<story><title>You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview</title><url>http://blog.interviewing.io/you-cant-fix-diversity-in-tech-without-fixing-the-technical-interview/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Scea91</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve had 4 technical interviews in my life and passed all of them. I didn&amp;#x27;t practice for them, I just have strong foundations in CS. The most criticism of interviews comes from people who can&amp;#x27;t get past them.</text></item><item><author>divbit</author><text>That is a pretty huge statistic, - what also pops out to me is: &amp;quot;stop practicing &amp;quot;. This seems to imply that these technical interviews are skills that you don&amp;#x27;t really gain on the job. I know that personally would 9 times out of 10 spend time on a cool &amp;#x2F; beneficial project rather than making time to practice trivia problems.</text></item><item><author>Animats</author><text>The big result there is this: &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Poor performances in technical interviewing happen to most people, even people who are generally very strong. However, when we looked at our data, we discovered that after a poor performance, women are 7 times more likely to stop practicing than men.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the hiring side, &amp;quot;For the specific case of an online job posting, on average, 1,000 individuals will see a job post, 200 will begin the application process, 100 will complete the application, 75 of those 100 resumes will be screened out by either the ATS or a recruiter, 25 resumes will be seen by the hiring manager, 4 to 6 will be invited for an interview, 1 to 3 of them will be invited back for final interview, 1 will be offered that job and 80 percent of those receiving an offer will accept it (Talent Function Group LLC).&amp;quot; This implies that 80% of interviews lead to rejection.&lt;p&gt;Given that level of rejection, the key here is to get women to know the odds and keep trying.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>qq66</author><text>You don&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;just have strong foundations in CS,&amp;quot; you also have strong foundations in interviewing, whether you consciously developed those skills or not. The problem is that those interviewing skills aren&amp;#x27;t really relevant to the job, so they shouldn&amp;#x27;t be part of the interview.&lt;p&gt;I once had a candidate who completely bombed the interview, one of the worst interviews I&amp;#x27;ve ever done, but he had a great portfolio. I took the risk and hired him on instinct and he turned out to be an amazing frontend developer who just doesn&amp;#x27;t do well when he&amp;#x27;s on the spot standing in front of someone. Years later I recommended him to someone else who was hiring, with the caveat that &amp;quot;he&amp;#x27;s going to bomb the interview,&amp;quot; which he did. The guy called me back and said, &amp;quot;I can&amp;#x27;t hire someone who did that badly on the interview&amp;quot; and I told him, &amp;quot;do it, you won&amp;#x27;t regret it, I promise you.&amp;quot; He did make the hire, and it predictably went great.&lt;p&gt;Interviews work well for salespeople because interview skills and sales skills overlap a lot. Interviews don&amp;#x27;t work as well for engineers because interview skills and engineering skills overlap very little. It&amp;#x27;s just a large injection of noise into the hiring process.</text></comment>
<story><title>You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview</title><url>http://blog.interviewing.io/you-cant-fix-diversity-in-tech-without-fixing-the-technical-interview/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Scea91</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve had 4 technical interviews in my life and passed all of them. I didn&amp;#x27;t practice for them, I just have strong foundations in CS. The most criticism of interviews comes from people who can&amp;#x27;t get past them.</text></item><item><author>divbit</author><text>That is a pretty huge statistic, - what also pops out to me is: &amp;quot;stop practicing &amp;quot;. This seems to imply that these technical interviews are skills that you don&amp;#x27;t really gain on the job. I know that personally would 9 times out of 10 spend time on a cool &amp;#x2F; beneficial project rather than making time to practice trivia problems.</text></item><item><author>Animats</author><text>The big result there is this: &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Poor performances in technical interviewing happen to most people, even people who are generally very strong. However, when we looked at our data, we discovered that after a poor performance, women are 7 times more likely to stop practicing than men.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the hiring side, &amp;quot;For the specific case of an online job posting, on average, 1,000 individuals will see a job post, 200 will begin the application process, 100 will complete the application, 75 of those 100 resumes will be screened out by either the ATS or a recruiter, 25 resumes will be seen by the hiring manager, 4 to 6 will be invited for an interview, 1 to 3 of them will be invited back for final interview, 1 will be offered that job and 80 percent of those receiving an offer will accept it (Talent Function Group LLC).&amp;quot; This implies that 80% of interviews lead to rejection.&lt;p&gt;Given that level of rejection, the key here is to get women to know the odds and keep trying.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kls</author><text>I have only failed one technical interview in my life, and to be honest I did not fail it, I took the confidence route which put off the 20 something lead I was interviewing with and mentioned that I was a keynotes speaker at IBM Impact on the coming transition to Javascript based applications. He took this as an affront and challenge (to be brighter than the IBM speaker guy to his team) and ensured that the interview was a miserable experience, but that is neither here nor there The only reason I toot my own horn is to relay the following observation.&lt;p&gt;The point I want to get to is: I have a buddy who I have dragged along with me (many times staking my reputation on his abilities), to every engagement I go on and this guy could not pass a how to use Microsoft Word interview. He has Aspergers and locks up and fails miserably in the interviewing process, but the honest, reality is, he is 10 times the developer I am, the guy sees patterns instantly and has a knack for code organization. He can master a new technology in a week and is hands down the best developer I have ever met.&lt;p&gt;That being said, over the years watching him has lead me to the conclusion that it is indeed the ones they hold faith in the technical interview are actually the ones that are the most stove piped and only see the world thru their limited experiences. It should be classified as a form of confirmation bias.</text></comment>