Agreed, it was very frustrating. They required that we follow the exact same set of interview questions for every candidate, verbatim. We were not allowed to ask technical questions or do any kind of proficiency questioning / testing, etc. When pressed, they said that we could ask follow up questions to their set of questions, and that we should be able to determine technical proficiency by inquiring about past experience.
Giving your HR group the benefit of the doubt, in my experience, when the pendulum has swung that far to the "process" side, it's because the company has been burned in some way in the past.
... And retaliates by burning everyone in it every day. That said, ive read more positive HR stories in this thread than I've seen everywhere else combined.
Not being allowed to ask technical questions sounds like a big problem.
Asking everyone exactly the questions at least seems like an attempt to ensure a level playing field for all candidates and eliminate bias that interviewers might not even realize is occurring.
Before starting my development career, I studied quite a bit of HR as part of my business degree. There was a fair amount of emphasis on a uniform, structured interview process largely to help eliminate interviewer bias.
The tech industry, and software companies in particular, are often accused of discriminating on the basis of age and gender. And I think that it does happen more than people want to admit, but I don't think it happens intentionally. People are terrible at recognizing their own biases. It's often not even conscious.
If we, as an industry, want to do something about it, we might consider listening more to what good HR professionals have to say. Yes, there are some HR people who are narrow minded and care more about rigidly adhering to process than about getting the best results. There are plenty of developers who meet that description, too.
I've heard so many developers dismiss all HR people as "HR drones" which is ridiculously unfair. If we actually care about eliminating bias from the hiring process, there's a lot we can learn by talking to good HR professionals. And yes, there are plenty of good ones. Some of them care just as much about a technically (and ethically) sound hiring process just as we care about good development process.
Technical questions are fine, and I'd argue that asking all candidates the same questions is one way to help eliminate bias. In combination with this, we could ask interviewers to rate the candidate based on their answers to the technical questions. If we wanted to go further, we could also ask people who didn't meet the candidate personally to rate the candidate based on their technical answers, without revealing any of the candidate's personal information (age, gender, ethnicity, etc.) and then compare these ratings. The comparison might help us see if our interview process is as fair as we think it is.
None of us want to believe we're biased interviewers, but from what I've seen of many technical interview processes, there are many tech companies who strongly believe their interview process is unbiased, but don't have much (or any) data upon which to base that belief.
But interviewing isn't about asking someone technical questions. It's about whether the candidate can get work done. I'll never understand the massive debate about the effectiveness of work-sample tests -- no questions, just "Here is some work. Can you do it?"
I've seen how effective it is. And how many people rebel against it. No idea why. Ego, sometimes. It's unfortunate.
