the_olivia•7d agoProlific Poster

PSA: A founder at a Corktown coffee shop told me something that changed my hiring approach

I was complaining about a bad tech hire, and he said, 'I stopped looking for perfect resumes and started asking what people build for fun.' He runs a small robotics startup. Anyone else in Detroit try this kind of interview question?

3 comments

3 Comments

calebc407d ago

But what if someone's fun project is just copying YouTube tutorials? I had a guy show me a cool game mod, but then we found out he just followed a step by step guide and couldn't explain any of his own code. It felt real until we dug in. That "fun" talk wasted a whole interview round because we still had to test the basic skills anyway. It's easy to be excited about your hobby, harder to do the boring work we actually pay for.

shane_hayes7d ago

That's a nice story, but it sounds like a luxury for a small team. In a bigger company, we need to know someone can actually do the core job first. Asking about fun projects is a cool extra, but it shouldn't replace checking basic skills. You can love building robots but still write terrible code for our systems.

gibson.morgan7d ago

Ever notice how a perfect resume can hide a person who just follows instructions? I ask about side projects because you learn what someone cares about enough to finish on their own time. It shows problem solving you won't see on a test. I hired a guy because he fixed old radios for fun, and he became our best debugger. The coffee shop guy is right, it cuts through the noise.