over their words, get nervous, or have zero social awareness. Yet, they are great engineers. One of my employees fits this description perfectly. In our first meeting he was shy, mumbled, and came across poorly. Yet he is a savant of an engineer. I guarantee he would have failed miserably on a PowerPoint about himself, but he’s the best engineer that I have. Any company would be foolish to not want him (and no, you can’t have him).

Another problem with these presentations comes from proprietary information. To me it seems unethical to request a “deep dive” into project funded by other companies. Personally, I’ve got some serious non-disclosure agreements binding me, so I would be completely unable to pass one of these interviews. I could maybe pick some projects from 15-20 years ago, but that looks fishy when interviewing. Technology changes so fast and they want to see up-to-date competency. Generally interviewees want to impress the interviewer, so maybe they won’t think about implications of non-disclosure agreements and overshare. Maybe they will and talk in high-level generalities. That might work. But, it might not. In this specific case it wouldn’t have worked, as they asked for a “deep dive.”

I get it. I really do understand why companies find this way of interviewing attractive. It forces the interviewee into flattening their life into a digestible chunk, rather than making the interviewer ask probing questions. But, it loses that two-way interaction. Okay, yes there is often a portion set aside for questions. But it can be instructive to interact in real-time, read the interviewer, zero in on potential issues, and get a better feel for them as a person. Some people simply don’t do well in panel style PowerPoint interviews.

My final niggle goes out to a certain company who boasts they don’t hire anyone with a GPA of less than 3.5. For a fresh graduate I can see how that might be useful, though see my first argument about middle-of-the-pack. Personally, I’ve got more than 20 years of experience. Yet, I have to answer that question? Nobody has cared about my GPA in years. The interview questions have been focused on real experience, not artificial grades. I don’t even recall my exact GPA from 20 years ago, so on that particular application I put N/A for the GPA. Guess whose application was immediately rejected?