[dopamean]

I am an instructor at a coding bootcamp and I conduct technical interviews of our applicants pretty regularly. I have recently been very concerned with tackling the idea the author first addresses: not hiring (or in my case admitting) for what people already know. Our program only has 12 weeks with the students and so what I am most concerned with is the applicant's ability to pick up new concepts quickly.

In the past we have tested students on the little bit of Ruby or Javascript they had studied to prepare for the interview. I am of the belief that that method has helped determine who knows a little bit of Ruby but not who can ramp up on complicated topics quickly during the program. My attempts to address this have led me to doing a 15 minute lesson on something totally new to the applicant and then having them answer questions based off of that lesson. So far I've found it to be useful.

Technical interviews are hard. It's easy to suck at them.