I try very hard to focus on what the candidate knows. Most of the other stuff is bullshit anyway.<p>Recent interviews:<p>- A somewhat well-known poster here, the kind of coder who parachutes in when startups are having trouble shipping and need help. Didn't actually know the programming language very well, which is sadly common amongst coders of the language in question. Sometimes that's ok, but this person presented themselves as an expert in the language and did not know very basic things about it.<p>- Again, not very strong with the language, but very strong in other languages and overall quite an impressive candidate. I recommended to hire this person, but for a different engineering role. Got hired for a different role and is doing a great job.
I think that's a false dichotomy. It's not simple to separate "personality" from "technical". A person's personality is what drives them to acquire technical skills. Candidates with a curious, open minded personality will spend more time acquiring technical skills than more passive or close minded candidates will. In my experience it's rare to see someone with solid technical skills that doesn't have passable interpersonal skills too. Learning is just too social.<p>This plays out at a larger scale too - some cultures are more open to borrowing from other cultures, and some are more closed. The more open ones utilize better technology than the closed ones.
To find the last new hire, 95% were weeded out just based on resume for lack of experience, or non-relevant experience. Of the remaining 5% who made it to a phone screen, 80% were weeded out because they could not convince me that their knowledge matched their experience (e.g. 10 years of Javascript but they can't explain Function.prototype.call() or Function.prototype.bind()). The rest who passed the phone screen, the decision to not make an offer came down to personality fit or geography (quite a few people were out of state, and would not be able to move here quickly).
I'll bring it from the other angle. I know why I wasn't hired (though I wasn't told):<p>- No formal background<p>- I don't code on the spot, and not on a whiteboard with zero resources but rote memory<p>- I'm not "senior" enough (with >15 years in roles with progressively increasing responsibilities and contributions)<p>- Buzzword trivia was fun in 2003. Not so much.<p>- Had an off day<p>The roles I've been hired into where I wasn't subject to a dog and pony show have arguably been the best, as I've been approached as a person and a professional, and not as a little blue box filling an opening in the calendar.
Because the candidate couldn't write a JavaScript function that allows chaining method calls on its result... along the lines of myFunction().setAttr('a').setAnotherAttr('b').toString(). In my experience, candidates either tackle this in 5-10 minutes, get close and finish with some hints in 20-30 minutes, or have no clue.<p>If it goes well (first scenario), I like to spend the rest of the interview pairing on a task like writing a parse method for a Backbone model that needs to transform a response for a charting library or something like that with Underscore/Lodash.<p>One time, a candidate started checking emails on his phone during an on-site interview. That candidate wasn't hired.
There is no rule as to what the reason is.
Firstly, the person must be a good fit for the team - a team player, right values, work well with the other members, be self driven, passionate etc.
If that is ok, then secondly they've got to be able to do the job! Technical skills must align to the salary they are asking for - if they are expensive resources then they really need to do what they say they can. If they are not so expensive then there is more room for new learning and basic growth. None of this is possible without the right attitude.
Successful candidates must have both.
- Candidate could not form coherent answers to my questions<p>- Candidate was lacking in fundamentals in his/her domain<p>- Candidate could not demonstrate a good critical thinking ability<p>The first was a total dealbreaker on a phone screen.<p>I prefer strong critical thinkers, and am willing to eschew complete knowledge of a domain from a candidate and mentor him/her up to speed, but weak critical thinking is nearly a dealbreaker for me as a manager.<p>I have been extraordinarily happy with all the people I have hired so far.
I find a lot of candidates with tons of college experience and theoretical knowledge, but no grease under the fingernails... no practical experience building real systems.