Re: /400 skills test

>  From:    sallen@fellowes.com (Allen, Stuart)

>  <snip>
>   The idea is that an interviewer doesn't necessarily need to
>   know the topic but should be able to determine the interviewee's
>  knowledge by following along with the answer as written
>  <endsnip>

I agree that when there is more than one way to do something, this form of 
Q+A fails, and in most programming that I have done, there are many many ways 
of doing something, an interviewer needs to be able to evaluate the validity 
of alternative solutions & have a discussion with the interviewee about 
opinions on the pros & cons & merits of alternative approaches.

I remember in one interview, I said that maintenance programming is much more 
challenging than creating new applications, and not a good place to put a 
beginner programmer, which was different from what the interviewer believed, 
and I made such a strong case for this, that the interviewer called in 
several co-workers to have me expound on this ... it was a novel notion for 
them that someone creating a new program has a great deal of freedom in style 
& method building something that will work logically, especially in a shop 
that does not have strong programming standards or peer review, but when you 
have to figure out what someone else has done & make your mods so they fit 
logically & smoothly within their creation, and revise internal documentation 
to help the next maintenance programmer accomplish the same thing without 
repeating ordeal of figuring out the whole program, then the maintenance 
programmer has much larger responsibility than the person creating new 
programs for first time.

One of the most entertaining interviews I was ever at was at a shop that did 
do regular peer review ... they ran interviewees through peer review of 
software that was both good & had some known flaws ... we were asked to 
suggest how it could be improved ... there were obvious improvements they 
were waiting for us to see, but then there were less obvious, even to the 
interviewer, that pitted all of us against our knowledge of the programming 
techniques & our appreciation of understanding what someone else saying about 
them, which gets down to communication skills that are really critical for a 
programmer who will be interacting with end users.

<snip>
>  RANT *ON
>  IF THE INTERVIEWER DOESN'T KNOW THE TOPIC
> THEN THEY SURE AS HELL SHOULDN'T  BE DOING THE INTERVIEW.
>  RANT *OFF
>  
>  Regards,          
>  Stuart Allen
>  European Systems Analyst
>  Fellowes

Most of my career I have worked at companies in which I was the ONLY person 
who knew AS/400 or prior hardware OS, the ONLY person who knew the 
programming languages being used on it, the ONLY person who knew the 
structure of the software package used to run the company, so if I was to 
return from the grave of losing that job because of some incident with the 
union army or normal business mischance & advise on how best to replace me, 
without me in the equation, I would advise that they put together a team of 
consultants including representation from

Our IBM reps who supply AS/400 & are familiar with what all we have loaded on 
our OS;
Our major software package supplier reps who are familiar with what 
modifications we have made & what skill levels are needed to keep that up;
Someone from our industry association who understands what a tech support 
person needs to understand about the industry.

These 3 would do a brief conference to identify minimum criteria & update 
whatever I had left with my employers regarding years experience needed in 
each area & what CDP credentials are relevant, then the interviews would be 
done by people who know the subject, but might not be employees of the 
company doing the hiring.

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
http://www.cen-elec.com MIS Manager Programmer & Computer Janitor
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