"What do you think about this candidate?" Cynthia asked. "His resume looks awesome."

"He only has 3 years of experience, but you are right, his resume looks great." Great is probably not the best word to describe his resume. His resume is exceptional.

This kid currently works at Google, and his resume have all of the right keywords that we are looking for. Even though he only has 3 years of experience, and Google was the only company that he had ever worked for. We'd decided to give him a chance and bring him in for an interview.

My phone rang 5 minutes before the scheduled interview time. Since I was the first person to interview this kid, I had to escort him in from the lobby. I walked over to the other building where our lobby is, and officially met this kid for the first time.

"You must be Brian." I asked. This kid is probably in his early 20s and professionally dressed for the interview.

"Hey, what's up?" Brian answered.

A little too casual, but I guess it was okay. "Good. Our interview is going to be at another building, so let's head over there now."

During the five minute walk to the building where the interview takes place, he started to comment on the campus, building, cafeteria food, and the traffic on the way in. By the time we've got to the building, I already knew we got a talker.

Right before we enter the conference room, he asked. "Can I grab a cup of water?"

"Sure." I thought to myself, he probably needs a gallon of water if he continues to talk like that for the next 4 hours.

When the interview finally starts, I began the routine introduction about the company, the team, and the Senior Web Developer position. Then he begins to introduce himself, which lasted about 3 minutes, but seems like a lifetime. At this point, I am already quite excited to know more about him, and what he can bring to the table.

"I am going to asked you to do a few code samples for me, but before that I wanted to gauge your level first." I asked. "Can you rate yourself from 0-10 in terms of your HTML skill?"

"Ten." He answered confidently.

"What about JavaScript skill?" I continue.

"Let's not waste any of your time. I am going to give myself a 10 on every skill that you wanted me to rate."

I was speechless. Believe me, for the next 10 seconds I was completely silent. I didn't know how to respond to that, as if I was the one being questioned. I gathered my thoughts, and continued. "That's quite ..." Cocky was the word that filled up the entire 1% of my brain, but I know that wouldn't be appropriate. Finally after I filtered down the list of words in my head I continued. "bold, that's quite bold."

"Okay, so let's start with a simple exercise, and see if you can just build me the HTML and CSS."

"We can skip the simple questions. I don't mind tackling harder questions." Again, he is quite cocky.

"No, let's take it one step at a time, and you will build the next exercise on with the first one." I responded.

The exercise is to build a simple sideway navigation with 5 links. Any Web Developer within our company can build it in less than 5 minutes.

Brian began writing his code on the board. Then he erased a portion of it, and continued. Then he erased some more. It took him a total of 30 minutes to complete the exercise, but his code is not even close to what I had in mind.

"I don't think there's a need for CSS, as I can already achieve the layout that you are asking for with HTML alone." He turned around and speaks so proudly.

I was again speechless. His HTML is not even valid to begin with, and the fact that he achieved his layout without CSS tells me that he didn't have an understanding of semantic markup.

"Would you say you are better with HTML and CSS, or are you stronger with JavaScript?"

"I am very strong in all of them, but I would say I am stronger in HTML and CSS."

"I'll be honest with you. What you have up there is completely wrong. Your HTML won't validate. For someone who rates themselves as 10 across the board, this is just unacceptable."

This poor kid came in thinking he is the greatest Web Developer in the world, just because he works for the largest online search company. Yet he is not even answer the simplest question that I have. Sometime it is good to be confident, but being overly confident and cocky can backfire. It must have been tough to sit through the next 3 hours of interview knowing for sure that he will not be getting any offer.

Let this be a lesson learned, Brian.

Categories: interview, web, work