I have recently been to two interviews, both of them were quite similar to each, the way they were conducted and what they asked, but would it be okay to say that interviews for internships, especially at software companies including the big giants, are being done right? What would be the perfect Interview process?
In general the typical procedure for an interview would involve coding rounds of different types :- 1. online coding round, tech coding round, ranging from 1 round to 4 rounds depending on the company. And then a HR round. Getting to the HR round is generally the key to nailing it, because the HR round usually includes general conversation about your interests which are just a confirmation for the value you would be adding to the company.
I remember my experience of preparing for these two interviews. Both of them involved me going through past interview experinces of the following two companies. In the case of one of them, I also had resources for the “most frequently asked questions” from the company’s interviews, which begs the qustion, is there a point to this? One might argue that at the end of the day there are only so many questions which one can make uniquely and so at some point of time you are bound to get repeated questions, but then if that were the case, why do it all, rather instead use another method of screening.
It’s easy to see that the following methods starts to bring in luck and chance as features for getting selected. This is strengthened by the fact that the interviewers aren’t constant for all the interviewers and don’t ask the same questions to all the interviewees. Thus it could so very happen that the one student gets a set of questions he so happens to have read, while another gets a set, which is the only set he/sahe had left unread. Weirdly this works on both fronts, when people are judged on the same thing, and when people are judged differently. A good way and mathematical way to counteract such an incident would be naturally to hold many such rounds. Although this is a good way of ensuring the lot which the company retains after each round is of good quality it does not talk about whether the lot the company has let out was really bad, or was it just bad luck.
Yet another solution to this would be to simply to conduct all rounds for all people without eliminating anyone. But this slowly becomes a less feasible option when the number of students to test starts increasing.
So we now have our final problem or should I say constraints. An interview process which:-
- Jayakrishna Sahit