8 ms·

I'm a recruiter that is technical (js engineer) based in NYC. I don't see what TripleByte is doing that is that different from what a good recruiter can offer.

by dsk139 10y ago

I'm a recruiter that is technical (js engineer) based in NYC. I don't see what TripleByte is doing that is that different from what a good recruiter can offer. Matching at very selective companies doesn't seem challenging. I don't work with Apple or Facebook, but in the past four months recruiting part-time I've had 15 placements. Over 65% resume submission to on-site rate. And over an 85% offer close rate (close counts if I get 3 offers for someone and they choose one). I can match relatively well without needing to put candidates through a day of tests and I save candidates time by sending them to selectively chosen companies (safety, fit, reach). And I spend a ton of truly understanding each unique process of the companies I work with. What makes Triplebyte actually unique? What are they changing about the industry? Are they actually reducing bias or is this a gimmick? Are they that different from a recruiting firm with strong lead generation?

marme 10y ago
the draw they have for engineering talent side is that you do preliminary interview with them and then move straight to on sites with companies they recommend you to. It means you can have 10 on sites without having to do 10 phone screens
- dsk139 10y ago
  Hopefully someone good at matching doesn't need to send you to 10 on-sites to find you a good fit. That sounds exhausting and unproductive.
  - Harj 10y ago
    We've never had a candidate do 10 on-sites nor would we encourage someone to. That'd indeed be incredibly exhausting. We encourage them to be broad with the number of companies they do an initial pitch call with, then be selective about who they move forward with to an on-site.
    - ryandrake 10y ago
      Wow. Do you actually find that less than 10 on-sites is sufficient to obtain at least one offer? A >10% success rate seems very high to me, even with the vetting you provide. Admittedly I have only anecdotal data.
- canistr 10y ago
  This sounds like it's optimizing for the wrong component of the interview process. I've never had issues with spending time on phone screens because they are one of the main ways in which I screen companies I'm interested in. It's the technical interviewing portion that's a pain to have to re-do over and over again. Especially if it involves travelling across the country to do. Engineers are ultimately looking at company and engineering culture to choose between. The other thing is that for some engineers, they might perform well in one on-site versus another for many reasons such as the questions asked, interviewer rating, or something as trivial as mood. Seems like Triplebyte giving people one-chance makes this difficult. Ultimately, I feel the main crux of hiring/interviews/finding the right talent is training. If the industry is over-fitting on people who can pass whiteboarding, then why aren't there more startups focused on this aspect? Not just passing interviews (e.g. outco.io), but actually focused on training systems design and algorithms. Universities don't do that in undergrad or grad school.
  - pmiller2 10y ago
    I very much agree with all of this. To me, the main draw of Triplebyte was "no whiteboarding." I suck at whiteboarding, so I went through the project track. And, yes, there was no whiteboarding, but what do they replace it with? Live coding. Yeah, like that's going to go any better. I'd have been better off at the whiteboard where I could at least fudge the syntax a little.
- nsm 10y ago
  (Disclaimer: Applied and at current job through Triplebyte) Seconded. I don't use LinkedIn or recruiters. When I was looking, I was applying manually to several companies, and setting up phone screens and so on was very exhausting and timing things was complicated. Triplebyte allowed me to combine the primary stages for a couple of companies and helped a lot with prep.
- pmiller2 10y ago
  My overall feeling is mixed. Given the time commitment, if all you get to bypass is the initial phone screen of ~1 hour, that means you need to go on 4-7 on-sites to break even. On the other hand, some of those on-sites might be from companies that wouldn't have even phone screened you. It's really hard to say whether it's worth it or not from the candidate side, IMO.
Harj 10y ago
I'm not sure exactly how your process works, from that description there's three ways we differ: (1) We don't submit resumes to companies. We give them a profile of the candidate which describes their technical skills and their work history but without any mention of specific schools or companies. For a company to move forward with a Triplebyte candidate, they have to trust in our screening process more than credentials. (2) Companies agree to not do any technical phone screens or coding challenges with our candidates. Instead they do an initial pitch call and then move to an onsite if there's candidate interest. This saves engineers a lot of time spent in repetitive phone screens. (3) The metric we optimize for is our onsite success rate i.e. how often does a Triplebyte candidate onsite interview result in an offer. Since our candidates don't go through the regular technical phone screens, any improvement we can make on the industry standard of a 20 - 25% onsite success rate saves the company engineering time spent doing those phone screens. Currently we're averaging 2x that rate across all our companies.
- dsk139 10y ago
  Harj- thanks for the thoughtful reply. Do you disclose numbers about what % of candidates that get offers choose to take them? I feel like that's pretty important for companies when considering time they save.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  > The metric we optimize for is our onsite success rate i.e. how often does a Triplebyte candidate onsite interview result in an offer. Since our candidates don't go through the regular technical phone screens, any improvement we can make on the industry standard of a 20 - 25% onsite success rate saves the company engineering time spent doing those phone screens. Currently we're averaging 2x that rate across all our companies. I can see where that's valuable to the companies. What value are you trying to provide to candidates? I already know how to apply to companies, pass the phone screen, and wash out of the interview. If I knew how to pass the interview, I'd still know how to apply and pass the phone screen. What is Triplebyte supposed to help with?
  - itsdrewmiller 10y ago
OSfrog 10y ago
I interviewed and was rejected from Triplebyte. It was pretty miserable. Compared to real recruiters, I feel more comfortable talking to recruiters since they care about my background and won't ask me to program an hour's worth of code on the spot or ask me several questions about redis and webscale technologies. They're kind of just filtering through candidates looking for people who they think could work at Google instead of looking for hard-working people. With that said, do you accept new candidates for the NYC area?
- dsk139 10y ago
  Shoot me an email. Happy to chat.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  > They're kind of just filtering through candidates looking for people who they think could work at Google instead of looking for hard-working people. Perhaps just responding to their customers (employers) desires. It seems companies these days, companies that are not Google, are looking for Google-caliber people even if they just need someone who knows how to code and is hard working.
rgoldenberg 10y ago
They are indeed reducing bias, and finding value where others aren't, such as in candidates with non-traditional backgrounds. When I interviewed with TripleByte I had just come out of a 3-month bootcamp, and spent the prior 3 yrs as a teacher. Most companies did not look twice at my resume and it was very tough to break in. TripleByte didn't look at all and judged on ability instead of credentials. I haven't seen that from other recruiting / sourcing organizations and give them a lot of credit for it.

by dsk139 10y ago

marme 10y ago

the draw they have for engineering talent side is that you do preliminary interview with them and then move straight to on sites with companies they recommend you to. It means you can have 10 on sites without having to do 10 phone screens

dsk139 10y ago
Hopefully someone good at matching doesn't need to send you to 10 on-sites to find you a good fit. That sounds exhausting and unproductive.
- Harj 10y ago
  We've never had a candidate do 10 on-sites nor would we encourage someone to. That'd indeed be incredibly exhausting. We encourage them to be broad with the number of companies they do an initial pitch call with, then be selective about who they move forward with to an on-site.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    Wow. Do you actually find that less than 10 on-sites is sufficient to obtain at least one offer? A >10% success rate seems very high to me, even with the vetting you provide. Admittedly I have only anecdotal data.
canistr 10y ago
This sounds like it's optimizing for the wrong component of the interview process. I've never had issues with spending time on phone screens because they are one of the main ways in which I screen companies I'm interested in. It's the technical interviewing portion that's a pain to have to re-do over and over again. Especially if it involves travelling across the country to do. Engineers are ultimately looking at company and engineering culture to choose between. The other thing is that for some engineers, they might perform well in one on-site versus another for many reasons such as the questions asked, interviewer rating, or something as trivial as mood. Seems like Triplebyte giving people one-chance makes this difficult. Ultimately, I feel the main crux of hiring/interviews/finding the right talent is training. If the industry is over-fitting on people who can pass whiteboarding, then why aren't there more startups focused on this aspect? Not just passing interviews (e.g. outco.io), but actually focused on training systems design and algorithms. Universities don't do that in undergrad or grad school.
- pmiller2 10y ago
  I very much agree with all of this. To me, the main draw of Triplebyte was "no whiteboarding." I suck at whiteboarding, so I went through the project track. And, yes, there was no whiteboarding, but what do they replace it with? Live coding. Yeah, like that's going to go any better. I'd have been better off at the whiteboard where I could at least fudge the syntax a little.
nsm 10y ago
(Disclaimer: Applied and at current job through Triplebyte) Seconded. I don't use LinkedIn or recruiters. When I was looking, I was applying manually to several companies, and setting up phone screens and so on was very exhausting and timing things was complicated. Triplebyte allowed me to combine the primary stages for a couple of companies and helped a lot with prep.
pmiller2 10y ago
My overall feeling is mixed. Given the time commitment, if all you get to bypass is the initial phone screen of ~1 hour, that means you need to go on 4-7 on-sites to break even. On the other hand, some of those on-sites might be from companies that wouldn't have even phone screened you. It's really hard to say whether it's worth it or not from the candidate side, IMO.

Harj 10y ago

I'm not sure exactly how your process works, from that description there's three ways we differ: (1) We don't submit resumes to companies. We give them a profile of the candidate which describes their technical skills and their work history but without any mention of specific schools or companies. For a company to move forward with a Triplebyte candidate, they have to trust in our screening process more than credentials. (2) Companies agree to not do any technical phone screens or coding challenges with our candidates. Instead they do an initial pitch call and then move to an onsite if there's candidate interest. This saves engineers a lot of time spent in repetitive phone screens. (3) The metric we optimize for is our onsite success rate i.e. how often does a Triplebyte candidate onsite interview result in an offer. Since our candidates don't go through the regular technical phone screens, any improvement we can make on the industry standard of a 20 - 25% onsite success rate saves the company engineering time spent doing those phone screens. Currently we're averaging 2x that rate across all our companies.

dsk139 10y ago
Harj- thanks for the thoughtful reply. Do you disclose numbers about what % of candidates that get offers choose to take them? I feel like that's pretty important for companies when considering time they save.
thaumasiotes 10y ago
> The metric we optimize for is our onsite success rate i.e. how often does a Triplebyte candidate onsite interview result in an offer. Since our candidates don't go through the regular technical phone screens, any improvement we can make on the industry standard of a 20 - 25% onsite success rate saves the company engineering time spent doing those phone screens. Currently we're averaging 2x that rate across all our companies. I can see where that's valuable to the companies. What value are you trying to provide to candidates? I already know how to apply to companies, pass the phone screen, and wash out of the interview. If I knew how to pass the interview, I'd still know how to apply and pass the phone screen. What is Triplebyte supposed to help with?
- itsdrewmiller 10y ago

OSfrog 10y ago

I interviewed and was rejected from Triplebyte. It was pretty miserable. Compared to real recruiters, I feel more comfortable talking to recruiters since they care about my background and won't ask me to program an hour's worth of code on the spot or ask me several questions about redis and webscale technologies. They're kind of just filtering through candidates looking for people who they think could work at Google instead of looking for hard-working people. With that said, do you accept new candidates for the NYC area?

dsk139 10y ago
Shoot me an email. Happy to chat.
ryandrake 10y ago
> They're kind of just filtering through candidates looking for people who they think could work at Google instead of looking for hard-working people. Perhaps just responding to their customers (employers) desires. It seems companies these days, companies that are not Google, are looking for Google-caliber people even if they just need someone who knows how to code and is hard working.

rgoldenberg 10y ago

They are indeed reducing bias, and finding value where others aren't, such as in candidates with non-traditional backgrounds. When I interviewed with TripleByte I had just come out of a 3-month bootcamp, and spent the prior 3 yrs as a teacher. Most companies did not look twice at my resume and it was very tough to break in. TripleByte didn't look at all and judged on ability instead of credentials. I haven't seen that from other recruiting / sourcing organizations and give them a lot of credit for it.