We had a candidate who spoke the jargon so fluently and naturally, that we totally bypassed the coding exercises so as not to potentially insult them. They were able to go into the ins & outs of all manner of software, from OOP to design patterns to "big O", so we thought we had a winner... well, come to find out, being able to regurgitate class notes in no way translates to actual ability. The hire was so poor as a programmer that he was relegated to HTML/CSS duty for the longest time, and eventually let go at the first convenient chance. Yes, we tried on-the-job training, but you can't make a software engineer overnight, and when deadlines are looming you don't really have the luxury to tutor someone at the remedial level.
Well, a technical interview that's lacking in actual hands-on coding perhaps. The reason we do actual whiteboarding now is to weed out those types (and it's done wonders in that aspect).
We had a candidate who spoke the jargon so fluently and naturally, that we totally bypassed the coding exercises so as not to potentially insult them. They were able to go into the ins & outs of all manner of software, from OOP to design patterns to "big O", so we thought we had a winner... well, come to find out, being able to regurgitate class notes in no way translates to actual ability. The hire was so poor as a programmer that he was relegated to HTML/CSS duty for the longest time, and eventually let go at the first convenient chance. Yes, we tried on-the-job training, but you can't make a software engineer overnight, and when deadlines are looming you don't really have the luxury to tutor someone at the remedial level.