Taking Interviews

Taking interviews is an experience in itself. Different companies place different requirements for recruiting candidates. We need to check out different things. The question is: How do we check those?

Here is my guide on how to check out different aspects of the prospective candidates:

Stability: Ask the candidate about his future plans. Whether they want to study further or not is enough for fresh candidates. For ex. if they say they would go for MBA after 2 years, then check your requirements whether two year is an enough interval for them to be helpful to the company. Past record can tell about experienced candidates.

Gets stuck: Keep on increasing the standard of the questions till the candidate gets stuck. For ex. Ask them what is 5 * 5. Then ask them what is 7*7. Then 11*11. Keep on increasing this level till they are unable to answer. Lets say they get stuck when you ask them 59*51. Does the candidate give up without thinking? Do they try something logically like 59*51 = 59*(50+1) = 2950 + 59 = 3009? If they do, then they are a Thumbs Up on this one. They got stuck and they managed to get their way out.

Seek Help and Move forward: Grill them on one of your favorites. For ex. take them out for a treasure hunt where each next stage depends on the answer of the previous. Check how many stages they are able to cross themselves! Once they get stuck, do they remain stuck forever or do they ask for your help? If they do, do they do it immediately without thinking. If yes, Thumbs Down. If not, then give them hints. Are they able to understand the hints and work logically forward. If yes, Thumbs Up.

Team Work: Tell them that they have to answer a question on How much is 11*Z. Z is an input that they require from a team member but the team member is a little slow and thats why your dates are getting slipped? How will they solve this problem?

Confidence: Try and test their skills on how sure they are about what they speak. For ex. Ask them how much is 5*5. If they answer 25, ask them Are you Sure? If they say it with confidence, ask them again. If they are again sure, they are one up. Then look out for a question where they are wrong. For ex. Ask them how much is 9*11. If they answer 98, ask them Are you Sure? If they say it with confidence, then they are Thumbs Down on this one. They would be putting bugs here and there without bothering to ask whats right or wrong. If they rethink, then they are a Thumbs Up on this one.

Communication Skills: Ask them to explain something which they are very comfortable but you are not. If you are able to understand, it means the candidate can explain what he knows well to a person who does not know it. Then ask them to explain a thing they do not know and maybe you know. For ex. Ask them to visualize how Alps look like? If they explain it well, they are a Thumbs Up when it comes to explaining both things they know and things they might not.

Treasure Hunting with the Freshers

I have been involved in training freshers joining my company for the past 3 years. For the past two years, I was doing it in my previous company and this year I am doing it in my current organization. One of the most useful things which I have been able to do with the new freshers is helping them get the basics right. It is very important for them to understand how things flow in a project. For ex. how things flow from specification to design to coding to testing. It is almost like a game of Treasure Hunt where the answer to each question provides a clue to the next step. Without completing the first question, you cannot jump to the next one and this is very important for the freshers to understand. If they do not understand the specification, they cannot understand the design and so on.

Now in most cases it happens that the puzzle has already been solved by some experienced guys who have been playing the Treasure Hunt game for quite a few years now. In these cases, it is important for the freshers to understand how the puzzle was solved.

One thing (both theoretically and practically feasible) which I work on with freshers is to help them map the specifications onto the code with the help of design. It consists of the following steps:

1. Start reading the specifications and give a presentation on it to ensure basics are properly understood
2. Read the design document to understand the clues on how to convert specifications to code.
3. Prepare a document which maps the specification line by line to the code.

In doing so, they understand how everything is linked together and help in finding problems in the existing code helping in getting a better product.

White Coat Hypertension

Wikipedia gives the following definition of White Coat Hypertension:

White coat hypertension is a phenomenon in which patients exhibit elevated blood pressure in a clinical setting but not when recorded by themselves at home. It is believed that this is due to the anxiety some people experience during a clinic visit.

I got to know this phenomenon when my wife and myself went to the doctor to get my BP checked. The first time the doctor checked it came out as 140 / 87. The doctor then asked me to rest of 5 minutes. The second time the doctor checked it came as 120/84 and the third time too it came almost the same.

The medical reason for the above behavior, as the doctor explained is White Coat Hypertension (even though she was wearing a black jacket at that time, but still I knew she was a doctor).

My wife asked the doctor why her comes 120/80 the first time if there is really something like White Coat Hypertension. It is because this is individual to individual.

And as my wife had said just before we went to the doctor: It just happens that the Doctor has done his / her MBBS and is sitting there to give you proper advice. Take it or leave it.

Thats why her BP is 120/80 the first time and mine is 120/80 the second time.

Team Management

How to arrange your team? This is one question which drives all top shots in the industry nuts. There is no SINGLE RIGHT answer to this. Well not really. Actually the ONLY SINGLE RIGHT answer to this is the TEAM MATURITY. But it is normally only there in the wish-list of everyone and never ever in execution.

Before we get into the details, let us understand briefly how most product companies are. A product is made up of parts and the same part can be used in different products. So Product and Part form a N x N matrix between themselves. For ex. Salt, sugar and water are three parts and sweet water + salt water are two products.

Now there are two broad ways of management in a product company:

a) Different Product Owner and Part Owner: We have an expert who knows the exact quantity of sugar that should be mixed in exact quantity of water to get the taste which sells. So this EXACT guy becomes our Product Owner for Sweet Water. He is worried only about quantity and does not spend too much thinking about quality. Quality has to be ensured by the guy from whom this EXACT guy borrows sugar and water from. These guys form the QUALITY guys. Now if a customer comes in the saying water is too sweet, the EXACT guy goes to the SWEET QUALITY guy and breaks loose on him. But it could be that water quantity mixed was less. So this EXACT guy was not REALLY EXACT. He pretended to be EXACT.

HOW CAN THE EXACT GUY DELIVER A QUALITY PRODUCT WITHOUT QUALITY PARTS? He can only if the same QUALITY PARTS are being used in some already proved QUALITY PRODUCT.

WHY WILL THE QUALITY GUYS BELIEVE EXACT GUY IS REALLY EXACT? They will only if the EXACT guy proves it time and again.

b) Same Product Owner and Part Owner: Now there is this ONE guy who knows EXACTLY how much sugar and how much water goes to form SWEET WATER which sells. And this ONE guy knows which QUALITY SUGAR and WATER will get him QUALITY SWEET WATER. Well, this is possible. BUT WHERE IS THIS ONE GUY? Nowhere most probably.

And if he is there somewhere, WHY WOULD OTHERS BELIEVE THAT HE IS THE ONE GUY AND THAT THEY ARE GOOD FOR NOTHING? They will if this ONE guy proves time and again that he is THE ONE GUY.

What is a mouse?

Couple of weeks back a new office boy has joined our office. He has come from Chennai and does not know Hindi. We have 16 people in our office right now (including two office boys) and 13 of us know Hindi, 14 of us know English. Now if we need to recruit a new office boy, what would be the requirements:

• Should be ready to do office work
• Should be ready to do misc. stuff (may or may not be part of his job profile)
• Should have a good integrity so that things are safe in the office
  
• Should be able to understand what needs to be done

But the only language our new office boy knows is Tamil which 12 people in the office do not know. I am equally amazed how he got through as some others in my office are. Maybe because he knows the language of the master. Anyways, I got a feeling of how important sign language is when early today morning a mouse came to say hello to me in the office. It scared the wits out of me. I had to explain that we have a new unwanted guest to our new office boy who was the only person around. I could not because he does not know Hindi / English and I do not know Tamil. I told him we had a mouse. He told me it is in the drawer. A little more brain tuning and I could make out he was talking about the COMPUTER MOUSE and not the MOUSE MOUSE. I tried to show him by hands that I am talking about A MOUSE WHICH WALKS. But I could not get through. I talked to him about a lion and a tiger and then suddenly RAT was the WORD OF THE DAY.

Monday morning blues

Early monday morning. Nice songs in the background. Chatting with a friend in the US. And an unwelcome guest.



Yes, this is one of the immense joys you HAVE TO enjoy in a startup (all pun intended). It suddenly jumped onto the cubicle wall, said hello to me and then in a flash I moved back and in next flash it went back to where it had come from. All pleasantries exchanged phew.....

Next began the cat and mouse game. But we were not able to house the mouse in a mouse trap. We have a new office boy and explaining whats a mouse to him was the icing on the cake.