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How To Hire a Hacker

Posted by samzenpus on from the kid-have-you-rehabilitated-yourself dept.

itwbennett writes "If you want to hire a hacker, you need to take a more psychology-based approach to the entire interview process to determine whether he or she has changed their ways enough to be a trustworthy employee, says Mich Kabay in a recent Network World blog post. But this approach is also 'germane for highly skilled staffers, even those that don't come with arrest records or who have done something questionable in their pasts,' says David Strom. For example, in your next interview, ask a question that will suss out how much of a sense of entitlement a candidate has — or how much you or your company has. 'One time when I interviewed with Microsoft in Redmond I couldn't get over this sense of corporate entitlement — it was one of the biggest turn-offs that I had during my interviewing day there,' says Strom. 'I got the feeling that I wasn't going to fit in, no matter how smart I thought (or they thought) I was.'"

6 of 370 comments (clear)

  1. Had any scary interviews? by WaywardGeek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Like a lot of big geeks on Slashdot, I take pride in always receiving a job offer after an interview... accept once. Once I interviewed with the EDIF reader group at Cadence, and the manager had exactly one technical question for me: "Do you understand recursion?" "Well... yes I do." "Well, then, you have all the skills that matter. What really counts is that you know how to fit in, and you don't impress me there."

    I'm still shaken up over that interview.

    --
    Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
    1. Re:Had any scary interviews? by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm still shaken up over that interview.

      Don't be. Although one can often tell in the first five minutes of an interview if you want the geek or not (I'm being generous with the time here) that sort of perfunctory questioning and the glib dismissal you received most likely means they already someone else had in mind for the job, and are just following procedure at this point - often you're competing with an internal promotion or other reasons not related to technical competence.

      Where you might need to improve is in believing your first impressions about a firm interviewing you. Hunches count, and your ability to drive the interview the way you want is a good indication of what level of person they're really after. I wasn't there, but my off-the-cuff opinion is that you were either bloody well jobbed, or the juxtaposition of the "Reader" group in the name and your choice of words (e.g. an "accept once" in your resume) was a deal killer. But they shouldn't have brought you in if that were the case.

      Disclosure: I've interviewed about five hundred candidates for technical jobs. I've hired one hundred, of which two turned out to be poor choices. It's a serious, expensive business to bring the right people on board.

      --
      Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
  2. Think this one needs a Part 2 by mysidia · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How to Fire a Hacker

    (Without getting pwned by her/him or his/her friends)

    Because (let's face it), there's a chance you hired one on accident, without realizing it, and that they don't have an arrest record, for one reason or another.

  3. How to... by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The easy way to hire tech people and keep them happy is have them work on, wait for it... technology. That is, most of them, unless they signed up for help desk basically want to be given a problem, some hardware, some software and then them to fix the problem. Thats it, no "team building", no pointless meetings, in general most tech people are happy simply working. The less social interaction with most people is the best.

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  4. Re:In fairness by e9th · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder how Terry Childs would have done if the guy who hired him had read this?

  5. Re:Sounds more like by TheModelEskimo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's nice, unless you work in a place that's even mildly diverse, where you have people like Kevin the married Mormon who is into skydiving, Samir the introvert muslim who regularly takes prayer breaks and loves Sunny-D, and Tammi the feminist who enjoys electronic music and builds analog synths in her spare time.

    No, I think your amazing team-building system would work best with extroverted dopey white guys aged 20 - 30 and see nothing wrong with TV. Mooks, basically. It assumes a non-diverse team, so by definition it's a weak way to build teams in general.