Submission + - Selecting Against Experience... Do Employers Know?
IBitOBear writes: A couple days ago I did "the interview loop" at that leading online retailer. Over the course of six hours I was repeatedly introduced to a guy in his early twenties, who would then ask me to write out code on a white-board for a problem that you might find in the study guide for a 200-level computer science class. I have 20 years of experience in programming and systems design. And in several cases the interviewers were vague, semantically incorrect, or self-contradictory. Interviewer blunders included not understanding that non-normal forms in databases can be more correct or efficient when the domain of a data is extremely limited; or choosing a leader amongst N candidates is a byzantine agreement problem. In short, the loop would have been perfect to weed out some guy getting his first job fresh out of school, but it definitely exerted selection pressure towards excluding experienced candidates. So employers, what are you doing to make sure that you are not culling out candidates with the low-ball? And job seekers, what do you do when you find yourself trapped in a sophomore study group?
