> If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken.
I think the better way of putting that is "Interviewing is broken". Determining that a candidate meets a minimum level of skill-set is possible to do in an interview, however, determining much beyond that is highly elusive. I've had candidates that were incredible "Used Car Salesmen", who the previous interviewers wanted to "skip the technical interview" and just hire the guy outright because he was so convincing only to have his outcome in the technical interview end up being terrible (and I've had candidates get the job where this fact was discovered too late)[0]. I've had candidates that I've had to have a fight nearly come to blows to get a candidate hired because they were so nervous that they completely bombed the interview, and that "accurate portfolio of their skill set" was the only thing, outside of my insistence, that got them hired (out of the few this has happened with, all were good hires, too).
I'm not asking anyone to jump through my hoops (especially now that I'm working at a place where I, thankfully, no longer interview candidates). I don't ask candidates to white-board code (I wouldn't let them if they wanted to), but given a candidate who has a solid portfolio against a candidate who does not -- assuming all other things are equal (or the portfolio is incredible) -- I'm going to hire the one with a portfolio. And I feel it is a personal responsibility of mine to keep that stuff up-to-date. I could do a better job of it, myself, but if I failed to get a job because I lacked in that area, I wouldn't blame anyone but myself.
[0] I blame myself for this one -- he could talk up and down about concepts; was hugely into functional programming at a time when that was less mainstream. He not only knew all of the buzzwords, but he knew the "why"'s behind them. Academically speaking, he was incredibly knowledgeable. It wasn't until he had to actually learn an existing code base and contribute to it that it was discovered he lacked in execution. A manager on his team felt that he "froze up" ... would write something seven different ways and keep coming back to it while writing follow-on features until all he was doing was modifying code he'd already written to yield the same result, just slightly differently. I, arrogantly, assumed he was too good for the half-rate programmers we hired but upon running into someone who worked with him at the company he came from, it was discovered that he was not actually employed by them at the time he was interviewing as he'd been let go a couple of weeks prior ... and he had the same problem there.
I think the better way of putting that is "Interviewing is broken". Determining that a candidate meets a minimum level of skill-set is possible to do in an interview, however, determining much beyond that is highly elusive. I've had candidates that were incredible "Used Car Salesmen", who the previous interviewers wanted to "skip the technical interview" and just hire the guy outright because he was so convincing only to have his outcome in the technical interview end up being terrible (and I've had candidates get the job where this fact was discovered too late)[0]. I've had candidates that I've had to have a fight nearly come to blows to get a candidate hired because they were so nervous that they completely bombed the interview, and that "accurate portfolio of their skill set" was the only thing, outside of my insistence, that got them hired (out of the few this has happened with, all were good hires, too).
I'm not asking anyone to jump through my hoops (especially now that I'm working at a place where I, thankfully, no longer interview candidates). I don't ask candidates to white-board code (I wouldn't let them if they wanted to), but given a candidate who has a solid portfolio against a candidate who does not -- assuming all other things are equal (or the portfolio is incredible) -- I'm going to hire the one with a portfolio. And I feel it is a personal responsibility of mine to keep that stuff up-to-date. I could do a better job of it, myself, but if I failed to get a job because I lacked in that area, I wouldn't blame anyone but myself.
[0] I blame myself for this one -- he could talk up and down about concepts; was hugely into functional programming at a time when that was less mainstream. He not only knew all of the buzzwords, but he knew the "why"'s behind them. Academically speaking, he was incredibly knowledgeable. It wasn't until he had to actually learn an existing code base and contribute to it that it was discovered he lacked in execution. A manager on his team felt that he "froze up" ... would write something seven different ways and keep coming back to it while writing follow-on features until all he was doing was modifying code he'd already written to yield the same result, just slightly differently. I, arrogantly, assumed he was too good for the half-rate programmers we hired but upon running into someone who worked with him at the company he came from, it was discovered that he was not actually employed by them at the time he was interviewing as he'd been let go a couple of weeks prior ... and he had the same problem there.