Interviewer Essentials

A great part of my weekend goes to interviewing and a considerable amount of my time during my weekdays is devoted to hiring and activities related to hiring - profile screening, talking to the candidates, interviewing - technical and softer aspects.

What I learned are (over a period of time)

To Interviewers and to their managers (the source of problem but who think that the fault is on everyone but them)

1. In the part of the world that I live in especially - be ready to read more (do not get bored or scared of seeing the projects and skills that one acquired 10 years back that never eroded)
2. Shortlist quickly and ask HR to schedule interview
3. Be available on time. If you have some work and you would join late, send someone who can do interviews (not just filling the space/time)
4. Interviews are a business transaction. The interviewer has to sell the company and the future employee is likely to undergo. Not a fancy future that would never materialize. Be pragmatic on what you say
5. You cannot get super-man when you pay peanuts. Reset your expectations
6. Expect that someone can become super-man after she joins. Look for track record
7. People want career, money, satisfaction, appreciation, feedback and a great culture (only the order differs from people to people). Do not oversell anything (as people might feel they won't get other stuff)
8. You may be leading machine critical things but do not expect the folks to burn might night oil. Do not boast either
9. Interview for the position (do not interview like you are hiring a CEO when you are hiring a developer). It is big sin to hire a developer without coding. Satisfied with pseudo code or "I can tell the logic" is the biggest sin. If you are hiring for senior position, start with design and drill down to coding (or start with code and move to design - bottom-up or top-down either way is fine, but do it)
10. Often neglected piece is asking them to write unit tests for their own code. They might even write just two test cases, but it is fine. The question is whether they "think". If someone is allergic to writing unit tests - never look back
11. Giving clues is not a sin. When you give hints, you really know more about the candidate (whether he picks up quickly and able to connect the dots). When you give clues, ask them to enhance.
12. Do not ask funny or fancy questions on DS and Algo (which you were not able to solve for three hours but once you solved you want others to solve in 10 minutes) when your daily work is something else
13. The world is moving more towards OpenSource, please see whether the candidate has allergy towards the word - OpenSource (and self-learning/training/exploring on their own)
14. Give them the runway - Not all will be able to crack everything first and not always. Warm them up
15. Listen properly and be attentive. Ask questions and answer questions properly
16. Most often you will learn things from others, interviewing is no exception
17. Decide as soon as the interview is over. Overthinking is killer
18. Help HR. Maybe they have so many candidates to take care. Pick your resume, invite the candidates and take care of interviews. Keep HR informed on outcomes
19. If the candidate asks feedback, spend some time with them in giving feedback (especially if they are very junior to you and looking to improve themselves). You never know when you will work for a nerd
20. No frustration (even if your day is tiring)
21. After hiring, connect with the candidate. Try to see whether you can be of any use to them.
22. Wait for them to join
23. Most importantly - remember that you are hiring a human, not a machine. Behave appropriately

Of course, this is not the bible to do interviews and there are zillions other things to do.

Your comments?

Improve Thinking Through Designing Scenarios, Puzzles and Games

As a part of OpenGyan, we have started to roll out videos for the students who want to be in touch with us. The design of topics and boxing them to 7-10 minutes duration is very challenging. When we do in-class workshop, it becomes a lot easier. But in the video we need to complete our session logically within 7-10 minutes.

While doing that i understood the power of analogy, co-relation, quickly building a short

scenario that can be expressed in under a minute. I see that these scenarios, puzzles and games help me to convey the point and i believe it will also help the listeners to have sharp focus on the content.

At the end, we also suggest some exercises. Again these exercises are scenarios, puzzles, coding problems and games. While i am designing the content, i find that my perspective on the topic changes and i tend to refer the text books, online materials to verify my understanding. And in that process, my thinking grows.

Designing our own puzzles, scenarios and games certainly helps to improve our thinking.

Now a bit of shameless branding :-)

To watch our videos, kindly check out our YouTube Channel.

Spread a word around (join us in Facebook and like/criticize us) and get into our hall of fame.

Happy week !

2011 - Looking back & Looking forward

I never intended to write something describing what i did the past year. But a quick thought arose now. I have two things to share that i feel so happy about it. One that happened at work and another in life (i should say internet life, as each of us have two personal lives - one in internet and another ordinary/common life :-))

By the starting of 2011, i took up something at work and i feel that though it is not super hit, i realized that i m playing the game to my strengths. All the situations thought me that i should always be level headed. Sometimes, i felt the situations are custom crafted to make by temper to reach its tipping point. Unlike my usual thing, i somehow played by emotions low. Towards the end of the year, i really liked the way i handled things. I only hope that i should improve from here. It was an year of low profile and great learning (particularly the time i spent with fresh professionals just out of college).

Next, let me talk my internet life. When you want to know about something, i think usually we hit Google and most likely the first link would be LinkedIn and Facebook (if you are searching for people) and Wikipedia if you are looking for informative articles. Wikipedia is beyond Encyclopedia and it gives us authentic information. This year i contributed towards Wikipedia fund to keep it for free and i m looking forward to next year (and hopefully, i m planning to double my contributions). When you have a great place to look for information and when the people wiser than you writing/building it, it makes sense to contribute and it is wonderful feeling being part such an initiative.

For the next year, i think i should blog more (with interesting topics) and do something that makes me feel that i m constantly stretching my limits.

I constantly think about this blog and my readers who constantly make me better everyday and each time i blog.

For all the wonderful readers, wishing you a very happy new year. I m looking forward for the new year to learn more. Together, let us learn more.

What is Experience

Yesterday, Sandeep and I had a long discussion on "what is experience". Here is what we came up with.

We start our career with equal potential. Experience is how we mobilize our potential. It is how we convert our potential (the energy we posses by virtue of being human, engineer etc) to action (how we mobilize the potential to get results) decides the depth of our experience. The conversion factor differs and so is over experience/learning. Experience obeys law of conservation of energy. The energy neither be created nor destroyed but transformed from one form to another form.

In general, potential diminishes as experience grows and kinetic increases with experience (for most of us). We become more action oriented with experience.

We came up with the following diagram during our chat.

Black Holes in Professional Life

Never put efforts in professional life without measuring. It is like a black hole and the size of the hole depends on the size of the organization. It drains a lot of energy from you and you never get anything back if you don't measure. If you say that it will add to your experience, my experience says 

• if you don't measure, you/others think it is easy job (but which may right or wrong)
• "no, it doesn't add to your experience" because you will be swimming deep to find that experience
• it will be very difficult to come out of highly viscous habit.
• you will lose focus and end up doing everything which has none to do.
• you will end up in staying up late to do your daytime job while you help for others in the daytime
• you will be literally struggling to put forward your assignments/results, then people take you for granted, then you lead austere life and finally write this kinda post ;-)

If someone asks you "can you do this?", ask questions and never accept until you are 100% convinced that you like the task, you will do the justice to the job, you can measure the efforts/results and in fact they will pay you back.

Medicine or Poison - Let us Wake Up

This news is there for a while and for most of us it is just a news. We don't go medical shop that frequently and there is every possibility that we get good medicine even if we go or very least we can think that we will get medicines that are perfect to cure diseases. Few months back, I heard an interview from a government health officer in radio (FM) and he promised that there are no incidences of selling fake or expired medicine. He said that the medicines given in government hospitals had very strict quality control. But it seemed genuine when he accepted that there were few isolated cases but that could not be generalized.

Recently, there was a big scam or rather a cruelty brought into light. It was shocking to hear about a single person involved in selling of expired and contaminated medicines. He used to involve in an activity of collecting drugs from garbage (that were thrown out by people) and sold it to shops like a drug distributor. Should we believe that this is done by a single person? How can the collection, packaging, distribution and selling of expired medicine of such massive scale be done by single person without any help from others? The magnitude is so big and revenue picks to few hundred crores. 

Just few minutes back, I heard someone in drug distribution (I bet he must be a President or in similar post) to talk about medicine. His statement was too general to believe. He says that the medicine loses weight after expiry date and loses it power or curing capabilities. He says that it will not cause death. Another one says that the people should buy medicines in full strips so that the expiry dates printed in the strip is not cut away and clearly visible. For sure, these creatures are better to be magicians. The guys who sell medicine on the road side ("legiyam vickaravan") are much better than these creatures. I don't want to ask them whether they will give this medicine to their loved ones or for that matter will they go and buy the entire strip when they just need two tablets. This shows that how irresponsible they are and I quite related to Mr. Subroto Bagchi's example of a doctor who sold kidneys and later to fled to Nepal. This is pure impurity - the lack of integrity and the lack of professionalism.

But I m sure that the guy involved in this scam will also get bail in few months and lead a peaceful life. At maximum he will be fined few lakhs, the bank account and property in his name will be seized (but his wife's, son's, friend's, relatives' and dogs' account will not be seized) and few police officers will get promotion, the chief minister will appreciate the police department (and himself) for being proactive.

But who is responsible for betraying the people who did not get a chance to go to medical college (or any school) and ended up swallowing the poison?

Adversity - How to Face It?

Neither my mom nor my dad had decent luxuries in their early lives. Both of them were born in a big family that struggled to meet both ends meet especially my mom's and aunt's/uncle's lives were nothing but adversity. When we (my sisters and myself) were young, our hobby was to hear my mom's early life. She used to explain us how they traveled by barefoot to her schools and how my uncles studied their diploma/colleges. When I was too young, I used to hear the story very with involvement. The involvement was just to get entertainment and pass time before my sleep. But later, as I grow up (still many of my friends shout at me when I say I m growing up :-) ), I started to listen to her on how the brothers and sisters missed a meal per day but yet how they stood by a core values.

My grandmother, an angel, in my role model. When she did not have food to feed her children, she fed her children with core/human values. I used to think, how come is it possible for a family to have such an wonderful value system. Now, I realize that it came from my grandmother. Being an orthodox family (and not well to do), it is really difficult to stand by core values. But yet they did. Awesome.

How did they face it? Whether to give control to the time thinking that everything will be taken care of? Or Is it fine to handle or workaround the situation to silently pledge the core/human values? Or to blame God who you think deaf when you always run into problems? I never heard them doing something wrong or talking bad about God for their hardship. When I try to understand what made them to stand on their values, it is love towards the family, the hope that things will fall on its plate pretty soon  and to work on the little they had in their hands and unprecedented passion towards "being human". Even when they are well off today, I find them modest and practicing the core/human values. Love, Hope and Passion are key ingredients to sail through hardship.

Push The Thinking Horizon

It was 12pm. I dialed the number in my mobile. I could really feel how distant Hyderabad is. It was Naveen who attended HCL interview in Hyderabad, a couple of weeks back. Impressed with his performance in interview, I was following up with him whether he joins us. As soon as he lifted his phone, he said, "Hey, Lakshmi", how are you doing?" and suddenly his voice went down. He told me, "Lakshmi, I asked my parents whether I can join HCL, Chennai". They said, "no". He went on to say, "I miss HCL" (so am I :-)). He said another thing that was shocking to me. He said, "you are the best person I met. I want to join HCL simply because you. Now, I cannot join but in future I will join". For sure, I will see this guy becoming terrific.

What did I do to be seen as best person other than interviewing him for more than four hours and thirty minutes of orientation post interview. On the interview day, I was just trying to bring out best out of him. I saw his eyes go bright on seeing his answers and when I try to put his answers into a perspective of problem solving.

The people love you when you make them super star, when you make them to stretch their thinking horizon, when you make them to do something different from their usual mundane work.

Human Rights - Where is It?

Yesterday, I was little late to home. Around 9am (or close to that), as usual I was driving at 45 kmph. My ride went on fine without much problems. As usual there were few buses that occupy the mid of the road and suddenly came off the road for no reasons. There were few boys (seems like they never got opportunity to grow up) zipping through all the lanes. Living in Chennai gave me lot of patience particularly when I am on wheels.

Near Hotel Trident (I use the left to reach my home at Nanganallur), there was a small traffic jam (don't ask me where is the bread). I (and anyone who uses that road) know that the road will have potholes, but these days I search for road to safely take the front wheel of my motorcycle. For the past two years, I never bother about back wheel and I always assume that it is intact. Till now, my assumption is proven right.

After seeing the traffic jam, I thought, I would have a break from driving for few seconds to few minutes. Since I like taking breaks during my drive (you know, my approach towards life is optimistic), I was eagerly expecting that this break would soothe me though my home is just 2 km away. Unlike the usual breaks that I used to take, this one was shocking and I was speechless to see the arrogance of a policeman.

There were two vehicles that were parked conveniently - a lorry occupying little space from end of the road to mid of the road and a auto occupying the corner. There stood the auto driver and behind him a policeman. I thought that they were having a friendly chat or I could possibly think that the policeman was doing his usual ritual (don't ask me what is the usual ritual). But within few seconds, he took his stick and started to beat the auto driver quite arrogantly. The driver was crying to stop the beating. Before the policeman could hear, the driver had received probably 10 heavy beatings barring 10 more beatings that fell on the auto off the target.

While I dont know what caused the policeman to show huge displeasure and arrogance towards the auto driver but I certainly feel that that was not a way to treat a human being. That was totally inhumane.

I' m back - Burning Fat

First of all, my hearty new year wishes to the readers.

It is going to be more than two months since I blogged. Work is overwhelming and never gives me time to take break for blogging. Let me not talk too much about my work. I m back in action and hope that I continue to blog. Today, I feel so happy that I m consistent for the past two weeks in jogging. Started to job again with a kilometer run and over a period of two weeks, today I jogged little over 12 kilometers. Yes, it is 12 kilometers. This is the first time I jogged that distance with my heavy body. I could feel that my fat was burning when I ran. Before I started to run today, I thought to run 15 kilometers but gave up as my knees started to give pain. So, I called it for the day and came to my room in train (BTW, I m San Jose, USA for a short trip).

It is very funny that for the first time (in US and in my life), I went to office by jogging (around 4 miles) and on my return I covered almost three quarters of distance. Overall, I jogged little more than 12 kilometers. Of course, I covered the distance in two hours.

As usual, I saw few great human beings who cheered me up on the way - a man in cycle, a lady with her son, a couple with their kid, an old lady cheered me up with a lot of smile on their face and words of greetings.

Leadership 101 - Anticipate Failures

The world is a physical balance. It has good and bad, ups and downs, successes and failures. Often people get carried by Positive Mental Attitude and they feel that being over optimistic is PMA. There is a difference. When we approach work, it is right to be optimistic. But when you are planning, you have to plan for failures. The success is not the outcome but it is your ability to out think failures. When you anticipate failures, you will know what to do when you are about to fail.

Each outcome, irrespective of success or failure, needs to follow a general pattern. There is a success pattern and failure pattern. When you anticipate failure, you will be more attuned to recognize the red flags and hence you will try to make corrective action. When you do that, there is a great chance for you to get away from failure. One of the key things needed to be successful is the ability to anticipate failures due to your action and correct your action recognizing the red flags. Great leaders anticipate failures. It doesn't mean that they are pessimist. It means that they are even prepared for the worst. So, anticipate failures.

Leadership 101 - Truth Travels with Great Speed

One of the thing that I often wonder is "truth". In my lifetime, I have lied for many things and went against truth many times but yet surrendered to the truth "always". The more I think of being "untruth", the more fierce it becomes. So, it left a deep impact and I learned the importance of being truthful. The truth travels with great speed. If you are truthful, it helps us to steer through the tight corner and if you are untruthful it grills us. If you are untruthful, clear submission to the truth is the only option.

Today, I happened to meet a person who was very poor in something. The impact that he is going to cause me is very little but yet I sat with him and told him the "hard truth". Then, his perception about life/work changed and within few minutes he understood his true state. His confidence grew and he promised that I would see him differently next time when we meet. In the whole of situation, my contribution is very little but the contribution of truth is immense. Today, yet another time in my life, I learned the importance of being truthful. It was a wonderful day.

Retaining People – Human Resource is Abundance yet Scarce

The economy is recovering and we see organizations investing again with a lot of hope. Job market too has recovered due to people movement and creation of fresh positions. If you are leading a team and for next one year, you will be facing enough challenges in terms of retaining people. During this period if we keep up the basics and control things that we can control, firefighting will give decent results. Here are some of the things that you have to do. BTW, the following things should be done “always” irrespective of job market.

Connect with the team. Make them understand about the organization. Give authentic information and suggestions.

Challenge them quite well. Give assignments that make them think and always little bit tough to achieve with ordinary efforts. Appreciate openly and celebrate them when they make big mistakes trying big things they never tried.

Recognize both efforts and results. If you are dealing with less experienced people, sit with them and hear how they solved the problems. You can see their eyes go bright.

Give a feeling that you won’t let them fail. Authentically work on their growth. If they don’t have enough skills, sit with them and draw plan.

Motivate people and celebrate successes. Most importantly respect them. If you turn their suggestions down, do it respectfully.

Keep a close watch on overall performance. Understand the language of performance and never compromise on it. It is lifeline. You don't need non performance even if they have niche skills.

Understand their concerns. Empathize. If their concerns are not valid or reasonable, tell them up front that you cannot fulfill them. Let they also know why it is not reasonable. Set the expectations right.

Don’t negotiate money. If they want to exit because of money, let them do it. If it is more ownership and challenges, give them opportunity that gives them new experience. Don’t negotiate money. It doesn’t work.

Anticipate bad things and work on contingency plans. It is highly important that you deliver even when you don’t have super stars. Have “Plan B”. Start to work on contingency plans.

Always speak the truth. Don’t woo them.

I have been practicing above things past two years and so far it worked. I strongly believe, it will work in future too.

Are You Restless With Things Around You?

The external environment affects us so much and we just fall as victim to the environment. We feel so bad for falling as victim and often feel that we are not able to solve some problems. For example, we agitate a lot when we see child labor, misuse of power, corruption, someone not performing their duties and the list can be endless. The main problem is that we want this world to think exactly like us. If you are over pragmatic, you will know that is not possible and you certainly fall on the other spectrum which is not caring too much about you and the world around you. This post is for people who agitate, agitate a lot. Agitation or becoming restless is a wonderful thing. That shows that you have awareness and you are so concerned about the environment.

When will you become restless? You become restless when you are aware that you are wasting your energy not producing any work or little. This is exactly how the external environment affects us. We react to the happenings to the environment. We fail to understand that we cannot react at the pace of the environment. If you think so, you will have time only to context switch. You need to understand the purpose of life and diligently move towards it by channelizing energy. If you channelize the energy, you will not become restless. You will understand the purpose and feel satisfied with the path you have chose.n If you are restless, it is great thing. You need little introspection, little bit of self talking and little effort to connect with yourself in perfect synchrony.

The key to add value to this world is to become restless and then to move towards the purpose of life without forgetting the environment. The solutions to all problems lies in our head. We just need to channelize energy and think.

I have read few of self help books. I can say most of them did not apply to me because I feel that I am unique and I am special case. But all those books gave me little thought to do a deep introspection and all those books helped me to move out of "restlessness" and be focused on the "purpose".

Think Twice Before Acting on Others Decision

It has been quite an experience these days. Every year, I tend to work with great minds as my teammates and this gives me immense experience. When I started my career, I was weak and numb. But over a period of time, my confidence grew by just looking others. This experience has taught me "think before you act, think twice before you act on others words".

The above sentence has two parts. The first part "think before you act" is obvious. The second part "think twice before you act on others' words" is not so normal. It is abnormal. When you are acting on others' words, you are acting in conventional way. Most of the times, the conventional way is the way that is traveled more. It does give you experience but it doesn't give you different experience. You are going to be in a box.

But when you think deeply (that think twice), you need to understand the hidden meaning and things will start to appear differently. This is like you read a classical book for the second time - the gets into the clearly. So, when you act on others' words, you need to think twice. It is an opportunity to go creative. It is the way that is less traveled and you go out of box. Do it, you will be happier :-)

This is highly important because in this world we are always conditioned and it requires a strong will and mindset to think deeply. The entire world will conspire against you to condition you.

Difference between Guru and the Student

It was a gurukula, all the students were gathered for the graduation of a student. The student was excited and wanted to test his Guru in front of all the other students. Guru sensed that and simply smiled. In front of others, the student asked the Guru, "I now know whatever you know and I learned all you know when I am quite young". The student went on to ask Guru, "How long did you take". Guru said, "I m still a student and I don't think that I will complete by learning in my lifetime". The student now realized what it takes to be a Guru.

We always get carried away with the things we know. We stuff our mind with a lot of "I" and literally leaving little space for other important things. It is not a great deal to know all the information in this world. With this technology advancement there is no wonder if we come up with a device that stores most of the useful information in this world. It takes a great deal to understand how a thing affects the other. It takes a great deal to understand how things affects us when we change them. Any person with limited lifetime will have limited capabilities and it is practically impossible to have infinite lifetime or infinite processing speed. A lifelong student is aware of this limitation.

The difference between a Guru and a Student is that the Guru understand His limitations and continue to march towards excellence but a student thinks that he has already reached excellence by focusing too much on his merits. The difference between Guru and the student is "Awareness".

Be Selfish, Yes, Be Selfish

We get too much carried away with the word "selfishness" and it has be given a wrong intended meaning. It is fine to be selfish. If you take any great thinkers of the world, you can observe that they are selfish. I am not talking about people who claim themselves as thinkers. I am talking about Buddhas, Vivekananda and so many other thinkers that this world has seen. First, they were selfish. For example, Buddha wanted to know what is the root cause of all miseries. Swami Vivekananda wanted to see God. Buddha never thought that his quest to understand the root cause of all miseries is a desire. He was able to bring higher level of thinking. He differentiated the desire and the purpose. Same is the case for Swami Vivekananda.

If we are selfish about our purpose and if the purpose is at a higher level, it is good. Our selfishness will only yield a better world. In this world, we have limited number of purposes at higher level. However there are at least infinite number of ways to realize the purpose. We fail to understand the purpose and get caught in the way (most of us die in mid way). Only way how you can walk the full distance is by being selfish - being selfish to understand the purpose and pursue life to attain the purpose. So being selfish is not really bad, it is a great thing.

Shortly after I published this post, I read Robin Sharma's quote in Twitter, "Best way to improve world is to improve yourself". If everyone is selfish in taking care of themselves, this will be a better place.

Privileged Moment - Slightly Feeling that I m Making Sense

It is exactly 11.30pm (12-Oct) and just now finished talking to my office buddy. I met him once while giving a presentation on how to write white paper. One of my teammates recently told that this office buddy wanted to talk to me. When I listened my teammate, he told me that "Lakshmi, my friend wants to talk to you and he really likes the way in reinvented myself". He went on to say that "whatever my inner guy says that holds now" and that we call it passion. He has started to find resonance and no doubt he is going to be a rock star - it is exactly the resonance of "inner thing" and "your action". When time comes, I will introduce him through this blog. BTW, he is a great guy and just trying to become greatest working on his daily improvements.

I feel that now I m making little sense to people around me. It is a great feeling and it is my privilege to help people to see through things (i do this by just asking questions. I m equally excited because I feel that this is going to be a turning point in my life. I m going to meet my office buddy tomorrow (13-Oct) at 7.30 pm and we fixed the date/time just few minutes back.

Life turns exciting at anytime. Thank you my dear friends. You add a great deal of value to me.

Leadership 101 - If you cannot Change, Don't Complain

Many of us often complain that things are not perfect or near-perfect. Being perfect is very difficult and nearly impossible and so is near to perfect. But, we can always try to be perfect. When it comes to others, we will have highest standards and see others' accomplishments as tiny. But when it comes our accomplishment we always see them through lens. This mentality introduces a fake inconvenience and we pass on our negative emotions to the environment. We question, then we complain and finally we fly away without causing any trouble.

But did we think that "flying away" is not a solution. If you fly away thinking that the other side of the river will be good, you will later realize that it is just another bank which is as good as or as bad as this bank. Mere complaining is a sick way of looking things. It is ok to complain as long as you authentically find ways to fix it. The complaining is the tool of people who solve problems and it is not tool to vent out your negativity.

Next time, when we complain, we need to find what are we going to change with our complaints. Then complaints make bigger sense.

How to become a better developer?

Once I was traveling in a bus and my school friend (who is also a software engineer) asked me how to become a better developer. He was a Java developer and asked me how to be a better Java developer. What are the things that one should learn to become a better Java developer. I answered him that "first be a developer" and then "try to become a better developer". I strongly believe that any person can be a better person only by asking questions. The questions has to be open and push one's own thinking and also others. It is the curiosity and questioning will make us better.

If you have whole a lot of experience and if you just ask closed ended questions, you are quacking like ducks. You can be a better person in saying what a thing does. But you cannot be a person to make something better. It is of no use either to you or anyone around you. First criteria to become a better person is to ask questions that provokes thinking. Once you ask such questions, you will automatically become a better person, better human being, better developer too. Questions matter a lot.