4 ms·

Would you have preferred to spend a whole day on an inconclusive onsite interview? Or perhaps a phone screen during which you're asked to implement a hashtable

• chrisper 11y ago
  You are right with that a whole day onsite interview is more time consuming.But personally, I think I can do better in a face-to-face evaluation than on a coding challenge where I have to guess the test cases from some vague description. In fact, face-to-face can show the interviewer how I think and what kind of questions I ask to figure out the way to solve an issue. Maybe it is my lack of interview experience, since I only had like 3 or 4 so far, but I only 1 out of them left me with a good experience after the coding challenge (even if I did not get an offer yet).
• hire_charts 11y ago
  Presumably you (the employer) have less time to do on-site interviews than to assign take-home projects, so landing a real interview is a much better indicator that my (the job-seeker) time will be well-spent. (Hiring is a two way street.)
• WorldMaker 11y ago
  At least an onsite interview typically includes expense reporting lunch, if not dinner, and maybe an opportunity to visit a city or a part of city you are less familiar with and possibly even sight-see a bit. I don't think a phone screen is productive beyond a half-hour to an hour and anyone asking technical implementations over the phone is likely a worse interview than trying to whiteboard things (and that's still far and removed from actual programming).
• turar 11y ago
  Yes. The onsite means the company is investing just as much time and effort into the process as the candidate.
  • brianpan 11y ago
    It's not just the investment. In a 4 hour take-home I learn close to nothing about the company I am applying for. In a 4 hour on-site I see the workspace, talk to employees, etc.
• toby 11y ago
  So if they do well in the take-home test, you give them an offer? Or do they still have to do the all-day on-site after that?
  • maxaf 11y ago
    Do well in the take-home test? Come in, meet the team, do the culture-fit thing. Then you get an offer. And this doesn't need to be an all-day thing. Who wants to keep selling the company to a candidate all day long? :)
• vellum 11y ago
  People usually have a coffee date first, before doing dinner. Here, you're doing dinner first, and then lunch. The first pass should be minimal in commitment, and give both sides a chance to get to know each other. They pass fizzbuzz or something doable in 15-30 minutes, you have a short convo about the company, and then you move on to the second pass.
• st3v3r 11y ago
  Those other things being unpalatable doesn't change code tests being unpalatable.