Anyone else feels technical rounds in interviews should be prohibited?

Posted by KnightWolf217@reddit | programming | View on Reddit | 8 comments

As someone who has both given and taken interviews, I feel technical interviews are overused and badly affect the process, often defeating the purpose of the hiring.

Technical interviews often have targeted coding challenges which one barely encounters during his/her job. This creates a divide between people who are constantly spending time on coding challenges, and others who are a regular programmer. Due to this they end up shortlisting candidates who are geeks at programming, and arguably less experienced to real life scenarios. Ironically, they want someone with real life experience and also want someone who can solve geeky problems.

More importantly, the person getting interviewed gets nervous doing challenges in front of people during a job interview which is already tense enough. This highly affects their ability to solve the problem especially in a short duration. A normal programmer doesn't work with such short time frames let alone with people watching him like an owl.

The person getting interviewed would have a qualification and experience, which naturally denotes his capability to do programming. I strongly feel technical interviews should be limited and focus should be on the person's achievements and profile, and how he/she fits in into the role.