On the interview trail. As people will know like superman I have 2 persona’s, by day the mild mannered information technology lecturer by night street wise software entrepreneur. In this later persona I have been interviewing for graduate programmers this last week. While the computer programmers I was recruiting for are more technically oriented than our students in the Information Strategy group it is perhaps informative for those of us trying to prepare our charges for the world of work.
I’ll describe what happened later but for those who don’t read so far the conclusions are that those who both showed a baseline of basic competence and a level of enthusiasm for the subject got the job. In whittling down the applicant we took some notice of degree (subject, university and class) but we certainly didn’t assume that just because someone had done a three-year course in software engineering they could write a tiny computer program. Once we had got candidates to show us a bit of their skills, it was enthusiasm for the subject that counted we don’t want people mopping around the office waiting for break time.
From this I conclude we need to help our students to develop skills that industry wants and to communicate our enthusiasm for the subject to them. If as lecturers we don’t have enthusiasm for our subject we need to go and regain that love of information systems.
For our work interviews half of all applicants applying for the job at www.villagesoftware.co.uk came from John Moores School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences. Half from other regional institutions. We had trimmed down from about 30 applicants to 12 for an initial phone sort and then invited 6 to interview of which 5 attended.
We focused on skills, knowledge and enthusiasm. The candidates were given a three page test. While observed and in discussion with a senior developer.
They had to produce a small computer program in a language of their choice based on the Fizz Buzz test, a test that says ‘ok write me a tiny piece of program’. Of the five graduate programmers who showed, one walked straight through this test no problem, 3 produced passable attempts after about 30 minutes and one failed to put anything credible together (John Moores Student I’m afraid).
They then went on to tackle an entity relationship diagram, for this I gave them a simplified version of the Lancashire Chemicals Operational Stock Control case study which I am currently haunting the 4th Year BIS students with in their Design of Enterprise IS course. None of them were great at this, 3 had a weak attempt and 2 had no concept of the technique. Interestingly we have recently come across ‘senior developers’ (those on about 30K) with similarly no real concept of database design.
Finally we presented one page of functional but poor computer program, written by my own fair hand, and asked the candidates what was wrong with it. They did better here, 4 of the 5 able to make at least some clear comment on quality failures but none left the impression that they really new the difference between industrial strength programming and hobby software development.
These ‘go on show me’ tests sorted the men out from the boys a bit (on this occasion all applicants were male). But we also interviewed them on a series of software development questions, which we had simplified from Coders at Work interview questions. One of the key differences this made was differentiating those who have an enthusiasm for the subject. Some candidates clearly came across as seeing their career as a software developer as an agreeable way to keep the wolf from the door while staying out of the rain, but showed no essential enthusiasm for the subject. As a manager I’d rather be containing peoples enthusiasm than flogging a dead horse.
It all makes me think that at the end of our courses we will offer our students a greater chance of happiness in life if we teach them skills that help them in the world of work but also inspire enthusiasm in the subject that will make working life interesting rather than a drag for wage slaves. Sometimes I feel this will involve some ‘tough love’.