The major part of my job is automating tests and, sometimes, tasks so people are freed up to do more exploratory testing. Another part of my job is doing interviews for intern positions (and actual positions).  That’s what I was doing from 10am until 2:30pm yesterday.

Interviews.

With interns.

Don’t get  me wrong, these were some pretty smart kids. It’s just that some of them were pretty socially inept. One kid sounded sort of like Beavis and another one sounded quite ill. At least I hope he was ill because he wasn’t sounding right. The majority of them were first year students, most haven’t even gotten through a semester yet. Of course, there is that they remind me that I’m getting old.

Little shits.

After a few of them I started losing track of which questions I had asked and what spiels I had given (i.e. what the intern would be doing). It was much the same. I asked the same questions and gave them an opportunity to ask some questions of their own – most of which were the same.

That got me thinking… one of the main identifiers of something that should be automated is that it is repeated a lot. With that in mind, I think I might automate the interviewing process. Pre-record questions, record the the answers given and even pre-record the answers to questions interns commonly ask. Almost like a lot of the support systems large companies have in place.

Of course, that’s completely inhuman (which creates an sense that this place isn’t a fun place to work for) and there are limitations on things a living interviewer might be able to answer or follow up on.

Ah well, I guess somethings shouldn’t be automated.