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Most interviews have asymmetric costs. There’s a potential payoff for both parties, but costs are higher for the interviewee (time off, prep, work done). I rec
by new299 8y ago
Most interviews have asymmetric costs. There’s a potential payoff for both parties, but costs are higher for the interviewee (time off, prep, work done).
I recommend trying to make the cost/benefit more symmetric. One way of doing this, is offering compensation for real work. Essentially, hire interviewees to do a small amount of useful (a day?) and evaluate them based on that.
This isn’t going to work for all interviewees, but where possible it feels like a better way of doing things to me.
- gnarcoregrizz 8y agoNot going to happen - I think the supply of software developers has started to outweigh the demand, so there's no way that companies are going to offer compensation to interviewees. If anything, the difficulty bar is just going to continue to go up. If there were a shortage there wouldn't be so many of these silly hoops to jump through. It's not really worth it to interview nowadays. Practicing leetcode for months, flying, doing all day onsites, when all the company has to do is interview you for a few hours. We've been issuing take-homes lately, and we ask that candidates spend no more than 3 hours on them. Well, it turns out almost no one spends only 4 hours on them... The most recent candidate we interviewed spent about 3 days on theirs judging from the commit logs. It was a fully fleshed out application with unit tests and everything. After all that they still have to pass the all day on-site, lol. Anyway I spend all of 2 minutes looking at each submission I really wish there were a better signal.
- alasdair_ 8y ago>Not going to happen - I think the supply of software developers has started to outweigh the demand, so there's no way that companies are going to offer compensation to interviewees. I was thinking the opposite - that no employed engineer is going to bother with a multi-day paid contract for a new position, so the only engineers you will attract are those without a job and no pending interviews.
- marcell 8y agoYour company might be inadvertently attracting poor candidates. I imagine a lot of good candidates (like myself) would just pass on a 4 hours of homework for a random programming job. And good candidates almost certainly won’t spend 3 days on it. Remember Joel Splosky’s classic observation: all the good programmers already have good jobs. The ones on the job market who apply to jobs are usually the bad ones.
- stult 8y agoIt's more like, given a good job market and low barriers to entry, the percentage of candidates who are not qualified will greatly outnumber the good candidates. Good programmers might be looking for work for any number of legitimate reasons, even in a hot market. Doubly so if you are offering a premium on compensation or otherwise trying to make yourself more attractive to applicants (which four hours of take home is the opposite of). The signal to noise ratio is just lower the less attractive you make applying to your company.
- austincheney 8y agoI would argue this in reverse. The costs are all on that side of the table. I love interviewing. Love it. I am honestly not being sarcastic. I am more than happy to take the time off just for the opportunity. If it doesn't go well or the position is not a good fit then I go back to my current job.