How do you do concrete interviews for non-technical people?
Nontechnical interviews and weak signals for competence
Now let’s compare this to nontechnical interviews, which, in my expertise at least, generate weak signals for competence: Almost every interview process I’ve ever been involved with, whether I’m the interviewer or the interviewee, seems to lack the level of rigor that most engineers go through. Why is that? I imagine that much of it has to do with the fact that in nontechnical positions, it’s harder to decide objectively what’s “good” or “bad” - people often disagree on strategy, design, and it’s hard to figure out if you’re actually competent or not.
As a result, many of the nontechnical interviews I’ve seen tend degenerate into descriptions of previous work, or soft skills, or very subjective conversations around “how would you improve X or Y?” That’s not to say that these discussions aren’t useful, but for me personally, I’ve seen far too many people with 10 years of experience in some area that turn out to not be able to tie their shoelaces. The question is, how do you find this out sooner rather than later?
this post was sorely needed. thanks andrew.
