5 ms·

Almost too obvious solution: do an initial phone chat to filter qualified candidates into a small pool and then pay your final round of candidates a nice rate t

by kmkemp 8y ago

Almost too obvious solution: do an initial phone chat to filter qualified candidates into a small pool and then pay your final round of candidates a nice rate to complete a take home project. Bonus points if you can make it something that you can actually use at your company.

monocasa 8y ago
I don't see how paying them for their time fixes the work/life balance and already have another job combo?
- hulahoof 8y ago
  For one, a potential employee may find it worthwhile to take an unpaid personal day to complete the challenge of they are compensated. It also shows the company is semi interested and not just meeting the consideration requirements before selecting an already chosen candidate.
TheGRS 8y ago
The take home exam is quite a bit more of an efficient filter than a blanket phone screen. Anything less than a 20 minute call isn't going to tell me much.
exDM69 8y ago
This is a terrible solution at many levels. Paying someone who isn't on your payroll (yet) needs a lot of bureacracy on both sides (e.g. taxes). And even if it's paid, it's still a not-insignificant time investment for the applicant. They're probably applying for several gigs and take home assignments would quickly turn into a full time job, and filing the tax paperwork could take more time than the coding. And finally, assigning a job that would actually get used at a company pushes up the complexity level, the need to understand the context. This would also make me very suspicious about the motives of the company. In my company, we give a "fizzbuzz" level assignment on the whiteboard (or their own laptop if they prefer). The purpose is to weed out the applicants who can't code at all (makes a surprisingly large portion of applicants). Additionally, we've noticed that the ones who are good programmers will ace these tests. I don't think that whiteboard assignments or takehome work is a good way to assess how good a programmer is. A 15-30 minute smoke test with a binary result (the applicant can or can not code at all) is good to filter out bad applicants but not to distinguish good from excellent.

by kmkemp 8y ago

monocasa 8y ago

I don't see how paying them for their time fixes the work/life balance and already have another job combo?

hulahoof 8y ago
For one, a potential employee may find it worthwhile to take an unpaid personal day to complete the challenge of they are compensated. It also shows the company is semi interested and not just meeting the consideration requirements before selecting an already chosen candidate.

TheGRS 8y ago

The take home exam is quite a bit more of an efficient filter than a blanket phone screen. Anything less than a 20 minute call isn't going to tell me much.

exDM69 8y ago

This is a terrible solution at many levels. Paying someone who isn't on your payroll (yet) needs a lot of bureacracy on both sides (e.g. taxes). And even if it's paid, it's still a not-insignificant time investment for the applicant. They're probably applying for several gigs and take home assignments would quickly turn into a full time job, and filing the tax paperwork could take more time than the coding. And finally, assigning a job that would actually get used at a company pushes up the complexity level, the need to understand the context. This would also make me very suspicious about the motives of the company. In my company, we give a "fizzbuzz" level assignment on the whiteboard (or their own laptop if they prefer). The purpose is to weed out the applicants who can't code at all (makes a surprisingly large portion of applicants). Additionally, we've noticed that the ones who are good programmers will ace these tests. I don't think that whiteboard assignments or takehome work is a good way to assess how good a programmer is. A 15-30 minute smoke test with a binary result (the applicant can or can not code at all) is good to filter out bad applicants but not to distinguish good from excellent.