How to conduct an in-depth technical interview

First of all, let’s briefly talk about the interview. In an interview, the candidate and the interviewer, the two opposing sides, are engaged in a confrontation that is almost at the limit of their own IQ. The interviewer initially has some advantages, but once the interview process is not grasped well, If you miss your own initiative, you will often be accused of being incompetent and technically speaking. And if you use too much force in the interview process, the candidates who are often hit have no confidence, and it is impossible to see the level of a person's level. Therefore, the interview may only be a challenge for the candidate, but for the interviewer, it is an arena. On the one hand, you have to hold on to the challenge, and on the other hand, you have to discover the real talents. Of course, sometimes You need to be able to grab the candidate's mind and attract the candidate personally.

We are technical, interviewing is not our major, but at the same time, we are technical, and we are the most rational and learning group of people in the world, so we can use if-else to conduct our interviews in a procedural way .

First of all, let’s take a look at our interview process. An interview generally includes several stages: self-introduction, skill question and answer, and mutual question and answer. At each stage, as the initiator of the interview, our interviewers should have methods to guide and advance an interview.

Interview three axe:

The first step is to introduce yourself. Just like any meeting will be paved with a brief introduction. The interview begins with the candidate's self-introduction. There is often a problem here. Experienced interviewers will introduce themselves. Sometimes it will naturally affect the interviewer unnaturally, and let the next interview go in their own direction. This is actually very good, because what we want to discover in the interview is the good side of the candidate. However, at this time, we should pay special attention to it. As an interviewer, when being taken away by a candidate, don't forget that you always have some points to investigate, such as a person's basic programming ability, basic logical thinking ability, communication ability, etc. If the candidate takes you After walking around for a while, these things have not been shown, so at this time we need to insert our own questions into the interviewer's communication process to draw our own conclusions. But often, our interviewees are ordinary programmers, and most of them are not very good at organizing interviews by themselves. The self-introduction often only includes the process of school and work experience. In fact, it is not very useful for technical interviews, so here we need to Mentioned is the first axe of self-introduction, learn to ask questions. According to the focus of the candidate's resume, most of the interviewees can be divided into two categories, one is technical, a large number of technical terms are piled up in the resume, and the experience is also full of different technologies And experience, this kind of candidate is my favorite type, because his technical keywords provide us with countless questions, so, for this type of candidate, I will not let the candidate Self-introduction is purely based on your own thinking, and generally you will put forward some requirements, for example, you need to tell the content of your work and team composition, or the development management model you use, etc. You can see that this is a departure from technology. The reason Very simple, for a person who shows a lot of his skills, we will get a lot of information in the skills question and answer session to judge the skills of this person, but any software development is not a personal behavior, so I choose to introduce myself in this session. Ask this type of candidate to describe more about how they work to see the candidate's teamwork and communication skills. If there are problems in these areas, people will not be available. Now let’s talk about another category. In addition to simply listing a series of technical terms in the skills section of this category of interviewers’ resumes, the rest of the content mainly describes the projects they have participated in and the project’s characteristics. Introduction, in fact, this type of candidates is more difficult to identify, because there are not many questions left for us, so we need to introduce ourselves



The second axe, the art of asking questions, soldiers are impermanent, and water is impermanent, so there is no fixed routine for interviews. In the self-introduction part, the interviewer only needs one or two sentences and then listens and observes, but he is asking questions. At this stage, you need to spend more thought and ask questions well, otherwise the candidate's ability will come out, and at the same time, it will directly form technical attraction to the candidate. For example, if a person has not done database-related content, but your interview questions are inseparable from the database, no matter what the real ability of the candidate is, it is difficult to interview the real level. So in the question section, how should we specifically ask questions? I still have to go back to the two types of people mentioned above. One type of people has given you enough room to ask questions, so just ask. For the technologies listed by the other party, first simply ask for understanding, then ask about the degree of use of the project, and finally Ask about the principle of technology. At this time, someone asked, what should I do if all the candidates have answered? Of course, it is the inner joy, and the surface is silent. He is indeed a good talent, but if you want people to come in, you must not make the other party too proud. Next, for the needs of the interview later, you need to simply suppress it and ask some more in-depth questions. If the other party still answers well, then congratulations, people are really not rude, try to ask about algorithms, computer principles, operating systems and other levels of content, if you still can, then it’s over Forget this part, the other party is a master. (After all, there are very few experts, so don't worry). After the previous question, the person's ability to comprehend his own technology, as well as his ability and attitude to learn have come out, but the knowledge of the rough and the leaf can be filtered out directly, and the suggestions that cannot tell the technical principle go to the next link to check but It is best to compare between multiple people, not only can explain the principle, but also keep in-depth, this hehe, really do not need to hesitate, go directly to the next link. OK, after talking about the better interviewees, let’s talk about those who don’t have much technical skills in their resumes. Often, such people are either not very confident in technology and avoid it, or they are at the other extreme. Very good, the understanding of software is very comprehensive, knowing that technology is not the focus, the latter type of people is really hard to come by, so we still focus on the former. For this kind of interview, we can only follow a routine. What is a routine? It is to ask the techniques used in our work one by one, starting with the basics, then the database, concurrency, server, network and problem-solving ideas, and finally Don't forget to examine specific code thinking skills, such as simply describing a small algorithm or design pattern is a good choice. In fact, this type of person is the most difficult to interview. Because they do not show their best aspects, some people often miss out. We can only express our silence.



The third axe, summarizing and communicating with each other, I am generally satisfied with the people who can enter the last part, so I usually say a few more words, or a brief summary of the interview just now, or share some Based on your own experience, simply attract the candidates, and then secretly throw out the final killer. Do you have any questions for me? On the person who can choose or not, if the other party can't ask questions that complement each other in response to the shortcomings just now, then basically this opportunity has been missed. How can I say it, for example, a candidate's skills are average, but the communication is ok, then I Expect the other party to ask some questions about how their skills should be matched with the job. This shows that the other party understands their strengths and the value is still relatively large, and if the other party asks some relatively remote technical questions or simply ask The technology you use is basically no longer a plus. In the same way, if a person who has a technical interview is OK but feels that there are some problems in communication, if the questions asked continue to be paranoid about technology, then this time will often make me doubt whether this candidate will be too paranoid and lead to teamwork The problem. Of course, before asking this, you must explain some of the other party's problems in advance. If a person reflects on it at the time, then it is natural for people to have some shortcomings. After all, as an interviewer, we are also responsible for training after we come in, right?