The Anatomy of the Perfect Technical Interview from a Former Amazon VP

http://firstround.com/review/The-anatomy-of-the-perfect-technical-interview-from-a-former-Amazon-VP/

作者 Neil Roseman 是Amazon和Zynga的前技术VP.

开始面试之前：

• You should come out of every interview with a clear sense of whether the person could improve the probability of your company’s success. # 能够清楚地辨认某人是否可以增加公司成功几率。
• Great interviewing is work. It takes time to prepare, conduct the interview and then de-brief in an effective way. If you don’t want to do the work, don’t interview. # 面试也是工作，因此要为此腾出时间，做好功课。
• Once you form an initial impression of someone - which usually happens within the first 60 seconds - you should spend the rest the interview trying to invalidate that impression. # 通常在60s内你就会对面试者有初始印象，接下来的时间你要检验你这些感觉是否正确
• You should always take copious notes during interviews so you can make a cogent argument for or against a candidate. # 做好面试记录以便可以给出让人信服的赞成或反对理由
• In most cases, the “best and the brightest” already have jobs, so you’re really just on the lookout for the best available. Plus there’s no way to prove that your hiring process resulted in the right people because you can’t A/B test hiring decisions. # 招聘没有办法做AB测试，所以没有办法确定某种流程就一定能找到正确的人。
• Always strive to hire superstars but realize that not all hires need to “walk on water.” This person should be better along some dimensions than a majority of the current staff and have the potential to have a long-term impact. # 人不能十全十美，但是它们必须在某个方面比其他人做的更好，并且能够发挥长期作用。
• You want to hire people who are smart, that get stuff done and have the functional set of skills you need for the role. # 聪明并且能够搞定事情。

阅读简历和设计问题：

• the least experience in is how to read a resume, identify the areas worth probing, and determining how to probe into them. # 如何阅读简历，找出那些方面值得去提问，并且选择正确方式去提问
• This is how he develops most of his questions. “You want to find out what somebody really did, as opposed to just being an observer or a participant,” Roseman says. “Even at the greatest companies, there’s a gap between those who get the most stuff done and those who don’t get much done. You need to try and figure that out during an interview.” # 就Roseman来说，他会就面试者工作经历，看他是否真的参与其中，还是旁观。
• In many cases, this can be a litmus test for how clearly they think about themselves and their role as well. “They might think it sounds good to say 'I improved system availability by 50%', but if we’re hiring someone for a system engineering role, I need to know they actually did that. In most cases with high level statements like this — which appear on resumes all the time — the person actually hasn’t done it or was just a participant, and understands very little. They won’t have a very clear answer.” The good candidates will be able to explain and backup their claims no matter how far you drill down.
• To put this another way, great interview questions focus on specific examples of the candidate’s unique contributions, actions, decisions and impact. Ideally, you want to:
  • Probe: give me an example # 你做了什么项目？
  • Dig: who, what, where, when, why and how on every accomplishment or project # 在项目中做了哪些事情？
  • Differentiate: we vs. I, good vs. great, exposure vs. expertise, participant vs. owner/leader, 20 yard line vs. 80 yard line # 个人在项目中角色以及表现
• Roseman goes on to share, “I look for past projects and accomplishments that seem to have enough weight and depth that I can apply STAR questions — STAR stands for situation, task, actions and results.” Roseman subscribes heavily to an approach called Behavioral Interviewing, in which STAR questions are a staple. They include: # 针对那些有分量和深度的项目进行STAR
  • What was the background of what you were working on?
  • What tasks were you given?
  • What actions did you take?
  • What results did you measure?

技术问题和面试流程：

• All too often Roseman hears hiring managers begin an interview by asking candidates to walk through their resume. “That is not a highly valuable question to ask unless you’ve already decided you’re not hiring this person,” he says. You can set a candidate at ease without this warmup softball. Roseman recommends introducing yourself so they know where you’re coming from, and clearly stating what his goal of the interview is. “I ask the person to introduce themselves and give me a couple of minutes about what they’re interested in and most excited about,” he says. “This way we can relax, set the stage for the conversation and make sure we’re both comfortable with each other. Calm any nerves that the candidate might have.” # 可以使用自我介绍，而不是重复一遍简历来进行热身。可能进行自我介绍更加容易帮助面试者放松自己。
• When asking a question, you have to know what to consider a very good, good, poor or very poor answer and why. To Roseman, this is the most important tenet of crafting smart interview questions. “One of the things that really pisses me off is people asking questions that they don’t even have a good handle on themselves,” he says. “They don’t have a good distinction between a great answer and a crappy answer. They decide to try out a new question they heard from somebody or make something up themselves." # 对于面试题目，面试官必须自己了解，什么是好的解答，什么是差的解答，并且知道为什么。
• When it comes to soft skills and culture fit, Roseman is a big fan of one question — he asks everyone, no matter the position: Do you consider yourself lucky? “If you look at what you’ve done, would you put yourself in the camp of people who say they’ve been lucky in their career?” Roseman explains. “I find a lot of people who will say I would have gotten that promotion but my manager cancelled my product, or they find other reasons for failure. Those are the ones who say they don’t think of themselves as lucky. I’m looking for the people who embody the phrase ‘fortune favors the prepared.’ It’s the willingness to be ready and take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself. At a startup, this is particularly valuable.” # 面试官更喜欢那些认为自己幸运的人，更倾向于那些认为“机会只垂青于有准备的人”的人。
• Even if you know a candidate is a no-go 15 minutes into an interaction, it’s important to get through all these phases of the interview. “You want to do close to a full interview because it’s a small world out there, and even if someone doesn’t get hired, my theory is it’s a good thing if the person believes they just had a great interview, even if they don’t get the offer.” # 即使认为面试者不适合，也要完成所有面试环节，让面试者相信，他们这次的面试非常有趣。
• At the other end of the spectrum, if someone is a clear winner, selling them on the position at the end of the session is critical. “You better do a good job both answering their questions and communicating your enthusiasm about the place and the opportunity,” says Roseman. “I’ve been very clear with the people on my teams that even if they don’t have an excitable personality, they have to be very positive about the company. If you can’t be, then don’t interview people.” # 相反如果认为面试者非常好的话，那么在面试结束推销职位是必要的。面试官不必有非常兴奋个性，但是必须对公司有积极正面的看法。如果做不到的话，那么最好不要去面试别人。

关于招聘团队：

• Given all the talk about sky-high Silicon Valley standards, Roseman acknowledges it’s not rare for hiring teams to pass on candidates because they don’t display superhuman skills. But not everyone should be required to walk on water in an interview. To keep this tendency front-of-mind, he’s set a more explicit bar: “The expectation is that the people you hire are better than when you were hired. So that in fact if you left and came back, you might not be hired again in that position. You want to improve your overall bar up with each hire. Another way to put it is every new hire should be better than your average current team member.” # 一个更加直白的标杆方法是：今天你招来的人，必须比入职时候的你要更好。另外一种方式是，招来的人要团队平均水准高。

总结：

• Don’t forget to introduce yourself to help work out everyone’s nerves.
• “Tell me about your background” is not a useful question for a tech interview.
• Pick specifics out of a resume to determine what the candidate actually did. Remember, you want people who get stuff done. Period.
• Probe when you see a resume with a long list of skills. Separate the truth from filler.
• Don’t “try out” new questions on candidates. Know what a good answer sounds like.
• Make sure you have them write code! This is too often skipped.
• Dig into algorithms, data structures, code organization, simplicity.
• Use some questions that are vague and open-ended. See if they ask you questions to find out more.
• Ask a design question. See how people think about a bigger picture problem.
• Create core competences for your company. Make sure candidates measure up well.
• Make it tough but fun. Good developers want to know they’re talking to smart folks.