4 ms·

Don't feel too bad, the hiring process in tech is almost universally garbage, from every angle. It especially has a high rate of bad "no hire" decisions.

vonmoltke 10y ago
I know. What really frustrates me is the number of people who try to justify that high rate as if it were a good thing, or at least a not very bad thing. I'm at the point now where I take willingness to encourage people to re-apply in n months as a signal that a company's hiring process is bullshit and that I shouldn't apply. I have been downvoted on reddit for saying this, but my opinion is that a company should be confident enough in a "no" that they won't reconsider that person for a substantially similar role.[1] If they aren't, they need to fix their hiring process so they are. As an aside, the other thing that really pisses me off is to hear about how in-demand "software engineers" are while still having to deal with this crap. Seems like a self-imposed problem to me. [1] "Substantially similar" here means same level, same stack, and same team, as appropriate for a particular company. IMO level should largely be irrelevant at larger companies because a candidate should be judged on hireability into any level and an offer made at the highest one appropriate. If there isn't one appropriate but a slot opens up within a reasonable amount of time, an offer should be made to previous interview candidates who passed that bar but failed the higher one, without the need to re-interview.
- InclinedPlane 10y ago
  I don't know if you've been on the other side of the equation, but it's also just as terrible. You get maybe 1 in 10 people that you can pass from one stage to the next (i.e. resume review to phone screen, phone screen to interview, interview to job offer). One of the biggest problems is that it's just very difficult to gauge someone's competency well (even broadly) in a short amount of time. Worse, most folks who do interviews are unwilling to acknowledge how difficult a task it is and how bad they are at it. And the high level of legitimate rejections makes it easy to imagine that all of your rejections are legitimate. It's very unfortunate because hiring is one of the most important things anyone does at a job, and hiring well (especially finding competence that other companies have passed over) is a major competitive advantage.
  - vonmoltke 10y ago
    I have been on both sides. > You get maybe 1 in 10 people that you can pass from one stage to the next (i.e. resume review to phone screen, phone screen to interview, interview to job offer). Where I currently work I have not been involved much in the early screening. My understanding is that resume to screen is about 1:4 and screen to interview is about 1:10. I have been involved with the interviews, and our interview to offer is somewhere between 1:2 and 1:3. Our screen includes a 2-hour timed coding test, though, so I think it is fairly effective at filtering the poseurs. Prior to this I didn't have any visibility into the results. This is tangential, but I often wonder how much of the phone screen and on-site failure rate has as its root cause a poor resume filtering function. When you say you only screen the top 10% of resumes, are you really screening the top 10% of candidates? I know it's a really hard question to answer, but it seems like many companies don't want to try to answer it. > Worse, most folks who do interviews are unwilling to acknowledge how difficult a task it is and how bad they are at it. This is one thing that really bothers me about this industry. So many companies think it is acceptable to just yank semi-random engineers out of their daily routine to go interview a candidate. I came from the traditional engineering world, and we got training before we were assigned to interviewing candidates. Furthermore, for our first interviews we were always paired with another interviewer who had significant experience. > It's very unfortunate because hiring is one of the most important things anyone does at a job, and hiring well (especially finding competence that other companies have passed over) is a major competitive advantage. What is ridiculous is the number of people who treat hiring as a distraction from their real job. If you want any sort of management responsibility, hiring is part your job.
    - InclinedPlane 10y ago
      Exactly. So many devs thrust into the role of interviewer basically just want to look for people who are like them, or find ways to flatter themselves at the expense of the interview process. So many interviews boil down to "guess what answer I'm thinking of", even when that answer isn't actually the best solution to the problem, and often when there's no straightforward way to get to that answer unless you already know of it. And that's on top of all of the other ridiculous problems in the "hiring funnel" that lead up to that point. It's crazy how few people are actually invested in improving the situation given that there's such a huge return on investment possible.

vonmoltke 10y ago

I know. What really frustrates me is the number of people who try to justify that high rate as if it were a good thing, or at least a not very bad thing. I'm at the point now where I take willingness to encourage people to re-apply in n months as a signal that a company's hiring process is bullshit and that I shouldn't apply. I have been downvoted on reddit for saying this, but my opinion is that a company should be confident enough in a "no" that they won't reconsider that person for a substantially similar role.[1] If they aren't, they need to fix their hiring process so they are. As an aside, the other thing that really pisses me off is to hear about how in-demand "software engineers" are while still having to deal with this crap. Seems like a self-imposed problem to me. [1] "Substantially similar" here means same level, same stack, and same team, as appropriate for a particular company. IMO level should largely be irrelevant at larger companies because a candidate should be judged on hireability into any level and an offer made at the highest one appropriate. If there isn't one appropriate but a slot opens up within a reasonable amount of time, an offer should be made to previous interview candidates who passed that bar but failed the higher one, without the need to re-interview.

InclinedPlane 10y ago
I don't know if you've been on the other side of the equation, but it's also just as terrible. You get maybe 1 in 10 people that you can pass from one stage to the next (i.e. resume review to phone screen, phone screen to interview, interview to job offer). One of the biggest problems is that it's just very difficult to gauge someone's competency well (even broadly) in a short amount of time. Worse, most folks who do interviews are unwilling to acknowledge how difficult a task it is and how bad they are at it. And the high level of legitimate rejections makes it easy to imagine that all of your rejections are legitimate. It's very unfortunate because hiring is one of the most important things anyone does at a job, and hiring well (especially finding competence that other companies have passed over) is a major competitive advantage.
- vonmoltke 10y ago
  I have been on both sides. > You get maybe 1 in 10 people that you can pass from one stage to the next (i.e. resume review to phone screen, phone screen to interview, interview to job offer). Where I currently work I have not been involved much in the early screening. My understanding is that resume to screen is about 1:4 and screen to interview is about 1:10. I have been involved with the interviews, and our interview to offer is somewhere between 1:2 and 1:3. Our screen includes a 2-hour timed coding test, though, so I think it is fairly effective at filtering the poseurs. Prior to this I didn't have any visibility into the results. This is tangential, but I often wonder how much of the phone screen and on-site failure rate has as its root cause a poor resume filtering function. When you say you only screen the top 10% of resumes, are you really screening the top 10% of candidates? I know it's a really hard question to answer, but it seems like many companies don't want to try to answer it. > Worse, most folks who do interviews are unwilling to acknowledge how difficult a task it is and how bad they are at it. This is one thing that really bothers me about this industry. So many companies think it is acceptable to just yank semi-random engineers out of their daily routine to go interview a candidate. I came from the traditional engineering world, and we got training before we were assigned to interviewing candidates. Furthermore, for our first interviews we were always paired with another interviewer who had significant experience. > It's very unfortunate because hiring is one of the most important things anyone does at a job, and hiring well (especially finding competence that other companies have passed over) is a major competitive advantage. What is ridiculous is the number of people who treat hiring as a distraction from their real job. If you want any sort of management responsibility, hiring is part your job.
  - InclinedPlane 10y ago
    Exactly. So many devs thrust into the role of interviewer basically just want to look for people who are like them, or find ways to flatter themselves at the expense of the interview process. So many interviews boil down to "guess what answer I'm thinking of", even when that answer isn't actually the best solution to the problem, and often when there's no straightforward way to get to that answer unless you already know of it. And that's on top of all of the other ridiculous problems in the "hiring funnel" that lead up to that point. It's crazy how few people are actually invested in improving the situation given that there's such a huge return on investment possible.