Ask HN: When interviewing candidates do you ask them about their side projects?

[andyish]

I was speaking with a friend a few weeks ago and they said that they've been warned off asking candidates about their side projects.

I can understand not asking it for more senior roles where there's a lot of history to draw on but for graduates/interns/juniors/mids do you ask them what they building on the side and see where their passions lie? Or do we just sound like relics from a bygone era?

[austin-cheney]

When interviewing for past jobs this is all over the place.

* Some places are incredibly interested in my side projects. They want to know about the motivation, the solution, and more. These places are really interested in what interests the candidate, their initiative, and their capacity for independently solving real problems.

* Some places are mild concerned about side projects, because they want to determine the real level of actual experience and capabilities, but are otherwise interested in anything about the side projects.

* Most of the time they only want to know about work history. In these cases I really feel like they are looking for mindless automatons on conveyor belt to supplement their pool of low confidence beginners.

This experience from interviewing for JavaScript related jobs. I stopped doing that line of work more than a year ago. Now, in the real world, places are more interested in my prior leadership experiences. This mostly means all the overseas adventures I have gone on in the military and only mild interest in my side programming projects just enough to know that I am a self-starter.

[andyish]

This aligns with my own experience, though it seems to be one extreme or the other. Either the interviewer is fascinated and wants to know how it was done (rather than anything to do with implementation), or they don't care.

I don't have any overseas adventures though (:

[rvz]

Depends on the "side project'.

Due to the age of AI, I ask it to *everyone*. It is enough to filter in those who would go the extra mile to build high quality and widely used software dependent on by others versus those who just call it a day.

Obviously, I would be interested if it is the following:

* It should not be a hello world project.

* The project solves a problem that is relevant or similar to the job description.

* The company happens to use a critical piece of software that the person is maintaining or has contributed to.

* It makes money.

It's very simple, but the goal is to give an easy reason to the interviewer as to why you are "exceptional" against the competition. We are also in the age where there is rampant title inflation. "Juniors" posing as "Seniors" and vice versa. So weeding them out with extra projects, etc is exactly what I would do.

"Seniority" and work history is just not good enough against 100s of "seniors" or "juniors" in the candidate pipeline.

[JohnFen]

I always ask this regardless of whether or not they're senior level. I think the answer can give a real insight into what sorts of things gets the person excited. If they don't have any programming side projects, that's not a mark against them, but I will follow up with asking them what their hobbies are.

[andyish]

I think this is the way forward, their answer wouldn't turn an offer into a rejection but it would strengthen their offer.

I must admit I also ask this question but have never been told not to and I find that every so often you come across a very senior candidate who nonchalantly says 'yeah, I built a plugin for abc that helps me xyz'. Then you look it up and they've got 500k installs.

[breckenedge]

I’d avoid it. You’re opening yourself up to subtle discrimination if they answer “no” and may (consciously/unconsciously) eliminate quality candidates who don’t have the time for side projects. What if they have a situation that prevents them from working on projects outside of work, such as young children or aging parents to take care of?