Interviewing a Programmer For Team Work
3/Oct 2012
One of the most underrated abilities of a great programmer in my opinion is team work. Some companies realize this and attempt to recruit team players. The problem is how do you determine if the applicant is a team player?
The most common practice is to call references and ask them how well the candidate worked as part of a team. This approach has a few drawbacks, like the candidate hand picking these references thus casting doubt on the reliability of their testament. This reference might not not have been a core part of the team therefor not really in a good position to judge. So even unintentionally this candidate can choose a bad reference in terms of team work.
I suggest that there might be a more natural and unbiased test that the interviewer can preform to verify the other sources that he might consult, does in fact give a good reflection of the candidates ability. Please note that I am not suggesting that this method should be used exclusively only that I might give a credit to other sources.
The Method:
I think that a multi-player (team) game creates a natural environment for a young programmer (Older ones might not be comfortable with it) to demonstrate her ability to be part of a team. A game like DotA is in my mind perfect but other games will also work.When playing an intense game that the subject is familiar with his attention will be diverted for trying to impress the interviewers and on to what is happening in the game. This will allow his true team work to show. It is more natural for some people to always take the lead or play a more supporting role on the team which will be visible in the game very quickly according to how she communicates and behaves toward her team mates. I don’t want to make this post to long and go over all the signs and behavior that can be gleaned by playing with the interviewee but I think that it will be a valuable source of information that is currently very difficult to obtain. These might include but are not limited to:
- Communication skills
- How does she handle orders
- How does she handle having to take the lead
- How does she react when criticized for failure (Both if it if she did fail and when she is falsely accused)
- How does she handle pressure.