I ask all the interns that I interview to hire, "why do you want this job?" I can pretty much tell by the answer alone whether or not they are going to work out. Those that say, "I didn't know what to study" or "I heard there was a good career in this" I can pretty much write off. They almost never want to learn anything except what they learned for a grade. Often its over for them after school, they'll never have the drive to learn what they really need to advance. I always tell them that dollar for dollar, we are one of the poorest paid fields. The amount of time we spend learning vs how much we are paid is way out of proportion even with our technical salaries. They never believe me.
It's those that get kind of that geekish giggle about some theoretical concept (state machines, some language concept they discovered they think is cool, compilers, etc.) I know are going to be great.
These are the ones that I really go after. With these people it doesn't matter how much they know at that moment, because when they're done, they'll know more. They'll keep doing it too.
There's another aspect to this though. Programmers have to be smart and get things done. In my experience of interviewing and hiring these qualities can entirely orthogonal. I've hired people who program enthusiastically on side projects and study advanced topics at the weekend but are pain in the workplace; overcomplicating tasks and working slowly while others deliver faster and with better quality. At the same time I've worked with people who express no interest in any realm of computing outside their direct area of expertise. They work hard from 9-5 being extremely productive and I know that they don't think about so much as a bit or a byte until they come into work the next day.
> There's another aspect to this though. Programmers have to be smart and get things done. In my experience of interviewing and hiring these qualities can entirely orthogonal. I've hired people who program enthusiastically on side projects and study advanced topics at the weekend but are pain in the workplace; overcomplicating tasks and working slowly while others deliver faster and with better quality. At the same time I've worked with people who express no interest in any realm of computing outside their direct area of expertise. They work hard from 9-5 being extremely productive and I know that they don't think about so much as a bit or a byte until they come into work the next day.
Speaking of teams, I'm usually the least productive member of any team I've been a part of because I often fall into the role of project servant: someone who bounces across team members as they get stuck with something or another. The best compliment I've gotten is that the role is that of the guy who gets ammo from person to person at the end of saving private Ryan: not the sexiest job but someone is doing it.
> I ask all the interns that I interview to hire, "why do you want this job?" I can pretty much tell by the answer alone whether or not they are going to work out. Those that say, "I didn't know what to study" or "I heard there was a good career in this" I can pretty much write off.
I would be careful about making that assumption - it was only 4 1/2 years ago when I landed my first job as a developer after 2 1/2 years of searching for any career track job after leaving my PhD program in mathematics. I was someone who was willing to do anything and was open to a wide variety of jobs. I put in long hours outside of work early in my career to learn and grow, with the mindset that I was behind and needed to accelerate my learning greatly - I had a work ethic that might be seldom seen in the industry, and a proven intelligence to match.
Fast forward to today, I am right now actively interviewing and being hotly contested by many companies for senior, lead, and management roles, including the likes of Google and Apple with multiple onsites scheduled or being scheduled (4 alone between Google and Apple over the next week or so).
IMO companies should try to tease out characteristics of people - how do they handle difficult situations, how open are they to feedback, how hard are they willing to work (especially earlier on), and how smart are they? Positive answers to these questions when interviewing inexperienced people are probably the biggest factors in determining the likelihood of someone being successful IMO (don't ask these questions directly of course, but the answers should be teased out).
Yes, it's the soft questions that really answer, "will this guy excel," for me. I'm on a sabbatical and I'm using the time to develop a product, because that's what I like to do. I want people like that.
I ask all the interns that I interview to hire, "why do you want this job?" I can pretty much tell by the answer alone whether or not they are going to work out. Those that say, "I didn't know what to study" or "I heard there was a good career in this" I can pretty much write off. They almost never want to learn anything except what they learned for a grade. Often its over for them after school, they'll never have the drive to learn what they really need to advance. I always tell them that dollar for dollar, we are one of the poorest paid fields. The amount of time we spend learning vs how much we are paid is way out of proportion even with our technical salaries. They never believe me.
It's those that get kind of that geekish giggle about some theoretical concept (state machines, some language concept they discovered they think is cool, compilers, etc.) I know are going to be great. These are the ones that I really go after. With these people it doesn't matter how much they know at that moment, because when they're done, they'll know more. They'll keep doing it too.