[RoadMonkey]

Why do I get a feeling that my region is the one being referred to as "the" region here? Not that I feel personally attacked - but because I have seen my mates do all sorts of unscrupulous things just to get a job. I have, in fact, lost friends due to expressing an objection on the methods chosen by them.

Regardless, an interesting point has been raised by someone in this thread - I've been talking about this for long. Our tertiary education system focuses on clearing exams and getting degrees with little practical skills to back it up. I can point out to my own education in this regard, it also explains why there's so much credential inflation in the job market and every recruiter wants a "post graduate". I graduated with honours in economics. We had computer science all 6 semesters and we were supposed to be taught C, SQL, Stata. This is a reputable department in a public University with high filtration rate. We were taught advanced statistics for most of our "degree" and none of my batchmates can do anything with that information. They can do derivations of any statistical formulae, but unfortunately cannot use them in a practical scenario. We "cleared" exams and got a degree. Skills? Questionable. But people need jobs, so what's the solution to all this? We need a serious overhaul in how tertiary education is conducted outside of the top institutions.

I don't have the details on IT industry but from outside it seems like a lot of people get trained on the job rather than through education.

[RGK]

Originally Posted by sunbaj

Another issue that I have come across in India is that no one is committed to their work.

True and Fact. No sincerity.

We were hiring for one of our project in the USA in Dec 2018. The candidate was living there ( H1B holder) and I told my HR clearly to take care of his identity. We had a skype interview and I reiterated the HR person to double-check. He cleared the technical round comfortably and negotiations were over with HR.

When I visited there in early 2019 to kick start the project, I met the candidate and assigned some tasks, but he could not accomplish any of them and I understood that he cheated us by a skilled proxy candidate in the interview.

[funkykar]

This is quite normal and expected from some candidates who think they are too smart. Reading from a piece of paper or quick googling tops the list. Lip sync isn't something I came across. That's a good one to be aware of. As interviewers, we should be cautious and often do a quick cross-question of their answers and see how they respond. With experience, it's quite easy to catch them. Of course, there may be pros who escape seasoned interviewers and ones who look out for such frauds.

[aashishnb]

A few thoughts:

1. Googling/searching - This goes back to the concept of our schools/education. Rote vs open book exams. Like a hindi saying goes, 'nakal karne ke liye bhi akal chahiye', translated - even to copy you need to have some brains to know what & where to copy from.
The test is 'trick questions' where for e.g. change of one word in the question can make the answer from positive to negative.
Without going into a detailed analysis, the key reason favoring 'open book' exams is the person should know how to 'apply' the knowledge and it is ok if he does not remember the exact 'formula/equation'. A quote attributed to Einstein apparently when asked why he does not remember any phone numbers - 'I do not bother to remember things that I can find elsewhere'.
The counter to this, especially from the real world, if someone were to do a job using 'open book' method, he/she could take double the time to do the same thing, costing precious resources to the organization.

There is no right or wrong method, and a lot depends on the interviewer as to what are they looking for in the candidate & therefore need to assess accordingly.

2. As far as loyalty vs frequent jumpers are concerned, one issue that most organizations face is that moving from one team to another is very difficult at multiple levels even if the candidate is suitable for various reasons - not disturbing the status quo due to potential friction between team leaders (poaching argument especially if the incumbent team leader is higher in the organization hierarchy than the new one), difficult for HR to justify massive salary hike for internal candidate, candidate having reservations (can be more open with outside people in interview than internal), etc.
I think a lot of organization's HR do have systems in place for internal transfers now a days, but still it is easier for someone to move outside than inside.

[vj_torqueaddict]

Originally Posted by iamahunter

I take technical interviews for SQL and DB DWH concepts, many times a candidate is perfect at answering all the concepts and definition. However in my next stage of interview I move towards ad-hoc technical question which I ask the candidate to apply logic and write a query, 90% of the rejections are at this stage.

Same here. We were noticing that candidates were reading out answers from the web. We restructured our interview in 2 parts. One is theoretical and the other practical. Practical round is many faulter as they struggle to apply the knowledge of the theories. Our question bank is available on Glassdoor as well. But we twist and turn the same questions.

[swiftnfurious]

In our organization, seems to have happened that some guy attended an interview and someone else joined . The interviewer was confused why he looked different and in a few weeks time, the incompetence of the candidate led to few heated discussion between the interviewer & the project manager and finally concluded they had a dupe join the org.

Now, in each stage of interview, we are supposed to take a screenshot of the candidate's video and pass it to HR so they can verify the person.

[rajeshsundaram]

I know someone from a startup in Bangalore which specializes in Screening rounds of interview through video.

He told me that malpractice is rampant in the last one year. Especially our indian folks are notorious in this aspect. The proxy doubles, voice-overs etc are pretty common. Both the hiring companies and interviewers find it difficult to handle.

[saisree]

Originally Posted by swiftnfurious

Now, in each stage of interview, we are supposed to take a screenshot of the candidate's video and pass it to HR so they can verify the person.

We do the same and the subsequent interviewers get the image of the previous interview.

Originally Posted by vj_torqueaddict

Same here. We were noticing that candidates were reading out answers from the web. We restructured our interview in 2 parts. One is theoretical and the other practical. Practical round is many faulter as they struggle to apply the knowledge of the theories. Our question bank is available on Glassdoor as well. But we twist and turn the same questions.

People are ready to give theoretical answers. What we do is to give a small basic program with lot of disguised errors induced into it and ask them to correct it and explain what is the correction and why we need it.

Originally Posted by sunbaj

Another issue that I have come across in India is that many in India are not committed to their work.

This is a sweeping statement and cannot be generalized.

[GJ01]

Originally Posted by poloman

Is this pointing to the wrong interview practices employed by the companies as well? In my opinion interviews should not be exams where you ask googlable questions. / / The interview should focus on the candidate's aptitude, problem solving skills, attitude and body language, analytical mind, quick thinking etc. You can learn technology but none of above mentioned skills. Also these are very difficult to fake.

Some valid points Poloman, and some not so much. Firstly, it depends on the level that you are interviewing for. If these are entry and slightly higher level lateral hires - Experience band of 3 - 7 years; there absolutely need to be questions to verify the persons technical credentials.
Candidate's aptitude, problem solving skills, attitude and body language, analytical mind, quick thinking - may be more appropriate when you are looking at Management, Lead positions etc. But keep in mind a lot of Indian IT companies operate not in the niche / consulting areas - for most of the companies it is commodity and volumes business that's running the engine. We are seeing companies take 30K - 50K employees every quarter. Here, for bulk of these you want to make sure you are getting what's printed on the box - or in this case printed on the CV

[Satish Pari]

I came across this trend of fake interviews during my days in the UK. After completing my Masters degree, I briefly worked for an Indian IT Consultancy. My job there was pretty simple, I had to match requirements and arrange interviews with IT companies based in the UK for the guys who came on work permits from India. And these were contract jobs.

The technical team who actually helped these guys prepare for the interviews, would actually help them with answers during the telephonic interview. But as I was a part of another team, I had to turn a blind eye.

But there were a few IT contract guys who did clear the technical round with help, but could not sustain in the contract company due to other reasons such as unable to communicate properly, lack of proper spoken english and so on.

[gk.pavan]

The best predictor of job performance is giving the candidate a piece of the job to perform in front of your eyes, wherever possible. Then ask them to walk you through the solution steps.

You make incremental changes to your question and watch for the reaction.

At my company, we give an assignment that requires the person to build something. 50% of interview time is letting this person build it while they share the screen. Remaining 50% of time goes in "defending" the build.

[fhdowntheline]

It would be a good idea to have the candidate visit the office location and attend the interview in video-conf mode.

[sukhbirST]

Have been through this game and I normally ask the boy/girl to remove headset as it is creating inetreference. Few times I also ask them to stand up. Body language can bring out many things in open.

[maheshm619]

Originally Posted by sunbaj

Now do we assume that the graduates that are coming out of the colleges are so pathetic that they are unable to make it to these IT jobs. Where do we as a country stand in terms of good quality resources.

Most of this discussion points to the poor quality of our eduction system, which is an exxaggerated memory test and nothing else.Graduates have no industry ready skills and only a handful of them have any idea regarding new developments.I've seen engineering graduates fumbling while asked to point out phase/neutral in a power outlet or operate a multimeter.Most of them pickup things pretty fast within a couple of months provided their basics are strong.

[Tinuvilla]

Unfortunately we had 2 such instances recently since we moved to video interviews because of Covid. From both of these experiences, we have noted down the below red flags for lip syncing and what we can do incase of doubt:

Red Flags:
1. Candidate's face is not clearly visible. They might be sitting far away from the camera and/or their face dimly lit.
2. Candidate hides their mouth when answering. They make sure their mouth is cropped and below the camera when answering.
3. It will very hard to follow what the candidate is answering because there is a delay between the sound and the lip movement. I've had to look away from the screen to digest what the candidate was answering.
4. Sometimes, we can hear a faint whisper of the second voice that does the lip sync. We could hear it once after jacking up the volume when we had a doubt.


Actions to possibly confirm a lip sync case:
1. Ask the candidate to disconnect and reconnect the call. This is just to given them the benefit of doubt incase the delay between audio and video was a technical issue.
2. Request the candidate to come closer to the camera or move to a brighter spot so that we can see their face clearly.
2. Try telling a joke or a light hearted comment that should trigger a chuckle or atleast a smile from the candidate. My colleague tried this on the interview and we heard a laugh but the guy in the video did not move.
3. Raise your hand asking the candidate to stop speaking. Does not always work, but sometimes, the guy in the video might stop lip syncing, but the voice continues. We saw this happen on one of the interviews too