5 ms·

Seems like the standard 2 phone screens + 5 onsite interviews.

cableshaft 10y ago
5 onsite interviews? Since when is that 'standard'? Unless you mean one day with talking to 5 different people. I wouldn't consider that to be 5 separate 'rounds', though.
- ChemicalWarfare 10y ago
  +1. I actually went through this once (sort of - 5 phone interviews) but that is in no way standard. My story was - getting interviewed by progressively more senior folks with positive feedback on the spot from whoever I was talking to. So then finally after 4 rounds of technical interview calls I get to talk to the hiring manager who is telling me something along the lines of "the feedback has been awesome BUT we didn't expect to find someone this fast and now need to wait till the next hiring cycle".
- cgore 10y ago
  We do the following: 1. look at resume 2. recruiter phone screen, just basic are you a human who knows how to answer the phone, usually 15-30 minutes 3. tech phone screen, 45 minutes 4. half-day in-person set of interviews, some tech and some not And then make a decision, although we'll filter out at each step.
  - cableshaft 10y ago
    Your process seems pretty standard to me, and what I've experienced most of the time. That's not the same as 5 onsite interviews though. I do know some people that have been called in for 3 onsite interviews though, which seems pretty excessive. 2 I can understand, and I've had 2 onsite once before.
  - biztos 10y ago
    This is interesting. Why not do another in-person half-day? It's been forever since I was involved in on-site interviewing but it used to be pretty standard to have more than one (but usually not more than two) rounds of in-person interactions. The point being: A) avoid "having a bad day" bias on both sides B) not decide too quickly on the "maybe" candidates C) get more senior people in to convince the outstanding ones Any strong "don't hire" reactions could cut this short of course but it seems like a good idea to give it a little more time for a serious candidate. Is that not done anymore, or are you trying to make your hiring decisions faster than other companies? (And in either case, do you have any insight as to why?)
    - cableshaft 10y ago
      2 in-person interviews means twice that an employed developer has to either take a PTO day (for something that might not work out), or lie to their boss for why they need to take a really long lunch. Also a lot of companies fly candidates in to interview (i.e. Google), it'd be really expensive to fly the candidate out twice, plus the candidate is effectively investing at least 2 days for the round trip flight and interview. Since it's a buyer's market for developers (supposedly, I haven't always seen evidence of that out here in the midwest), a developer that's already employed (and thus, signalling that they're good enough to keep their job, which makes them more desirable to other corporations) isn't going to want to take a bunch of time off for interviews with a single company (especially if they're actively looking for work with other companies too - going through the process with 4 or 5 companies could easily eat up most of my PTO time for the year). I know I hate to take a PTO day for an interview, and if you made me take two you better be willing to pay me an ass load of money and be doing something I really want to do. Besides, the interview process is exhausting enough. Since so many companies have intense coding exercises or quizzes you have to practice for (especially since they rarely warn you what you're going to be asked you pretty much have to refresh your entire computer science degree), I may have spent 20-30 hours in my spare time refreshing my knowledge ahead of the interview already. I had a five hour intense onsite interview at Google and I needed a couple days just to recover from the mental exhaustion of it. If I know you're going to do that to me twice, for maybe a 25% chance of getting the job (assuming a handful of other good candidates), I might just not bother altogether. My girlfriend is going in for her second onsite interview in a couple days, but she's in corporate real estate, and all she had to do to prepare is get dressed and make sure she had her portfolio. The first interview they asked her a bunch of personality questions, some questions about her job history, and looked at her portfolio. If that was as intense as a developer interview was, it wouldn't be AS big of a deal to have two onsites.
kraftman 10y ago
Doesn't that make it impossible to apply while already employed? If I had to do more than 1 phone interview and 1 onsite I don't think I'd bother.
overcast 10y ago
That sounds like a weeks worth of work, for what?!

5 onsite interviews? Since when is that 'standard'? Unless you mean one day with talking to 5 different people. I wouldn't consider that to be 5 separate 'rounds', though.

ChemicalWarfare 10y ago
+1. I actually went through this once (sort of - 5 phone interviews) but that is in no way standard. My story was - getting interviewed by progressively more senior folks with positive feedback on the spot from whoever I was talking to. So then finally after 4 rounds of technical interview calls I get to talk to the hiring manager who is telling me something along the lines of "the feedback has been awesome BUT we didn't expect to find someone this fast and now need to wait till the next hiring cycle".
cgore 10y ago
We do the following: 1. look at resume 2. recruiter phone screen, just basic are you a human who knows how to answer the phone, usually 15-30 minutes 3. tech phone screen, 45 minutes 4. half-day in-person set of interviews, some tech and some not And then make a decision, although we'll filter out at each step.
- cableshaft 10y ago
  Your process seems pretty standard to me, and what I've experienced most of the time. That's not the same as 5 onsite interviews though. I do know some people that have been called in for 3 onsite interviews though, which seems pretty excessive. 2 I can understand, and I've had 2 onsite once before.
- biztos 10y ago
  This is interesting. Why not do another in-person half-day? It's been forever since I was involved in on-site interviewing but it used to be pretty standard to have more than one (but usually not more than two) rounds of in-person interactions. The point being: A) avoid "having a bad day" bias on both sides B) not decide too quickly on the "maybe" candidates C) get more senior people in to convince the outstanding ones Any strong "don't hire" reactions could cut this short of course but it seems like a good idea to give it a little more time for a serious candidate. Is that not done anymore, or are you trying to make your hiring decisions faster than other companies? (And in either case, do you have any insight as to why?)
  - cableshaft 10y ago
    2 in-person interviews means twice that an employed developer has to either take a PTO day (for something that might not work out), or lie to their boss for why they need to take a really long lunch. Also a lot of companies fly candidates in to interview (i.e. Google), it'd be really expensive to fly the candidate out twice, plus the candidate is effectively investing at least 2 days for the round trip flight and interview. Since it's a buyer's market for developers (supposedly, I haven't always seen evidence of that out here in the midwest), a developer that's already employed (and thus, signalling that they're good enough to keep their job, which makes them more desirable to other corporations) isn't going to want to take a bunch of time off for interviews with a single company (especially if they're actively looking for work with other companies too - going through the process with 4 or 5 companies could easily eat up most of my PTO time for the year). I know I hate to take a PTO day for an interview, and if you made me take two you better be willing to pay me an ass load of money and be doing something I really want to do. Besides, the interview process is exhausting enough. Since so many companies have intense coding exercises or quizzes you have to practice for (especially since they rarely warn you what you're going to be asked you pretty much have to refresh your entire computer science degree), I may have spent 20-30 hours in my spare time refreshing my knowledge ahead of the interview already. I had a five hour intense onsite interview at Google and I needed a couple days just to recover from the mental exhaustion of it. If I know you're going to do that to me twice, for maybe a 25% chance of getting the job (assuming a handful of other good candidates), I might just not bother altogether. My girlfriend is going in for her second onsite interview in a couple days, but she's in corporate real estate, and all she had to do to prepare is get dressed and make sure she had her portfolio. The first interview they asked her a bunch of personality questions, some questions about her job history, and looked at her portfolio. If that was as intense as a developer interview was, it wouldn't be AS big of a deal to have two onsites.

kraftman 10y ago

Doesn't that make it impossible to apply while already employed? If I had to do more than 1 phone interview and 1 onsite I don't think I'd bother.

overcast 10y ago

That sounds like a weeks worth of work, for what?!