Amber Hanks, our summer intern and current programmer

At the T&S Web Design, just yesterday we did our first group interview for interns, both programmers and designers. Previously, I had wasted spent a full day and a half interviewing any time I hired a group of interns, whether it was designers or programmers. Spending a full three days one week did not appeal to me, to say the least.

One thing I noticed in the previous interviews was that I spent about a half hour telling each applicant the same thing. A group interview, it seemed, would at least eliminate me repeating that part time after time after time.

There was a three step process:

1. Interested parties called a hotline and left a voice message with specific information.
2. The applicants that passed the first part had a relatively short phone interview.
3. The applicants that passed steps one and two came in for the group interview.

Now I’m a nerd about trying new business methods, so I was really excited about trying this new method out. Jennifer Howard helped us come up with the three steps, but we filled in the specifics ourselves.

Voicemail

Here was our particular message when the applicants called the hotline. I was the one who they heard when they called in.

I’m Tim Priebe. My wife, Leann, and I own T&S Web Design.

We are hiring both design and programming interns, to work a combined 80 hours a week. 40 of that is programmers, and 40 is designers.

Our focus on interns is hiring those who are willing to learn, not necessarily those who exactly match the skill-set of what we do.

That said, let me talk briefly about the job duties of the programmer first, then the designers.

Programming interns will be responsible for performing both client T&S requested updates to existing websites, converting website designs from static image files into working code, and making changes to website code throughout the website creation process.

Designer interns will be responsible for coming up with designs for both print and web web work and modifying graphical elements as requested by clients or by T&S.

We use Adobe CS3 products currently. Our sites are designed in Fireworks, converted to code both by hand and using Dreamweaver, and then implemented either as a Dreamweaver template, a WordPress template, or a combination of the two.

Our business is deadline driven, and interns will be expected to meet deadlines just as our full-time people are. Everyone must work in a team environment and not be easily stressed when working on a tight deadline.

Hopefully I haven’t scared too many of you off.

If you are interested in joining us at T&S and becoming an intern, please leave your name, a telephone number where you can be reached during the day and your email address.  Let us know where you are attending school, and if you are applying as a designer or a programmer. Finally tell us why you think you would be perfect for this job.

Let me go through that one more time. Leave your name, a phone number you can be reached on during the day, your email address, where you are attending school, whether you are applying as a designer or programmer, and why you think you would be perfect for this job.

Oh, one last thing. While we’re excited to consider you for this job, we simply don’t have time to talk to everyone in person. So don’t call our office phone to speak with us, or you will not be considered for the position.

Thanks!

Phone Interview

We researched the applicants with publicly available databases. Yes, this included Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Once we’d eliminated some of them, it was time to call the rest.

Each interview here was slightly different, based on what they left in the voicemail and what information was publicly available about the applicant. However, one of the questions we asked everyone was the number of hours they were available per week to work. We were looking for 40 total hours worth of programmers, and the same for designers.

If they passed the phone interview, they were given the date, time and location of the group interview.

Group Interview

We had each applicant bring three things:

1. Resume
2. Specific weekly availability
3. Work samples (We had to be able to keep them)

We broke the interviewees up into two different hour and a half sessions, designers and programmers. Here was the break down of how we spent that time:

• 30 minutes – About T&S
• 30 minutes – Group activity and presentation
• 15 minutes – Presentation of work samples
• 15 minutes – Each applicant rates the other applicants

For the group activity, we had the designers critique a specific website that Emily, our full-time designer, found. For the programmers, we had them research and find the best contact form plugin for WordPress. We weren’t nearly as interested in the results as we were in how they all worked on solving the problem.

For the rating, each applicant just took a sheet of paper and wrote down their thoughts on all the other applicants. My instructions included something like, “And remember, you may be working with one of the people you comment on, so be sure to be honest.”

The whole process seemed to work fairly well. We will be notifying the applicants that we chose on Monday, so it will probably be a couple months before we really know if the process worked well or not.