Intro

This article describes my approach to the interview process.

Communication Skills

Whether you are a writer or an engineer, your communication skills are a key component of your day to day job.  I'll be looking to see how well you communicate to different audiences by asking some indirect questions.  For example:

• Explain your last successful project.
• How do you explain to your kids/parents what you do at work / what your company does.

I'm looking to make sure you are not using jargon or too much (irrelevant) detail.  Succinct descriptions that give me the high-level picture is what I want.

Problem-Solving Skills

Most interviews will have some aspect of problem-solving.  After all, companies are paying you to solve problems.  But not all problems are well-understood and it requires the person working on it to seek additional information.  During the interview, I may ask you to solve a problem that is purposely ambiguous to see how you react. 

• Do you stall or choke when the problem is unclear? 
• Do you ask for needed information?  Perhaps ask way too much?
• Do you start working on a solution without fully understanding the problem?

Passion

We all want to work with people who are passionate about their jobs.  This will manifest itself during the interview in how a candidate describes his previous experiences or any other non-work (technical) activities.  I once interviewed a college freshman for an internship position.  He described how he loved programming and had been entering programming competitions since he was 12 yrs old.   In his resume, he had links to the websites hosting these events so I looked at them after the interview and confirmed not only how early he had started programming but also the level of difficulty on the problems he solved.   I called him back and made him an offer.