It’s definitely attractive to sit on the other side of the table playing demigod to the souls who desperately want to prove their competence to you. I got such an opportunity and man it was a damn good feeling. I still wonder why the managers decided to send me to interview candidates, of course yours truly is brilliant no doubt in that, but generally a one year experienced is not given an opportunity to change the fate of many and the company.
Most of my colleagues were happy that I would recruit more females and the others were unhappy for the same reason. I still wonder why people have that notion about me being biased towards female candidates. However I am still happy for the fact that they don’t think I might be biased towards males. So all set, I and two of my fellow colleagues were chosen to interview candidates for our division.
I started preparing for the interview the previous night and brushed up the basics with my collected interview papers when I was looking out for a job. Googling is the easiest way but many candidates would have done the same and you obviously want to give them something unexpected. I slept at around 1 and woke up at 6 and started preparing again. It took me a whole night to realize that I am not attending the interview rather taking the interview. Still I dint wanna risk and downloaded few questions in my lappy.
As soon as we reached the venue we found a huge crowd gathered around the gate. They were apparently late and hence not allowed to take the interview. We walked pompously towards the gate showing off the IBM BATCH (You should have witnessed the crowd watching us; it was either like watching a hippo in a zoo or looking at the angels descending from the Heaven to purge their sins). The security guy mistook us for candidates and we had a tough time explaining him that we were from IBM, damn… it was one embarrassing moment which sent the pompous walk packing.
Though we were supposed to conduct only personal interviews we helped the HRs in conducting the written test. I had a nostalgic feeling of how I wrote the same written test 2 years ago in my college. But I still can’t comprehend why students try to copy in the test. We decided not to create a scene by catching the candidates red-handed rather to give them a treat in the technical interview. Around 1/6th of the candidates were filtered from the written test. I and my colleague were given ten candidates to interview.
We decided to give a puzzle initially, then few algorithm questions and then move-on to some language basics and then to screw his/her area of interest. Our idea of giving the puzzle was to ensure that the candidate is accustomed to the environment and feels comfortable. Ironically it backfired and I was able to see most of the candidates freaking out and giving bizarre answers. So we decided to reduce the level of difficulty for the successive candidates. I heard so many “sir” that day that it compensated for the lack of the word in the corporate culture.
I was particularly impressed with a ECE candidate for he was so good in JAVA even though he dint have a JAVA course in his syllabus. “How did you learn so much in JAVA?”
“Sir my room-mate in hostel was a comp-sci guy and I was involved with him in doing his JAVA project”
“What other language do you know?”
“Sir Kannada Sir”. I was really astonished to hear the answer and still wonder whether that was an innocent reply or he was trying to give us something back.
To another candidate “What is the difference between C and C++?”
“Sir C++ has structures and classes but C don’t.”
What??? “Are you sure that C doesn’t have structures? How did you implement Linked list in C?” I said after recovering from the temporary shock, to give her a second chance.
“Ohh I am sorry C++ has structures and C has only classes”
To another candidate “Can you write a program to reverse a linked list?”
She evaded the question by saying “You can use Doubly Linked list na sir, why make life miserable using Singly Linked List”.
“What is the use of DLLs?”
“Sir Doubly Linked List is used for…”
“Well I meant the DLL files of Microsoft” “I don’t know sir”
This candidate was ultimate, had mugged up all the theory ones but in the wrong order. “What is the difference between array and linked list?” “Sir linked list is contiguous memory but array is non-contiguous” “Are you sure array doesn’t have a contiguous memory allocation” “Yes sir. We can get any member of the array so array is definitely non-contiguous”
Another candidate after screwing up the whole interview “Sir I am a very hard working candidate sir, I might not have been able to answer some questions because of the nervousness caused by interview sir. Bu I am a quick learner and can adapt to any situation sir” She had prepared that finishing statement very well.
After rejecting many we were finally able to find enough candidates who met our requirements. When we were done it was close to ten. It was a great learning process, but was a very tiring one too. I wasn’t able to get up till 12 the next noon. Looking back, I wouldn’t go for interviewing candidates again. The anguish in a candidate’s face in the middle of the interview when they know that they had done enough damage beyond repair will make you sleepless for weeks!!!
