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Interviewing Experienced IT People?
thricenightly writes "After more than 20 years in IT I've learned that the most valuable people in a team are frequently the old timers. Young pups straight out of college might (think they) know all the latest buzzwords and techniques, but in the real world, where getting working products delivered on time and on budget is of paramount importance, people who have been doing the job for a decade or two tend to be the people I'd rather be working alongside. I've recently been elevated to a position where I get to interview and choose those who get hired in my department. Although I'm very much focused on choosing the right person for the role regardless of age, experience or whatever, it's probably fair to say the more mature applicants will get a more sympathetic hearing from me than they might from most other interviewers for IT roles. The question is, what do I ask older applicants to get them to demonstrate the value of their experience? My current gambit is something like 'IT is seen as a young man's game. My next applicant after you is 23 years old. What do you know that he doesn't?' This gets responses ranging from the vague to the truly enlightened. All next week I'm interviewing for a number of senior software designer and developer roles. What should I be asking of the more experienced applicants, and what responses should I be looking out for?"
I recently took a job at a web hosting company. During my interview with the senior admin, my 5-digit slashdot ID gained me major bonus points... especially since I'm only 24 years old.
I think you'd find they have a keener understanding of how to bring a civil suit for age discrimination.
Are you looking for ways to justify hiring more experienced candidates instead of less experienced candidates? Are you worried that the older folks you interview won't outshine the younger folks like you want them to? If you want to build a successful team, you should probably just make hiring decisions based on who you think will be more successful. Your pre-interview biases can only hurt your company and the industry.
I'd start with an open ended question:
"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike...what do you do?"
I'd follow it up with a more direct problem solving question:
"I need to get all the primes less than 1000, and all I have are these punch-cards...go."
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
Definitely an interesting question.
Most senior (read: geezer) geeks I know have firmly held opinions on ... just about everything. In most cases these opinions are the distillation of decades of experience. This doesn't mean that they are (necessarily) stuck in a rut, but it does mean they are unlikely to be swayed by the language/methodology du jour.
So one thing I would want to know is can they work in the specific environment you have in place (or planned). I've got 35 years and N^2 languages behind me, but you say 'Java' and I say 'Life is too short'.
Another valuable trait in a senior member is the ability to pass on their experience to other members of the team. This can be as a role model, as a mentor, or even as someone who gives periodic instructional seminars. A way to keep balance might be to have some of the younger members give talks on things that are more cutting edge and that the seniors might enjoy learning. For example, I've been using RCS/CVS/SVN since God was a young child, but I had someone half my age sit me down and give me a real tour of Mercurial (hg) and it blew me away.
I'll be interested in hearing what you come up.
I think I've found that hiring passionate people, whether loaded with experience, or fresh out of college is the key. Someone who is passionate about technology and their job will ultimately lead you to a better work place, and will continually strive to improve on their work. Some people may be good because they've been doing it for a long time, but if they don't particularly care about the job, you can't expect them to continually want to do great things for your company, nor stick around all that long.
Here's a question you can ask every applicant. There is no right answer, but it would be interesting and telling to see what they do with it.
Organize these IT concepts by priority:
Uptime
Backup
Customer Service
Security
Documentation
User Experience
Fault Tolerance
Best Practices
Add/subtract terms as you see fit. You get the idea.
Ask them to talk about the mistakes they've made or project failures they've been a part of.
If they claim it's never happened, or it wasn't their fault, etc, then they probably are lying or stupid.
If they can explain the failure, why it happened and how they've avoided the same thing in subsequent projects you've probably got a good one.
As a 45 year old IT person and one time manager, I would ask older IT folks about current technology that you use or plan on using. I'd also find out how current are they on the IT market in general. And I would try to figure out if the person I am talking to is willing and able to integrate with my IT department.
I don't want to generalize much, but there is a tendency for older IT folks to fall behind, often far behind, the tech curve. You know, as we get older, we have other priorities which is OK, but you want that experience they have, but you also want someone who can take your company forward. But older IT folks are also very capable to get upto speed on newer tech often quite quickly.
I wouldn't assume, either, that the young'uns are going to know the latest tech either or even be exposed to it. I do think it would be a mistake to think you could take an older IT person and put them into a mentorship role and have that work out.
Don't mention age! Don't mention you are discriminating applications based on age (even if you phrase it as being "more sympathetic"). You are setting yourself up to get sued bigtime!
I consider it to be a major problem that nobody in IT is willing to train junior-level employees up, anyway. But if you are convinced you need gray hair to do the job, ask them to give examples of projects they have lead in the past. That will give you a legal, meritocratic approach to being a discriminatory bastard.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
oh and ...
IT interviewers tend to be terrible as the person who is interviewing proceeds to treat the applicant like auditing a software application. The same terms, styles and such simply don't apply. They are people just like everyone else, only with less showering and better toys.
You interview IT people much like you would interview anyone else:
You ask them deep questions, that require more than a few words to answer.
You put them in problem situations they would normally face and find out their process for working through them.
Get a feel for how comfortable they are with you and other interviewers, culture fit is incredibly important for small organization sizes.
Actually have READ their resume and ask them questions on some of the more small or trivial things.
Ask questions about where they want to be in 5 years, how are they with shifting priorities, what's their work goal for the next two months. Get a feeling for how they deal with change over time.
Ask them what they dislike most about their field. What they LOVE about what they do.
Get them to describe any long term projects they may have been part of and what they feel was their ultimate contribution to it being a success.
Ask them about their worst fuck up, everyone has one. This says a lot about a person when they can easily tell you one and how they learned from it. ... and for fuck's sake don't ask lots of stupid little nit picky questions unless you are sure they are embellishing on their field knowledge. Asking someone about the different arguments to a specific command or sub call shows that *you* don't get it. There's more in IT than anyone person can know, find out instead how they go about learning new things and how actively they do so.
--- I do not moderate.
I'd rather have a pragmatist than an idealist any day.
I also don't want to hear never-ending whining from an open source evangelical. If I ask your opinion, and you say Microsoft sucks, that's fine. I asked. But after that, if Microsoft is part of the job, I want to know I don't have to listen to you bitch about it.
In fact, you might describe the environments/toolsets and ask the candidates how they feel about them.
That good GPA indicates you passed up a lot of opportunities that you'll regret later.
t
Mention how your company is committed to Total Quality Management and ISO 9000 processes. If the guy doesn't start running for the exits, he's not learned anything from his experiences. Try and have someone track him down and explain that you were just testing before he makes it to his car, or you'll never see him again.
I think what you're doing is probably a worker's rights violation (disclosing others candidates' ages, asking candidates to make a case for a job based on their relative age). Even if it isn't or you don't get sued, no good employee would want to work for someone who interviews like that.
You should not be a manager. Nor should you be interviewing anyone. You represent your company extremely poorly and open them up to legal action. Or did I (and the editors) just get trolled?
Don't ask the old guys
"about where they want to be in 5 years"
They don't give a toss as long as they are coding/testing etc.
Take it from me, once you get to a certain age, you don't give a shit about the greasy pole.
They know their limitations and thus can work within them and get on with the job.
And yes, I have called an old boss of mine a dipstick.
He didn't give me the sack. He just labelled me as an awkward bastard as what I told him about the project was true and it saved his ass.
I'm 55 and happlily desiging complex systems. I don't want to be a manager or team leader. I'm a Designer/coder/Architect/General Dogsbody who will tell you whats what with a proposal/project. Once my new boss understands that, we generally get along fine. Which is why I am a contractor and not a permie. I'm no threat to their job.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Sounds like: "I am wanting a senior developer, but he needs to be less that 25 years old". Do you work for HR by any chance? You will probably want some who has 20 years of Java development next!? ;)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Dear Slashdot,
I have a set of pre-interview biases. How can I frame my interviews to support those biases?
You don't get rights just because you're young, old, black, white, yellow, pink, blue, male, female, etc...
Yes, all people are created equal, that does not imply that all people ARE equal.
Experience matters, as does intelligence, attitude and aptitude.
If you can say you have the experience that someone older has, as well as the attitude and aptitude of the older applicant, then you are equal, if you don't have that experience, attitude or aptitude, then you aren't, it's as simple as that.
It's not age discrimination, it's making a decision weighted on key factors that mean more than any education.
I'd rather hire someone with years of experience, a can-do attitude and the technical aptitude that enables them to almost intuitively understand a system or troubleshoot a problem, than someone with only a few years of experience, a PHD and a "I'm too good for your job" attitude any day.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
My current gambit is something like 'IT is seen as a young man's game. My next applicant after you is 23 years old. What do you know that he doesn't?'
It is illegal to discriminate against anyone over the age of 40. (For the US. Differs elsewhere.)
A question like that demonstrates, clearly, that you see age as a factor.
You see it in terms of encouraging older applicants.
People who don't get what they want are often somewhat bitter and tend to remember things differently.
They are going to simply see, "He openly voiced an issue with age. I'm over 40. I didn't get it. I'm suing."
Lawsuits aren't about who's right and wrong. They're about how much it costs you to defend yourself even when you are right. Your company may settle, even though you know you're in the right, to avoid court costs. They may win but still be out the tens of thousands it cost to defend themselves. Either way, you're the idiot who asked a stupid question and cost them a fortune.
Don't put age in to any question. Don't put gender in. Don't put marital status in. Don't put sexuality in. Don't put race in. Just leave them alone.
If you really want to give older people a chance, ask a question that's so removed from "age", no one can sue you over it. Try, "We've talked about specific experiences. What do you think the benefit of your culmulative experience is?" Then the guy who's got 20 years of it can be guided to what you're looking for.
But mention age, sex, race, sexuality, marital status, etc. and you're begging to get hurt.
You'd never ask, "I've got a male coming in next. Tell me how your being a female gives you an advantage he doesn't." or "I've got a white guy coming in next, tell me how the experience of growing up black in America helps give you the edge." Don't be stupid enough to do the same thing with age.
The proper response from this geezer would be, "I know that I can and will crush him under my boot heel, and then then you if you dare ask that question again."
I'm a fresh graduate with...no work experience.
In other words, I've never made a mistake ;)
Oh, you've made one mistake all right.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
One common thing I noticed on resumes of younger IT candidates was the '18 month bounce'. The string of jobs they list all had right around 18 month durations. Which is just enough time to get familiar enough with a technology/process and put it on your resume before hunting for a new job.
The older candidates had longer stretchs of time at companies unless there was reorganizations/acquisitions or other events outside of their control.
I think it's a mindset thing. I don't know if younger candidates understand that a pattern of leaving just when you should be starting to add real value is a very bad thing to do to the company that hired you. It may be a 'what can you do for me' mindset.
Yes, I'm a bit of a codger myself in the IT field. When I was interviewing I would always ask what the candidate could do for the company. It's amazing how many of the candidates had no idea how to answer that but had plenty of statements of what the company could do for them.
If an interviewer asked me what you did I would thank them for their time and stand up to leave. If they don't know the difference between almost two decades of relevant work experience and a newly minted college degree then I don't want to work there much less spend the time explaining it to them.
Apparently a 236 UID doesn't get you troll resistant armor.
Guess I'll have to re-roll my character.
If you want to get information on how your older geeks think, just ask them, "Of what project you've worked on are you most proud - and why?"
If their eyes light up and you get enthusiastic responses then you know they do this job for the love of the project - the thrill of the chase... And that means they'll be an enthusiastic and contributing member to your team. If you get dull responses then they are in it for the money - or are burned out and might not be the asset you want..
"Straddling the sword of technology..."
True story (but from the world of finance) - my great uncle, back in the 80s, went for lunch with his broker in the city (London) - he noticed all these young people flapping about, making deals, making money. He didn't like what he saw one bit so he decided to move all his money out of the stock market that day. This was some time in August/September 1987. He's dead now, but I still believe he's grinning. Any how - this true story really highlights the difference between age, people who have seen it all before, and youthful exuberance.
The question is this:
Given a software project such as (briefly describe a project the candidate might typically be asked to handle), how would you do it? What steps would you take?
We then let them speak. Everytime they stop speaking, we say "And then what would you do?"
The Question is terrific for evaluating a person's approach to software development. For example:
and so on.
I don't want to generalize much, but there is a tendency for older IT folks to fall behind, often far behind, the tech curve. You know, as we get older, we have other priorities which is OK, but you want that experience they have, but you also want someone who can take your company forward. But older IT folks are also very capable to get upto speed on newer tech often quite quickly.
You may require a specific skill set or technology, but the reality is that math and customer service hasn't changed all that much.
The servers need to work, the apps need to run and the customers and users need to be happy. If you need someone to twiddle something in the Next Hot New thing, hire the old guy and get him a code monkey.
Additionally, what the employee doesn't do is likely to be as valuable as what they will do. By the time someone hits their 40's or better, they're unlikely to say "screw the company" and fly off for week long drunken orgy with your secretary. They're also unlikely to do socially inappropriate things in front of customers or do really stupid things with your hardware like yanking good drives on a production machine "to see if the RAID works".
If you hire the right person, he's also likely to know how to cover your butt when something bad happens, where the young guy with nothing to lose would be just as happy to throw you under the bus.
Yep experience matters and some times in a bad way. A can-do attitude? Yes. Technical aptitude? Yes. Experience? Maybe. If a person isn't willing to work with the team then you don't want them on your team. I've met plenty of people that are unwilling to listen to a good answer from a young person because the young person is young and by extension inexperienced. But that young person is closer to school, meaning they learned from not just your mistakes but the mistakes of the industry over the past 30 years and very likely the youngsters were playing with real-world code long before they ever could have counted it experience. Not that that is all there is to experience but don't ignore the youngsters.
I've been writing software for nearly 15 years and real world stuff for almost 10 and I was supporting friends and relatives with IT stuff long before that. On my resume you see 5 years professional employment. Plenty of kids getting out of school now have been writing stuff since I started, have no "professional" experience, but have been cutting their teeth on open source for years.
Older workers might be more experienced, but also have more time to develop bad habits. Instead of asking questions like the one you listed, think up a few scenarios and ask them what they would do in the situation.
I don't think this is stressed enough. Age/experience has a very goldilocks approach in IT. It can be too hot and too cold. You can get the old dogs stuck in their tricks that want to port your entire system over to what they've been doing, or you'll get the ones that are so jaded in the civil war against management and marketing that they are nothing but a poison thorn in your IT department. You can also get masters of their craft that are seeking new ways to expand themselves, but may get bored with the tasks you have for them and leave just as quickly as they came. You'll probably get something inbetween.
These are all different cogs for different machines. Maybe you just need a human appliance in your IT department that you can rely on like a laborador to get his job done. Maybe you need someone who's unafraid to stick up for the IT in front of marketing/management (because lack of competent project managers?). Maybe you need a magnanimous whirlwind to roll through your department and get the engines greased and running on the right track within a short amount of time.
For your money, unless they're pursuing IT as a post-retirement hobby, the older ones will typically cost you more for their output compared to the younger ones, but they'll typically be more reliable as well -- as an imprecise generalization.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
You are creating a false dichotomy there.. of COURSE you would prefer the a can-do experienced person over someone with an "I'm too good for your job" attitude. You are absolutely wrong, however, to categorize all old people in the first group and all young people in the second group. There are many young people who are experienced and have a can-do attitude, while there are older workers who feel they are too good for their job.
For kicks, here's a clear-cut quote:
(c) It shall be unlawful for a labor organization-
(1) to exclude or to expel from its membership, or otherwise to discriminate against, any individual because of his age;
My next applicant after you is 23 years old.
This is a great way to create liability for your company. Age discrimination is against federal law and simply mentioning it is cause to be sued. Simply put, don't!
My next application after you has a penis. What do you and your vagina know that he and his penis doesn't? Obviously that sounds bizarre but hopefully it make my point. Asking questions which imply age is part of the equation is simply asking each applicant to sue as they leave the interview room.
Simply put, don't!
I'm curious what your definition of "often" is in this case. While I find people across age groups that are lazy, I'm finding it far more likely with younger people these days being the worst in that they want things handed to them and want to minimize what they actually put into the job. I've gotten to the point where I'll take a person with base knowledge and a drive (and ability) to learn over someone with a wealth of knowledge and no such drive any day.
I see this especially with fresh out of college grads and my teen aged sister's kids (and their friends). These people have, basically out of the gate, access to vast amounts of knowledge and great search tools that I would've killed for when I was starting out in computers and barely calling BBSes.. but so many of them aren't even willing to take 2 seconds to search google for an answer and want others to hand them the solution.
I've found that in the last few years, apparently the definition of the word "help" has changed to mean "do this entire thing for me and hand it back so I can take credit." Not to mention that "training" seems to mean "Give the final steps without explaining why any of this is required."
Though one of the worst offenders for both of the above ideas was a couple years older then me. Thankfully he's gone now.
I agree completely.
I've known plenty that just have no drive to learn.. and if you want to work in IT and don't like continually learning the new stuff, leave the field now, you're in the wrong one. But I have known a few that just can't get beyond a very basic level. They're just as bad in the long run and have no read future career path.
- My favorite error message: xscreensaver, running on an old Sparc 5 w/ 8bit color: bsod: Couldn't allocate color Blue
In my experience, age itself doesn't matter. I have dealt with young people who are hopeless and old people who are hopeless. I have also dealt with amazing older folks, and just as amazing younger "fresh" kids. The skills/traits that I look for in people these days are (Pretty much in order):
1) Common Sense - It goes so much further than anything else.
2) Ability to comprehend tasks - I don't want to have to explain things over and over for one. Secondly, if they understand what they are doing, there is a good chance they might have a good input to make it even better.
3) Communication skills - If they can't talk, articulate and be precise in asking questions or listening to answers, they won't do point 2 well.
4) Programming ability - Yes, it's way down on the list. Most programmers can program well enough. The value in good software/development isn't purely in scratching two seconds off an operation that takes three minutes. It's in making an application/solution that the customer wants to have - which isn't always exactly what they ask for.
As developers I look for people that COULD possibly be in the business role that they are developing for had they wanted to, but chose developing instead. People who can understand what the business/customer is doing will ALWAYS make better software than people who follow requirements to the letter. The four points above in that order will help you find people who will do the best work.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
I've met plenty of people that are unwilling to listen to a good answer from a young person because the young person is young and by extension inexperienced.
That is the killer right there. Most older successful people know that everyone is a resource, and LISTEN to everything. Anyone that refuses to listen to someone because of some preconceived notion fails the test.
Usually what older folks bring to the team is the experience of their own mistakes, not just in their chosen field, but in life. People skills that successful people develop over time are super-valuable and can be the glue that holds a team together.
Chuck
So you worked really hard, beyond expectations, etc. Where did that get you? I mean in terms of eventual success with work, accomplishments, happiness with life, etc. I'm not trying to be cynical, it's just that I'm in grad school (biomed. not CS so not quite the same but still) and have been coming across alot of different attitudes towards how much time/effort one's job needs to take up in order to do something that contributes to society and leaves you satisfied with your effort without wasting your life away working for someone who benefits more from your effort than you do yourself.
When I graduated college 10 years ago, I was one of those ambitious people... I often stayed at work till 10pm to insure our products/projects met their milestones etc... Recently we hired new hires that are of the new generation. So far, many of these people are out the door as soon as the clock hits 5, regardless the status of their projects and when the milestones were... Even when I'm travelling on business and am halfway across the world, they don't want to take any personal time to give me a hand (even if it's to upload a project they are past due on). They didn't even bother taking their work laptops home, because they don't want to "work" outside of work.
I happen to be one of those people - I don't mind helping out with a few reasonable things and putting in a few extra hours on rare occasions, but many companies expect you to work 60+ hours a week, and if you don't you are not a "team player". Well I say fuck that. You pay me - I work. When you don't pay me - I don't work.
I don't consider my life goal to help some company achieve X business goals. I know the company is not loyal to me - they will fire me if they need to - so how can they expect loyalty from me??
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Mod parent up? please? Why haven't you done it yet?
Seriously, there's a REASON the older folks don't tend to show the drive and ambition that the younger folks do. You can only work through so many nights without sleep before you finally realize you're not compensated enough (in pay, recognition, or even lack of complaints -- which == recognition in our field often). Sorry to be a whiny IT wonk, but pay alone doesn't cut it. You watch the person you made that app for take all the credit for it and you might get a ** mention in the fine print. They get promoted over and over and you get... another project. Let's face it, people good in IT are not often good with people, and there's not a lot of vertical headroom in tech-only positions in most companies.
Neither.
if ($variable) ...
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
Sorry you were so stupid when you were younger.
I'm paid to work a 40 hour week. I work a 40 hour week, and I do good work in that time. If you want me to work more, there's a method for that- it's called paying me overtime. Offer it and I'll consider it. Probably not though- I don't really need the money.
Life is short. Free time is far too valuable to be wasted by doing extra work. When you're older you'll never hear any of your coworkers say "Damn I wish I had spent more time at the office". You will hear them say more time with the kids, wife, etc. My father's passed on, and if I could trade a year I spent working for a year flipping burgers for minimum wage but spending time with him, I'd do it in a fucking heartbeat. We're just smart enough in this generation to know this now, rather than waiting til we have a stress related breakdown in our middle age.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
There must be, or why do you see job adverts requiring 4 years experience in something that's only been around for 2?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You are just playing games with the interviewees by showing them how clever you are.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If a person isn't willing to work with the team then you don't want them on your team. I've met plenty of people that are unwilling to listen to a good answer from a young person because the young person is young and by extension inexperienced.
Conversely, I've met plenty of young people who aren't willing to listen to someone older because someone older can't possibly have an understanding of all these fresh, new ideas that they're bringing to the table. (Hell, just a few years ago, I was /one/ of those young people - back before I lacked the experience to know that there are things I don't know. ) Nevermind that the 'fresh new ideas' are variations on the same themes that have been playing through the industry for decades.
The point I'm trying to make is that it's just as easy to get a young recruit with a bad attitude than an older recruit. That's part of what the interview process is for, to weed out the people not compatible with your organization. INterviewing people with the assumption that "older = stuck in their ways" and "younger = innovative and yet willing to learn" is a mistake that can cost you some potentially good hires.
An article I read in Scientific American Mind basically suggests that the key to above-average or genius level intelligence is that sort of laziness.
It suggested that in mental tests given by researchers among two groups; one group of people with average intelligence and one group of people with above average or genius level intelligence, the difference seemed to be maximizing the resources we're all born with by minimizing the things they had to do in order to come to a solution.
It's been a long time.