<story><title>If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers</title><url>https://medium.com/@NTDF9/if-companies-interviewed-tech-recruiters-the-way-they-interview-programmers-f18e1a980cdd</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>dsr_</author><text>I am, now and on occasion, a hiring manager. Naturally, every freelance recruiter wants to be my friend.&lt;p&gt;They often start cold calls with a description of a person&amp;#x27;s technical abilities, and then ask if I would be interested in interviewing that person.&lt;p&gt;When that happens, I ask them to define one of the buzzwords that they have just used. &amp;quot;Could you tell me what &amp;#x27;big data&amp;#x27; means?&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;What&amp;#x27;s the difference between AWS and GCE?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t do business with technical recruiters who aren&amp;#x27;t familiar with the meanings of the terms that they throw around. They have never been more valuable than a regex.</text></comment>
<story><title>If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers</title><url>https://medium.com/@NTDF9/if-companies-interviewed-tech-recruiters-the-way-they-interview-programmers-f18e1a980cdd</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jordanpg</author><text>When I read articles like this, I tend to assume that they are exaggerations written by people who feel burned because they didn&amp;#x27;t get the job they want and that the reason was unfair interview questions.&lt;p&gt;In other words, I simply don&amp;#x27;t believe that interviewers are, as a group, so stupid that they regularly ask obscure Excel questions when they are plainly not relevant.&lt;p&gt;To continue with the recruiting example, I suspect what is more common is that interviewers are expecting candidates with some Excel experience, and ask questions to gauge some basic level of competency.  And interviewees have conflated using it one time with any depth of experience.&lt;p&gt;I can attest to seeing this many times during programming interviews.  If I see something towards the top of someone&amp;#x27;s resume, I will ask a basic question to see if anything whatsoever is known about that thing.  Yes, book knowledge.  Stuff that you would know if you had actually read any docs.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t want to work alongside someone who claims knowledge or experience of something and doesn&amp;#x27;t know the basics.  Or doesn&amp;#x27;t know that they don&amp;#x27;t know the basics.</text></comment>