Knowledge Day - Recruiting students
Many, even medium-sized companies, often are not averse to start growing specialists from scratch. The question is how to conduct the selection. With proper advertising in the surrounding universities and the good reputation of the company, there may be quite a few willing people. And conducting a traditional interview, aimed at testing practical skills, it is not always possible to correctly assess the main qualities that you want to get from the intern - the ability to learn and the desire to work.
Not so long ago, our company opened three vacancies for students and instructed me to select candidates. At the dawn of a career, I myself had the opportunity to go through a competition organized by one of the American offices for students for the vacancies in my Russian office. In a similar pattern, I decided to act.
I want to share my interview experience and list of questions with the community. Our employees are still embarrassed to criticize old-timers, I hope to get some objections, or alternative ideas on the selection mechanism here.
So, two main goals that we wanted to achieve by selecting students:
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The entire selection process revolves around the same list of questions. Questions must be complex, perhaps even those that students have never encountered before. There should be a lot of questions. I don’t remember exactly how much was offered to me personally, but for our selection, together, we were able to make up 90 questions, divided into 9 categories. Questions are not designed for everyone to know by heart. But if you dig, google, read - then, having understood, you can write a short answer without any problems. Of all the options I sought to select useful questions, the search for answers to which would bring useful knowledge to students.
At the first stage, students were asked to respond to all that they can by sending a response to the next day.
At this stage, the lazy ones were eliminated, those who simply decided to try, but were not ready to perform complex tasks. The time limit serves two purposes - to understand who is responsible for the deadlines and, in a sense, to get a slice of the student’s current knowledge. Yes, many already at this stage, Google, copy-paste from msdn'a, but this is also good.
After checking and commenting on the answers, at the second stage, students were already asked to answer everything, including those that were not answered earlier, and those to which we considered answers incorrect or incomplete. The term of the second stage is two weeks.
So, by the end of the second stage, I had the answers of only 10 people. We evaluated the final answers on a four-point scale: not true / incomplete / counted / true. After that, we could compare each student with each in the chess system: comparing the answers to each question in pairs, giving 2 points for a victory, one point for a draw, and zero for a loss. Points were added up. Thus, a student who answered a difficult question that no one else could answer received an advantage, and too easy questions or questions that no one could answer did not affect the final results.
Comparing each with each, we received a general rating of applicants, and comparing the answers of a person at the second stage with his answers at the first, we received an inaccurate, but characteristic, learning and readiness to work.
Having received a numerical assessment, it became clear to us that the group of leaders of five people has a significant lead over the other candidates in all respects. It was these five people, it was decided to invite for an interview.
After all the work done, interviewing is very simple. We discussed questions to find out if the candidate studied understood. They asked which questions they liked, which ones they did not, to which I wanted to hear the answer.
The main purpose of a personal interview is to understand how much the help of friends influenced the results.
I still remember with joy the days of work in my first company. And I hope to gather at least a strong team under the current roof.
At the end of the interview, we found two that we wanted to take and get to work. We do not doubt that they will become excellent members of our team.
If anyone is interested, then with a general permission list of questions published here . There, of course, not all questions are ideal, many do not quite serve the declared goals and are needed only for the masses.
Not so long ago, our company opened three vacancies for students and instructed me to select candidates. At the dawn of a career, I myself had the opportunity to go through a competition organized by one of the American offices for students for the vacancies in my Russian office. In a similar pattern, I decided to act.
I want to share my interview experience and list of questions with the community. Our employees are still embarrassed to criticize old-timers, I hope to get some objections, or alternative ideas on the selection mechanism here.
Tasks
So, two main goals that we wanted to achieve by selecting students:
- Find out if a person can effectively combine work and study
- Understand whether a person can learn and understand what has been learned.
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Iteration first
The entire selection process revolves around the same list of questions. Questions must be complex, perhaps even those that students have never encountered before. There should be a lot of questions. I don’t remember exactly how much was offered to me personally, but for our selection, together, we were able to make up 90 questions, divided into 9 categories. Questions are not designed for everyone to know by heart. But if you dig, google, read - then, having understood, you can write a short answer without any problems. Of all the options I sought to select useful questions, the search for answers to which would bring useful knowledge to students.
At the first stage, students were asked to respond to all that they can by sending a response to the next day.
At this stage, the lazy ones were eliminated, those who simply decided to try, but were not ready to perform complex tasks. The time limit serves two purposes - to understand who is responsible for the deadlines and, in a sense, to get a slice of the student’s current knowledge. Yes, many already at this stage, Google, copy-paste from msdn'a, but this is also good.
Iteration two
After checking and commenting on the answers, at the second stage, students were already asked to answer everything, including those that were not answered earlier, and those to which we considered answers incorrect or incomplete. The term of the second stage is two weeks.
So, by the end of the second stage, I had the answers of only 10 people. We evaluated the final answers on a four-point scale: not true / incomplete / counted / true. After that, we could compare each student with each in the chess system: comparing the answers to each question in pairs, giving 2 points for a victory, one point for a draw, and zero for a loss. Points were added up. Thus, a student who answered a difficult question that no one else could answer received an advantage, and too easy questions or questions that no one could answer did not affect the final results.
Comparing each with each, we received a general rating of applicants, and comparing the answers of a person at the second stage with his answers at the first, we received an inaccurate, but characteristic, learning and readiness to work.
Third iteration
Having received a numerical assessment, it became clear to us that the group of leaders of five people has a significant lead over the other candidates in all respects. It was these five people, it was decided to invite for an interview.
After all the work done, interviewing is very simple. We discussed questions to find out if the candidate studied understood. They asked which questions they liked, which ones they did not, to which I wanted to hear the answer.
The main purpose of a personal interview is to understand how much the help of friends influenced the results.
Total
I still remember with joy the days of work in my first company. And I hope to gather at least a strong team under the current roof.
At the end of the interview, we found two that we wanted to take and get to work. We do not doubt that they will become excellent members of our team.
If anyone is interested, then with a general permission list of questions published here . There, of course, not all questions are ideal, many do not quite serve the declared goals and are needed only for the masses.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/68473/
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