6 ms·

At my startup we pay interviewees a decent hourly consulting rate for take-home problems or full-day followup onsites (after the first interview). We only do t

At my startup we pay interviewees a decent hourly consulting rate for take-home problems or full-day followup onsites (after the first interview). We only do them when we are pretty excited about a candidate but need more information to make a hiring decision. It's cheap, really, considering the cost of sourcing candidates and the cost of making a bad hiring decision.

rrdharan 8y ago
Interesting and the first I’ve heard of this and the first confirmation I’ve heard that cost-wise it’s not egregious to do so. It still seems strange to me to pay for throwaway work but I can also see how that’s really just my personal sentiment / bias and this is probably a pretty good and balanced approach.
- pc86 8y ago
  Except some of us already have full-time jobs and don't want to spend the weekend working on quizzes, whether it's paid or not. And unless you're very generous with timing taking a day off of work can be a logistical issue, not just a pay issue. This type of interview self-selects for people with fewer family/non-work obligations, who are willing and able to spend their free time still programming.
  - pault 8y ago
    Sometimes you might have to inconvenience yourself to improve your career.
    - Clubber 8y ago
      Ya, if you paid double market rates, I'd do it. I suspect most people who do this sort of thing probably pay market or worse.
  - dfee 8y ago
    Cost of doing business. Not willing to put in your free time? No need to worry about getting a new job. Are you also job hunting at work, doing interviews on your employers time, etc?
    - gamblor956 8y ago
      You're ignoring the context of the comment you're replying to. That guy already has a good job. Another company is trying to poach him. Why would he, or any other qualified and gainfully employed candidate go through that unnecessary homework bullshit for a company that's trying to recruit them? The company has its priorities misplaced. They should be trying to convince the candidate to join them, not putting up barriers to their most qualified candidates.
      - ryandrake 8y ago
        I would totally do homework bullshit for a company/opportunity/compensation that I saw as “better” than what I have currently, but would not do so for anything else.
        Clubber 8y ago
        So your salary + $1? How much better? I'm curious. I'd probably go through this for maybe 50% above market rates.
        ryandrake 8y ago
        Not sure! I guess it depends on how much homework.
        dfee 8y ago
        Insane. Let’s say it’s half that and you make $100k a year. You wouldn’t put in 2 hours for an extra 25k/yr? I mean this isn’t a lottery, and hopefully you’ve reasoned there will be a high probability of getting hired; say 50%. So then the expected value of your time is $6.25k/hr. Go, take the moral high ground, and don’t do the homework. That helps rational minded folk achieve an even higher hit rate.
- bgribble 8y ago
  We aren't paying for the work-product, we're paying for the time and inconvenience. It's more to show respect for the candidate's time than to actually "hire" them to do an interview. I mean, even "discount" recruiting platforms like Hired and Vettery will cost 5-figures when we make a hire through them, and traditional recruiters often charge 20% or more of the new-hire's first year salary. A few hundred bucks to get some more information about a prospective coworker is cheap.
Clubber 8y ago
I'd recommend dropping the full day onsite. I mean what the hell do you talk about for a full day? The small talk must be unbearable after the first 30 minutes.
- doorbumper 8y ago
  So you want a company to hire somebody after talking them for 30 minutes? Based off of what? You honestly can't imagine talking about technical software problems for more than 30 minutes? That's a pretty big red flag to me.
  - Clubber 8y ago
    I'm assuming you are technical yourself, otherwise please disregard. What you are unintentionally implying is that you can't spot a fraud by talking to them about your chosen profession within 30 minutes. If you can't, you shouldn't be doing the interviewing. If you can, why waste 5.5 hours of the company's time per candidate?
    - varjag 8y ago
      Plenty of people are great talkers about profession, big picture, architecture blabble and so on. It does not correlate with coding ability.
      - Clubber 8y ago
        I disagree. You aren't asking the right questions or probing enough.
        varjag 8y ago
        When you start probing enough it quickly becomes practical/coding interview we all come to detest. Sure enough, that way you might not even need 30 minutes. But shop talk alone doesn't cut it.
scarface74 8y ago
When I'm looking for a job, I usually have 3 or 4 strong prospects and looking back on my spreadsheets that I keep when I am looking, it usually takes about 2 weeks from the time I reach out to my network of recruiters and I have an offer (the shortest was 4 days from looking to having an offer from what was then a top 10 Fortune 500 company). Why would I go through that trouble? I have 20+ years of experience that I can explain how I architected and developed from the website, to the middle tier, to the database to multiple VPCs on AWS and dev ops. I'm not going to do homework. When I was first starting out I might, but living in a major metro area that's not on the west coast, there are more openings for senior devs/architects than people to fill them. If a company wants to try me out, I'm more than willing to do a contract to perm, but my hourly rate is going to be enough to cover self employment taxes, make up for not getting paid for time off and at least two or three weeks between employment.
- noahc 8y ago
  > If a company wants to try me out, I'm more than willing to do a contract to perm, but my hourly rate is going to be enough to cover self employment taxes, make up for not getting paid for time off and at least two or three weeks between employment. What does that number look like? 10k a week?
  - scarface74 8y ago
    For a 1099 contract where I'm responsible for my own self employment taxes.... 2080 - hours in a work year -80 Paid Holidays -120 Paid Time off -120 Gap between employment (based on my history) = 1760 work hours per year FTE Salary * .028 (Employer Medicare Contribution) + $7967 (maximum social security amount - 128500*.062) = minimum salary minimum salary/1720 hours = pay rate. Take a reasonable salary for my market as $140,000, that is about $152000/1720 = $88.37/hour minimum. Adjust the number based on market, skill set, and the amount of time you estimate between jobs. I'm also not taking into account health benefits that you would need to pay yourself because I'm covered under my wife, or 401K matching. I would add 4% to the hourly rate to cover 401K matching.
  - walshemj 8y ago

rrdharan 8y ago

Interesting and the first I’ve heard of this and the first confirmation I’ve heard that cost-wise it’s not egregious to do so. It still seems strange to me to pay for throwaway work but I can also see how that’s really just my personal sentiment / bias and this is probably a pretty good and balanced approach.

pc86 8y ago
Except some of us already have full-time jobs and don't want to spend the weekend working on quizzes, whether it's paid or not. And unless you're very generous with timing taking a day off of work can be a logistical issue, not just a pay issue. This type of interview self-selects for people with fewer family/non-work obligations, who are willing and able to spend their free time still programming.
- pault 8y ago
  Sometimes you might have to inconvenience yourself to improve your career.
  - Clubber 8y ago
    Ya, if you paid double market rates, I'd do it. I suspect most people who do this sort of thing probably pay market or worse.
- dfee 8y ago
  Cost of doing business. Not willing to put in your free time? No need to worry about getting a new job. Are you also job hunting at work, doing interviews on your employers time, etc?
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    You're ignoring the context of the comment you're replying to. That guy already has a good job. Another company is trying to poach him. Why would he, or any other qualified and gainfully employed candidate go through that unnecessary homework bullshit for a company that's trying to recruit them? The company has its priorities misplaced. They should be trying to convince the candidate to join them, not putting up barriers to their most qualified candidates.
    - ryandrake 8y ago
      I would totally do homework bullshit for a company/opportunity/compensation that I saw as “better” than what I have currently, but would not do so for anything else.
      - Clubber 8y ago
        So your salary + $1? How much better? I'm curious. I'd probably go through this for maybe 50% above market rates.
        ryandrake 8y ago
        Not sure! I guess it depends on how much homework.
        dfee 8y ago
        Insane. Let’s say it’s half that and you make $100k a year. You wouldn’t put in 2 hours for an extra 25k/yr? I mean this isn’t a lottery, and hopefully you’ve reasoned there will be a high probability of getting hired; say 50%. So then the expected value of your time is $6.25k/hr. Go, take the moral high ground, and don’t do the homework. That helps rational minded folk achieve an even higher hit rate.
bgribble 8y ago
We aren't paying for the work-product, we're paying for the time and inconvenience. It's more to show respect for the candidate's time than to actually "hire" them to do an interview. I mean, even "discount" recruiting platforms like Hired and Vettery will cost 5-figures when we make a hire through them, and traditional recruiters often charge 20% or more of the new-hire's first year salary. A few hundred bucks to get some more information about a prospective coworker is cheap.

Clubber 8y ago

I'd recommend dropping the full day onsite. I mean what the hell do you talk about for a full day? The small talk must be unbearable after the first 30 minutes.

doorbumper 8y ago
So you want a company to hire somebody after talking them for 30 minutes? Based off of what? You honestly can't imagine talking about technical software problems for more than 30 minutes? That's a pretty big red flag to me.
- Clubber 8y ago
  I'm assuming you are technical yourself, otherwise please disregard. What you are unintentionally implying is that you can't spot a fraud by talking to them about your chosen profession within 30 minutes. If you can't, you shouldn't be doing the interviewing. If you can, why waste 5.5 hours of the company's time per candidate?
  - varjag 8y ago
    Plenty of people are great talkers about profession, big picture, architecture blabble and so on. It does not correlate with coding ability.
    - Clubber 8y ago
      I disagree. You aren't asking the right questions or probing enough.
      - varjag 8y ago
        When you start probing enough it quickly becomes practical/coding interview we all come to detest. Sure enough, that way you might not even need 30 minutes. But shop talk alone doesn't cut it.

scarface74 8y ago

When I'm looking for a job, I usually have 3 or 4 strong prospects and looking back on my spreadsheets that I keep when I am looking, it usually takes about 2 weeks from the time I reach out to my network of recruiters and I have an offer (the shortest was 4 days from looking to having an offer from what was then a top 10 Fortune 500 company). Why would I go through that trouble? I have 20+ years of experience that I can explain how I architected and developed from the website, to the middle tier, to the database to multiple VPCs on AWS and dev ops. I'm not going to do homework. When I was first starting out I might, but living in a major metro area that's not on the west coast, there are more openings for senior devs/architects than people to fill them. If a company wants to try me out, I'm more than willing to do a contract to perm, but my hourly rate is going to be enough to cover self employment taxes, make up for not getting paid for time off and at least two or three weeks between employment.

noahc 8y ago
> If a company wants to try me out, I'm more than willing to do a contract to perm, but my hourly rate is going to be enough to cover self employment taxes, make up for not getting paid for time off and at least two or three weeks between employment. What does that number look like? 10k a week?
- scarface74 8y ago
  For a 1099 contract where I'm responsible for my own self employment taxes.... 2080 - hours in a work year -80 Paid Holidays -120 Paid Time off -120 Gap between employment (based on my history) = 1760 work hours per year FTE Salary * .028 (Employer Medicare Contribution) + $7967 (maximum social security amount - 128500*.062) = minimum salary minimum salary/1720 hours = pay rate. Take a reasonable salary for my market as $140,000, that is about $152000/1720 = $88.37/hour minimum. Adjust the number based on market, skill set, and the amount of time you estimate between jobs. I'm also not taking into account health benefits that you would need to pay yourself because I'm covered under my wife, or 401K matching. I would add 4% to the hourly rate to cover 401K matching.
- walshemj 8y ago