What are your biggest red flags when interviewing?

[pentae]

Here's mine when hiring developers that are charging $30-$45 an hour:

- "Sorry I can't share any of my prior work experience with you as it's all under NDA. Every client." 

- "Sorry, I don't have a github account because all my prior work was done in private repos." 

- "Yes I worked on _superfamouswebsite.com_ but cannot provide any references or proof, but if you hire me you'll see that I can do the job"

So. Many. Scammers!

[versailles]

Also, I would never hire a dev for any project of significant size without having a video chat with them. This is a way to filter out people with fake profiles and photos, which is the mother of all red flags.

[gbalint]

Well, I'm a software developer (architect/tech lead/team lead/whatever - there are so many names nowadays) and I have about 7 pages (each showing 25 items) of repositories on BitBucket out of which I can show 0 (zero) to anyone.

Nobody really said they are under NDA, but who would take me seriously if I randomly show work done for my previous clients? It's just not ethical.

I can show some of my personal projects which are a mess because they weren't made for money and I didn't have enough time to polish them up (after working x hours programming a day, who wants to add another y hours anyway?)

So, yeah, z% of people can claim they are good software developers but cannot show any work. Some might try to scam people, but t% of them are like me, good software devs that worked a lot. Just that it's not up to them to show off their work. Who is responsible to separate the two? Yeah, the interviewer.

As a software dev it usually takes me 5 - 15 minutes to figure out if somebody knows about this domain or not. All the people I've screened in the last 3 years have proven to be exactly how I thought about them after talking with them for 10 minutes. So, if one cannot weight a developer by what they say, hire a software developer like me to conduct the interviews 😄

[tta192]

These are all red flags, just not in the way you interpret them. On the contrary, one should never hire such a freelancer, nor work with clients asking to see ‘previous work’(e.g., other clients’ property).

Of course, whether "such a freelancer" and "such a client" make a good fit is a different question...