3 ms·

What I learnt about interviewing while at Uber

2 points by s16h 7y ago

davismwfl 7y ago
Essentially this is a plug for a startup that wants to take more of the human out of what should be the human to human interaction of interviewing. Most tech companies problem with interviewing is they treat it like a fit test to see if you fit in a box the same way all the others do. It is a human interaction that you need to get good at to discern the good from the bad hires. Removing more and more of the human aspect doesn't get you good people, it gets you robots that work the same way you do which is horrible way to grow and expand your company. I really wish tech companies would learn from the past, stop making mistakes we did 20 years ago during the dot com boom/bust and go back to interviewing people properly as many of us in the last 90's early 00's. You do NOT want to hire the same type of people over and over, you want diversity in thought, diversity in background and people who can solve problems. Testing for language syntax and all these other stupid tests I see anymore are just insane and are getting companies controllable robots who think like everyone else on the team or who have studied to pass a test but may be horrible engineers. I have mentored a number of startups, many on how to hire and when you break down the hiring process you find they tried to turn it into an algorithm to find the right people. People are not algorithms, stop it. There is nothing wrong with identifying traits that are desirable but stop trying to design algorithms to find them and instead talk to people, see if you can work with them. I find it funny that people think that by pre-defining 100 questions and splitting them up across 3-5 interviewers gives them hiring repeatability, analytics or good hires. It doesn't. If you want a good candidate, get 3 people to have a conversation with the person and dive deep, ask questions, learn about their decision making skills which are FAR more important than if they can correctly write a specific algorithm in XX minutes. A smart person can look up the best implementation for a specific algorithm, but if they have bad decision making skills they'll have no clue when to do that and will hurt the team not help.
JSeymourATL 7y ago
> The opaqueness of the interview can lead to bad habits for the interviewer. Most commonly: failing to prepare and therefore not knowing basic background about the candidate, Hiring Executives/Senior Managers take note. Don't depend on HR Flunkies and Recruiter Bozos to drive this process. Be mindful, be present, take this task seriously. Relative to whether an AI Screening Tool adds value to a Human Connection-- paint me a cynic. Corporate America will likely buy-in as CYA cover.

2 points by s16h 7y ago

Essentially this is a plug for a startup that wants to take more of the human out of what should be the human to human interaction of interviewing. Most tech companies problem with interviewing is they treat it like a fit test to see if you fit in a box the same way all the others do. It is a human interaction that you need to get good at to discern the good from the bad hires. Removing more and more of the human aspect doesn't get you good people, it gets you robots that work the same way you do which is horrible way to grow and expand your company. I really wish tech companies would learn from the past, stop making mistakes we did 20 years ago during the dot com boom/bust and go back to interviewing people properly as many of us in the last 90's early 00's. You do NOT want to hire the same type of people over and over, you want diversity in thought, diversity in background and people who can solve problems. Testing for language syntax and all these other stupid tests I see anymore are just insane and are getting companies controllable robots who think like everyone else on the team or who have studied to pass a test but may be horrible engineers. I have mentored a number of startups, many on how to hire and when you break down the hiring process you find they tried to turn it into an algorithm to find the right people. People are not algorithms, stop it. There is nothing wrong with identifying traits that are desirable but stop trying to design algorithms to find them and instead talk to people, see if you can work with them. I find it funny that people think that by pre-defining 100 questions and splitting them up across 3-5 interviewers gives them hiring repeatability, analytics or good hires. It doesn't. If you want a good candidate, get 3 people to have a conversation with the person and dive deep, ask questions, learn about their decision making skills which are FAR more important than if they can correctly write a specific algorithm in XX minutes. A smart person can look up the best implementation for a specific algorithm, but if they have bad decision making skills they'll have no clue when to do that and will hurt the team not help.

JSeymourATL 7y ago

> The opaqueness of the interview can lead to bad habits for the interviewer. Most commonly: failing to prepare and therefore not knowing basic background about the candidate, Hiring Executives/Senior Managers take note. Don't depend on HR Flunkies and Recruiter Bozos to drive this process. Be mindful, be present, take this task seriously. Relative to whether an AI Screening Tool adds value to a Human Connection-- paint me a cynic. Corporate America will likely buy-in as CYA cover.