6 ms·

Don't Treat Interview Candidates Like Detainees

25 points by asimjalis 17y ago

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
dpritchett 17y ago
Alternate link in case of server troubles (I found the page load suspiciously slow): http://aspdd.com/news/recruiting-news/how-candidate-abuse-is-costing-your-firm-millions-of-dollars-in-revenue/ http://aspdd.com/news/recruiting-news/how-candidate-abuse-is...
dpritchett 17y ago
It certainly lowers my estimation of the other party when there's no follow-up or when there are brazenly disrespectful power games in the negotiation process. It's one thing not to respond to a resume submission, quite another to go silent after an interview or three. "Organizations like the Ritz-Carlton and Wal-Mart have elevated monitoring guest satisfaction to a science and know the exact dollar cost of obtaining a customer, upsetting a customer, and losing a lifelong customer. While such evaluation is common in sales and customer support functions, it is nearly unheard of in HR functions, which often interact with a significant volume of potential customers in any given year. The impact of a poor “candidate experience” is uncalculated, unreported, and not discussed, making it quite possibly one of the largest “hidden costs” facing modern organizations."
pw0ncakes 17y ago
Most companies that I've worked in or with seem to treat interviewing as a miserable bore, and most candidates as utter incompetents to be sifted through. Whether this is accurate (I'd be ready to believe that the incompetents spend much more time on the job market, but that would concede the questionable possibility that most corporations' interview processes work) or not is open to debate. Grading papers, an objectively miserable process, has probably led a few teachers to conclude that their students are morons just due to the unpleasantness of the task. If you can get to an in-office interview, you have the shot of impressing someone enough that people are actually excited about interviewing you-- people start talking about "the candidate" being really good today-- but this doesn't happen often, and not until you've already passed enough hurdles to get in person with someone who matters. Until that happens, you're just a block of work to be dealt with.
- LiveTheDream 17y ago
  Most companies that I've worked in or with seem to treat interviewing as a miserable bore, and most candidates as utter incompetents Jeff Atwood and Joel on Software blogged about how an absurdly high amount of people applying for programming jobs can't actually program at all. Many candidates are utter incompetents. Filtering the wheat from the chaff is hard process for the average company, because interviewing well and performing a job well are two different tasks.
  - tom_b 17y ago
    I think a large number of programming jobs aren't - this is how we wind up with such a mind-numbing process for both job seeker and hiring organization. I have interviewed at a number of places where the job description would have led you to believe the position was for a hard-core development person, with a desire for the type of experience in candidates that could only be obtained by being a tech lead dev or architect with dev responsibilities at a forward-thinking software shop. I've have generally been surprised to often find what companies were really after was someone willing to work with a previously purchased tool or framework, placate internal users, and perhaps do some scripting on the side. Perfectly fine work, but in no way matching the job description. People who've been filling these positions now begin to think of themselves as programmers (even if this type of job is all they have had). Then we, when hiring for something approximating actual dev work, are surprised to find that all they have done is lightweight admin of some tool set and some scripting. A giant red flag for me at this point is to apply to a job, offer to provide code samples, and have ZERO interest from the hiring group in seeing those samples. Seriously? But, then I realize, they aren't REALLY looking for a programmer - they are looking for more of the role I've described above. We could look deeper under the covers at reasons for this weirdness, but it's probably too depressing in general.
    - pw0ncakes 17y ago
      Question: in hiring, what would you read for in a code sample? I ask this because, in my experience, the most destructive breed of lousy programmer is not the sort who can't program but the "rock star" who writes code fast that seems acceptable on the local scale, but has no modularity or organization at a more global level. This is the sort who can hammer out a 4000-line project over a weekend, but if you have him on something major, he won't even understand his own code if it's older than 2 months (and no one else will be able to understand it, either). You can't really catch this kind of programmer in a code sample, unless you know what to look for (and I think I'm among the majority of people who don't).
j_baker 17y ago
> "Little or no honest feedback throughout the process" THANK YOU! I hate receiving that form email that says that this job isn't a "good fit".
davidmurphy 17y ago
The hiring process in America is broken. I agree completely. I'd like to see startups address the broken-tech aspects, and hiring managers address the cultural factors. Even the "best" offerings like Taleo are highly lacking IMHO. Then you have custom sites that have horrid designs, like USAJOBS.gov - used by thousands and thousands of people. Why in this era of LinkedIn should anyone ever have to retype a resume into individual form fields? Insane.
- pw0ncakes 17y ago
  The hiring process in America is broken. Although far away from relevant machinery, social class stratification is the root problem. Very few people have substantial money or power. Since the middle and lower classes have more people, and talent seems to be fairly evenly distributed among social and ethnic groups, most of the talent is in these relatively powerless classes-- separated from the means to get anything done. Back doors (social connections, informal gatherings, elite colleges) are always going to be more effective for hiring and job-seeking than front doors (HR). I think it's doomed to be that way. Back doors are in a miserable state now because of the social entrenchment, gated communities, invitation-only events, that reinforce the power of the hereditary aristocracy and marginalize 99+% of the talented (the young and poor++). ++ Here I define "poor" as anyone who would face financial ruin in event of long-standing (several years, plus a need to go back to school) unemployment or an unfortunate event (e.g. uncovered medical expenses). So the vast majority of people, even those we'd consider "middle class", qualify as poor by this definition. With social gaps widening and "back doors" in a state of general failure, it follows naturally (in my estimation, although I admit I've made no case for it here) that front doors are going to fall into an even sorrier state.

25 points by asimjalis 17y ago

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

Alternate link in case of server troubles (I found the page load suspiciously slow): http://aspdd.com/news/recruiting-news/how-candidate-abuse-is-costing-your-firm-millions-of-dollars-in-revenue/ http://aspdd.com/news/recruiting-news/how-candidate-abuse-is...

dpritchett 17y ago

It certainly lowers my estimation of the other party when there's no follow-up or when there are brazenly disrespectful power games in the negotiation process. It's one thing not to respond to a resume submission, quite another to go silent after an interview or three. "Organizations like the Ritz-Carlton and Wal-Mart have elevated monitoring guest satisfaction to a science and know the exact dollar cost of obtaining a customer, upsetting a customer, and losing a lifelong customer. While such evaluation is common in sales and customer support functions, it is nearly unheard of in HR functions, which often interact with a significant volume of potential customers in any given year. The impact of a poor “candidate experience” is uncalculated, unreported, and not discussed, making it quite possibly one of the largest “hidden costs” facing modern organizations."

pw0ncakes 17y ago

Most companies that I've worked in or with seem to treat interviewing as a miserable bore, and most candidates as utter incompetents to be sifted through. Whether this is accurate (I'd be ready to believe that the incompetents spend much more time on the job market, but that would concede the questionable possibility that most corporations' interview processes work) or not is open to debate. Grading papers, an objectively miserable process, has probably led a few teachers to conclude that their students are morons just due to the unpleasantness of the task. If you can get to an in-office interview, you have the shot of impressing someone enough that people are actually excited about interviewing you-- people start talking about "the candidate" being really good today-- but this doesn't happen often, and not until you've already passed enough hurdles to get in person with someone who matters. Until that happens, you're just a block of work to be dealt with.

LiveTheDream 17y ago
Most companies that I've worked in or with seem to treat interviewing as a miserable bore, and most candidates as utter incompetents Jeff Atwood and Joel on Software blogged about how an absurdly high amount of people applying for programming jobs can't actually program at all. Many candidates are utter incompetents. Filtering the wheat from the chaff is hard process for the average company, because interviewing well and performing a job well are two different tasks.
- tom_b 17y ago
  I think a large number of programming jobs aren't - this is how we wind up with such a mind-numbing process for both job seeker and hiring organization. I have interviewed at a number of places where the job description would have led you to believe the position was for a hard-core development person, with a desire for the type of experience in candidates that could only be obtained by being a tech lead dev or architect with dev responsibilities at a forward-thinking software shop. I've have generally been surprised to often find what companies were really after was someone willing to work with a previously purchased tool or framework, placate internal users, and perhaps do some scripting on the side. Perfectly fine work, but in no way matching the job description. People who've been filling these positions now begin to think of themselves as programmers (even if this type of job is all they have had). Then we, when hiring for something approximating actual dev work, are surprised to find that all they have done is lightweight admin of some tool set and some scripting. A giant red flag for me at this point is to apply to a job, offer to provide code samples, and have ZERO interest from the hiring group in seeing those samples. Seriously? But, then I realize, they aren't REALLY looking for a programmer - they are looking for more of the role I've described above. We could look deeper under the covers at reasons for this weirdness, but it's probably too depressing in general.
  - pw0ncakes 17y ago
    Question: in hiring, what would you read for in a code sample? I ask this because, in my experience, the most destructive breed of lousy programmer is not the sort who can't program but the "rock star" who writes code fast that seems acceptable on the local scale, but has no modularity or organization at a more global level. This is the sort who can hammer out a 4000-line project over a weekend, but if you have him on something major, he won't even understand his own code if it's older than 2 months (and no one else will be able to understand it, either). You can't really catch this kind of programmer in a code sample, unless you know what to look for (and I think I'm among the majority of people who don't).

j_baker 17y ago

> "Little or no honest feedback throughout the process" THANK YOU! I hate receiving that form email that says that this job isn't a "good fit".

davidmurphy 17y ago

The hiring process in America is broken. I agree completely. I'd like to see startups address the broken-tech aspects, and hiring managers address the cultural factors. Even the "best" offerings like Taleo are highly lacking IMHO. Then you have custom sites that have horrid designs, like USAJOBS.gov - used by thousands and thousands of people. Why in this era of LinkedIn should anyone ever have to retype a resume into individual form fields? Insane.

pw0ncakes 17y ago
The hiring process in America is broken. Although far away from relevant machinery, social class stratification is the root problem. Very few people have substantial money or power. Since the middle and lower classes have more people, and talent seems to be fairly evenly distributed among social and ethnic groups, most of the talent is in these relatively powerless classes-- separated from the means to get anything done. Back doors (social connections, informal gatherings, elite colleges) are always going to be more effective for hiring and job-seeking than front doors (HR). I think it's doomed to be that way. Back doors are in a miserable state now because of the social entrenchment, gated communities, invitation-only events, that reinforce the power of the hereditary aristocracy and marginalize 99+% of the talented (the young and poor++). ++ Here I define "poor" as anyone who would face financial ruin in event of long-standing (several years, plus a need to go back to school) unemployment or an unfortunate event (e.g. uncovered medical expenses). So the vast majority of people, even those we'd consider "middle class", qualify as poor by this definition. With social gaps widening and "back doors" in a state of general failure, it follows naturally (in my estimation, although I admit I've made no case for it here) that front doors are going to fall into an even sorrier state.