I was recently asked what I look for when hiring engineers. This is an interesting question because I believe engineers are generally poor interviewers. My goal as a leader is to create an organization that has a broad range of skills and depth of experience, composed of individuals who are self motivated and have an interest in collaborative work. I'm a firm believer in the Agile principal of discussion before written specs, although I believe that writing down details of decisions and ideas, as well as fully baked designs, is important (more on this later).
So I look for engineers who can communicate clearly and concisely, getting across the relevant information and skipping the irrelevant details. I'll ask for those in due time. I am also looking for someone who can admit if they don't know something (I recall the advice I was given before a deposition on a patent infringement case: short and to the point answers, don't embellish or speculate. If you don't know, say you don't know).
Most important when hiring engineers, I am looking for someone who can teach me something. This serves two purposes. First, I discover that the candidate has skills and knowledge beyond mine, and can therefore complement me. And second, I learn whether the candidate can explain something clearly and concisely. What I learn from the candidate isn't necessarily directly related to required job skills. for example, I recall interviewing a candidate for a QA position who had worked in wireless networking. He explained to me how wireless radio networks worked and what kinds of events he looked for in testing them. While I wasn't looking for wireless experience, I learned something about that technology, and I discovered that the candidate had acquired a depth of experience on the subject matter he was testing.
I am not an advocate of the interview quiz, where an engineer asks a candidate a design question expecting a specific right answer. I find these are often egocentric to the interviewer and serve to show "I am smarter than you". Utilizing this technique results in teams of clones or acolytes rather than a team of professionals each bringing a set of skills to the task.
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