Completely the other side of the table from what I’m used to and haven’t a clue where to start.

We are looking to recruit experienced technical staff as at the moment we have way too shallow a skill set on too many projects and I’m constantly firefighting to keep everything on track with no time to properly upskill existing staff.

How technical a question can I go in an interview? I want to ask how to troubleshoot equipment A (industry standard kit)) from set of symptoms but was told it might be too hard.

Any advice?

There will be another person doing the soar stories etc.

1st interview is to see if you (the company) and the candidate like each other. Introduce the company, probe into technical areas without going full geek of course.
It’s perfectly acceptable to get more information specific and even set a short technical test for the second interview.

If it’s for a technical position then go for it. Depending on how common your industry kit is though it might be worth exploring the thought process (how to troubleshoot) as much as knowledge on a given piece of kit (I’ve got this error – what does it mean).

I’ve sat in interviews (and I’m moderately technical in my field) where our subject matter expert and the interviewee have been having technical conversations and I’m just about keeping up.

Ask what you need to ask. There’s no “too difficult” – if it were me I’d be looking for a logical approach to problem-solving even if they couldn’t fix the problem. One of the best techs I ever took on knew nothing about computers, he was a car mechanic looking for a career change. I asked him, “my car won’t start, what do you do?” – “Well, I’d check the fuel line, if fuel was getting through then it’s likely to be an electrical problem, is there a spark…” and so on. Textbook answer, unrelated to the field but showed he had the right thought process.

Questions in a tree. First one is simple, then follow answer down to more detail. When they can’t carry on back up and follow the next branch.

Ask us a technical question

http://www.27bslash6.com/interviews.html 😉

I had to interview people for a technical role with a broad skill set required. I decided about 8 tech tests. Explained I didn’t expect them to know it all but to answer what they could. It allowed me to see how they approached things they didn’t fully understand as that would happen on the job.

When I worked for a Motorsport company they asked everyone, including admin staff, to read and explain a rather complex engineering drawing. Again I think it was more about the approach than technical knowledge.

I expect most technical people would rather answer tech questions than trite HR style clichéd questions

Could be worth documenting a case study with some specific questions and get them to read, consider and then you interview using that.

I’m definitely interested in thought processes as a lot of what we do is non standard oddball development work forcing standard kit to do a job (there are 3 manufacturers of the main equipment we use and all are identical at the heart).

Which is why I think they need to be able to sort out equipment Vs method/sample problems.

So the other interviewer doesn’t have to understand what we are talking about?

I claim OP is an ‘office bulls**t” troll….

He said shallow skill set , firefighting and upskill and no one even noticed.

Standards are slipping.

I expect most technical people would rather answer tech questions than trite HR style clichéd questions

Oh yes.

So the other interviewer doesn’t have to understand what we are talking about?

Sure. If they did there’d be no point you being there.

Do you have a piece of kit with a (repeatable) issue that you can actually give them to solve? I used to do this with software – write some code, which had a few bugs (but compiled fine) and then ask them to debug it and watch (without hovering over them constantly) how they do it and they though process. That reveals much more than someone telling me how they would do it. You do need it to be a problem they can solve in a realistic time frame. If their role involves talking to non techies then ask them to come back into the interview and explain what they did and and what the problem was to your colleague. If they are more likely to do that by email in the job then ask them to write that email!

There is some awesome tech speak on here. Upskill is training isn’t it?
Firefighting dealing with day to day problems? Shallow skill set lacks experience?

This is not out of the ordinary for most businesses these days.

Find somebody with the right attitude who is reasonably intelligent then train them to the required level.

In most of my recent interviews there has been 3 people.

Me (the hiring manager)
Our subject matter expert
Someone from HR

All looking for different things. If I can only just follow the expert and candidate the likely HR completely lost on the topic but they should still be evaluating things based on body language; willingness to engage and all that good stuff.

When I was a NOC duty manager on a nightshift I’d be given a 6-12inch pile of CV’s to sort thru then I would mark em up for a first interview or not, sorting the typical agency crud out. Knowing that there was a 1 in 4 chance I would interview them or that I would be interviewing ones marked up by my peers. First thing I would have in mind would I have them on my shift? If so then most likely they’d get on with the other shifts too.

Sod the tests, in most cases 15-30 mins having a good read of the CV concerned beforehand will set you up for your questions specific for that individual, if they have said they have a particular skill then test them, not to the n’th degree but enough to identify BS, look for gaps, what were they doing for that 18 months missing etc.. Got a pile of those CBT test type certs, have they any real world to back those up and so on.

Then there is nothing worse as a candidate for a role going into an interview and being tested rote questions by someone that has not prepared beforehand, would you work for some muppet or org like that? Part of the interview is selling your business to a prime candidate, so be bloody professional.

Lastly and this it bloody important MAKE PLENTY OF NOTES this is even more important for someone you discount as you have to make sure of not falling foul or even having a taint of discrimination.

Just ask them what they do for hobbies!

IME, decent technical people are the ones with a science/technology interest outside of the job.

We have to do a bench test now ,ever since my old boss employed a chap from his church who was quickly proven to be dangerous.
As above ,provide a technical drawing and ask “What is x,yorz” & we give them some commonly used gear and ask them to make it work.

Getting them to troubleshoot something real-world sounds like a good plan but you’d obviously need to be evaluating their methodology etc. not just success/fail so you’d need to plan it pretty well and run through it as a test exercise a few times with existing staff.

On the IT side when I got asked to start interviewing people we had standard HR questions to get through, after that I just tried to get a better a idea on the candidates past experience and projects and the questions would mostly just be reacting to what they’d said.

The standard test we had was a joke, a mix of very basic stuff and other stuff you’d probably only touch on when brushing up for an MS exam (not hard as such, just largely irrelevant in the real world). I spent quite a bit of time changing it, I kept some basic questions as a warm-up but added much more difficult questions as well – but also warned the candidates beforehand it wasn’t expected they’d be able to answer them all so as not to freak them out.

I think it worked pretty well although it was an eye opener how little some people applying knew (despite claiming multiple years experience in a 3rd line role).

I like Cougar’s approach. Rather than go “full techie” and asking text book questions (lazy IMO) I’d rather get to know the person as a whole. They might be able to recite the manual to you and tell you exactly which buttons does what but what is the thought process? Are they logical and analytical in approach? Can they give you real world examples?

Many years ago when the CNE qualification first became the industry standard the company I worked for decided to put a bunch of staff through the exams. Rather than just sending SEs they decided to send a field service engineer too. I crammed the course in a week then did the exams and passed. Ask me a question about Novell and I would have answered confidently. I then went to my first solo site visit… Clueless. I would also add that I crammed and passed several MCP exams by cramming mock exams.

Nothing beats real world experience.

My standard ice-breaker is to get them to explain their last couple of projects – I work in software, so getting them to detail the system it was running on, libraries used, problems encountered etc. is usually a good starting point. Maybe chuck in a couple of questions about the latest releases of software we use, just to see if they like to keep up to date in the field.

I have a set list of Qs from noddy to very deep and ask everyone the same set. That way I have an absolute reference point on where they fall.

I try as much as I can to help them get each question right, so if they don’t know the answer we discuss the issue giving them as many clues as necessary. They only score a tick if they get it with no help.

I find it very insightful to see how much help they need and how they think.

If they get them all right they generally get a job offer there and then. Not many do…

I claim OP is an ‘office bulls**t” troll….

Sorry – years of listening to the stuff has me talking the same rubbish.

Thanks for all the feedback, most helpful.

Am I allowed to look at their linkedin profile? It’s public so I expect the interviewee to look at mine as they have my details.

No hands on stuff unfortunately – as they need site safety training etc before being allowed near the equipment. Certainly no “by rote/textbook” questions either. More, “if you have 1200 bar back pressure how would you go about discovering the cause?” type question.

100% professional as we can be client facing and it is expected they will be too.

Am I allowed to look at their linkedin profile?

During the interview would probably be poor form. (-:

Why not? I’d also look at their Facebook profile, which can often be much more insightful. Not just what they get up to but whether they’re stupid enough to make it publicly visible.

I’ve just been through an interview process (and I start on Monday…), and I was very impressed with the structure.

They had two online interviews (the company is is Portland, Oregon) and the first one was a technical interview, followed by a second cultural-fit interview.

Both, though, were done by asking the interviewee to describe a time where they had a particular problem (I seem to remember there were about 6 asked) and how they went around resolving it. It meant that you not only got to hear about their knowledge but also about their thinking process and how they interacted with others to achieve resolution.

Think about problems you actually have – build them into a list of things that are going to explore different skill sets and there you go.

Rachel

Those are the SOAR (situation/obstacle/action/result) stories, standard interview stuff.

Lets you understand the way people think/approach problems they have chosen so dubious (As you can pre-define 20 or so situations ahead of time – at least that’s what I did) but no real help with technical stuff/experience which is what we really need.

Both, though, were done by asking the interviewee to describe a time where they had a particular problem

aka Competency Based interview. Had to prep the wife for a few of these in the past…

Am I allowed to look at their linkedin profile? It’s public so I expect the interviewee to look at mine as they have my details.

Oh yes. That used to form an early step of assessing who to bring in for interview. Is there agreement between LinkedIn and their supplied CV?

It’s also handy if LinkedIn identifies any skills or experiences that might be useful in the interview, even if only to start conversation between the door and the interview location.