Hiring in the age of StackOverflow

Hiring in the age of StackOverflow

When interviewing people for any role / job in this new age, what is important to ask is can they think on their feet ? Because other than that, everything else is available on Stackoverflow.

The world now operates in an ‘open book test’ mode. If you know what to search and where, you will be able to get the pointers. Just taking that and applying to your context is what remains.

25 years back, when we were just out of college, the evaluation for jobs was to give us code repeated tests that would evaluate if we knew the language, and the corner syntax conditions, like ‘ a++; ++a ‘. Because we had to code without help. The IDEs were also not what they are today.

Life is asking our developers to solve different problems. Ask the question: does this person have the aptitude to learn quickly ? Languages, technology, frameworks, tools will all change. But the soft skills are difficult to teach. Specially in the age of remote working. A self motivated learner would need less help, get more done.

So, this year, resolve that the only interview you, and your company, are going to do is to judge if it’s the right person, not whether they know the technology.