Selecting Against Experience - Do Employers Know?

IBitOBear asks: "A couple days ago I did 'the interview loop' at that leading online retailer. Over the course of six hours I was repeatedly introduced to a guy in his early twenties, who would then ask me to write out code on a white-board for a problem that you might find in the study guide for a 200-level computer science class. I have 20 years of experience in programming and systems design. And in several cases the interviewers were vague, semantically incorrect, or self-contradictory. Interviewer blunders included not understanding that non-normal forms in databases -can be- more correct or efficient when the domain of a data is extremely limited; or choosing a leader among N candidates -is- a byzantine agreement problem. In short, the loop would have been perfect to weed out some guy getting his first job fresh out of school, but it definitely exerted selection pressure towards excluding experienced candidates. So employers, what are you doing to make sure that you are not culling out candidates with the low-ball? Job seekers, what do you do when you find yourself trapped in a sophomore study group?"

Comments

Since you might care... A clarification.

[IBitOBear]

I didn't get the job. And after I thought about the interview I didn't really want the job. So it was a push. I took a job offer that I had gotten from another company the day before the interview loop.

Also, I have done hiring. I appreciate the need to ask some simple coding questions because it isn't that uncommon to get people in who _can't_ write a bsearch and who cannot demonstrate a mastery of the simple language syntax. But you only really need to walk that mountaiside once in the interview process.

Then again, when you write some code on a white-board and the interviewer cannot understand it (q.v. "I don't understand... why are you checking the value of the pointer and then the contents of the pointer") and then that interviewer helps build the group decision that "we should get someone more technical", you are entering the realm of high comedy.

I actually laughed when the recruiter told me about their rationale.