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If there were a better way, we would be doing it. Recruiting is half science, half art. There is no formulaic way to guarantee you'll find the perfect hire. The

If there were a better way, we would be doing it. Recruiting is half science, half art. There is no formulaic way to guarantee you'll find the perfect hire. There likely never will be. People are fickle -- you could find the perfect person for a position who could have the ulterior motive of "resting and vesting", and not being the leader in your organization that you'd hope they would have been. So we take proxies -- like degrees from renown (or at least accredited) institutions, prior employer prestige, and years of experience as signals for what may be. But ultimately, we can never know. Even with a whiteboard coding exercise, the subject could get lucky and know the question. Or get nervous and fail miserably, but would have succeeded on the job. There is no good answer for how to reliably choose talent. If there was a prescribed way, we'd do it. The best that we've come across in our industry is to say, "well, the candidate could implement algorithm <x> on the whiteboard, so maybe they know a thing or two". Also, you might be over estimating the amount of time/effort we should put into hiring. Most employees are at will, so we can quickly get rid of them if they aren't a fit. In a world where employment trends further and further towards being ephemeral, why should we invest any more than we do?

warrenm 9y ago
>Most employees are at will, so we can quickly get rid of them if they aren't a fit. While this is technically true, it's ridiculous to think most employers think this way. Onboarding costs (from placing ads to interviewing to extending offers to actually hiring to getting equipment issued to getting people signed up for all the crap they need to get signed up for to training etc) is MASSIVELY expensive. A day of interviewing costs not only the flight & hotel for the candidate (presuming they're from out of town), but also the lost work time for everyone involved as interviewers.
- Y7ZCQtNo39 9y ago
  Let's say you get brought on, and it's clear that you aren't a fit in the first two weeks. They still have the rolodex of other candidates they picked -- they could easily extend an offer to #2. Flight + hotel should not be a deal breaker for a well-funded business or one with access to a lot of capital. If you're bootstrapping, it could be an issue, but I don't think those startups tend to hire people out of town.
  - warrenm 9y ago
    >they could easily extend an offer to #2 And #2 could easily have already accepted elsewhere. Or otherwise no longer be interested. Hiring is HARD. And doing it not poorly is often the biggest hope: hiring well is exceptionally difficult - a couple hours of forced interaction in a manner that will never happen again is a pisspoor way of doing it.

warrenm 9y ago

>Most employees are at will, so we can quickly get rid of them if they aren't a fit. While this is technically true, it's ridiculous to think most employers think this way. Onboarding costs (from placing ads to interviewing to extending offers to actually hiring to getting equipment issued to getting people signed up for all the crap they need to get signed up for to training etc) is MASSIVELY expensive. A day of interviewing costs not only the flight & hotel for the candidate (presuming they're from out of town), but also the lost work time for everyone involved as interviewers.

Y7ZCQtNo39 9y ago
Let's say you get brought on, and it's clear that you aren't a fit in the first two weeks. They still have the rolodex of other candidates they picked -- they could easily extend an offer to #2. Flight + hotel should not be a deal breaker for a well-funded business or one with access to a lot of capital. If you're bootstrapping, it could be an issue, but I don't think those startups tend to hire people out of town.
- warrenm 9y ago
  >they could easily extend an offer to #2 And #2 could easily have already accepted elsewhere. Or otherwise no longer be interested. Hiring is HARD. And doing it not poorly is often the biggest hope: hiring well is exceptionally difficult - a couple hours of forced interaction in a manner that will never happen again is a pisspoor way of doing it.