At last year’s WWDC, I (purposely) kept a really low profile. I was already working on a new app for OS X, stemming from an idea that Dan Wood approached me about a few years ago. Dan, of course, was across the street at JavaOne demo’ing Project Alam…

This all reminds me of the series I wrote on great engineers. It sounds like Apple takes this philosophy to heart…

This spring I was interviewing for a coop position. I had a few serious candidates, but this one guy really stood out. Like, “surprised he was even talking to me” good. He was clearly the cream of the crop and I actually got into an internal fight w/ another manager who wanted him. So, _somehow_ I ended up hiring him and was looking forward to a very productive summer.

A week later he calls with hat in hand and explains that he had applied with Apple and never really heard back so he assumed they had passed. After accepting my position they made him an offer for a summer internship working on networking code. It was really hard trying to act professional when I really just wanted to figure out how to weasle an “in” with Apple out of him and not let “you were way too good for us anyway” come out of my mouth =).

Buzz has some great interviewing tips that everyone new to interviewing should definitely read. Having been doing some interviewing myself recently…

I have had more experience as interviewer than interviewee, and I think you really nailed a lot of the big issues. I’d add two things:

Don’t lie - with intent or otherwise. I recall interviewees who, in their desperate attempts to show enthusiasm and camaraderie with the company, would blurt transparently ignorant opinions about the company. Don’t go looking for work at Napster and say “I’m excited to work here because Napster is the most popular music store on the Internet!” Don’t tell your potential manager at Microsoft that you’re excited to “build upon the already rock-solid foundation of Windows.” You might get a deluded manager who’s excited by your statements of grandeur, but more than likely they know the shortcomings of their own company, and will find you repulsively unresearched if you express contradictory opinions.

Be prepared to perform real work, right now. I was always surprised by the hemming and hawing that would occur with some candidates when asked to perform some job-related task before my eyes. For a job whose main requirement is “extensive experience with Interface Builder,” you shouldn’t hesitate to show off your skill when asked to produce a simple dialog interface. If your resume touts your extensive gdb knowledge, don’t be surprised if your interviewer has a “crash” waiting for you to start debugging when you arrive. Qualifying statements like “I’m not used to this mouse,” or “I usually have my screen set to a higher resolution,” or “I need my custom macros,” are not helpful at this point.

For programming positions, have example code available. Somebody’s going to ask for it, and you want something ready to go so you’re not racing home after the interview to polish something up. If you don’t keep all of your code spotless, then make sure you have a significant project in relatively clean condition that you can share with interested parties. This is also ties in with the “proactive” measure as described above. I interviewed a candidate for a Mac programming position who hadn’t touched a Mac in years. His other programming skills were highly regarded, but he’d have to tackle a serious learning curve. He arrived for the interview with an iBook and a Cocoa-based clone of the Mac OS 9 Jigsaw Puzzle application, prepared to speak humbly of the learning experience he’d undertaken for the past 2 weeks. He was hired!