3 ms·

I conduct interviews with candidates almost every other day. Believe me, interviewing is a huge cost for the company and nobody wants to organize interview to

I conduct interviews with candidates almost every other day. Believe me, interviewing is a huge cost for the company and nobody wants to organize interview to "fish" for the candidates. We have screening process to remove candidates that don't have chance passing next stage so that we can spend more time with candidates that pass screening. It is really difficult to figure out if you want to work with somebody after 1.5-2h discussion. For 2 hour interview I must fit following things: * Spend 5 minutes getting everything to order, bringing water, solving connection problems etc. * Spend couple minutes introducing myself, who we are and what we are doing * Spend couple more minutes trying to calm the candidate, break the tension. People react very differently to stressful situation and we would really want to get the candidate little bit more calm to level the field (we don't want just the people that deal well with stress). * Ask couple technical questions from various areas. I can understate how difficult is to gauge candidates knowledge and experience from 30m of technical questions * Give a coding task. I can't tell how many time we had a candidate that was able to answer questions quite well but was unable to organize process to write simple piece of code. It is when the candidate is solving the task when we learn for example if the candidate can react to hints or how it feels to have a discussion on a technical problem. This typically takes 0,5h to 1h * Have a discussion on the candidate experience, past projects, what was his/her involvement, etc. * Let the candidate ask his/her own question about our project. * Spend couple of minutes to close the discussion on a good tone regardless of how the candidate fared. Our HR does not like us to extend the discussion over 2h supposedly because it "scares" candidates but you have to understand, it is very difficult to do all of this and get to know the candidate in such a short time. I can totally understand somebody wanting to spend couple more hours with a candidate that shows really good promise. Hiring a bad employee is a huge cost and totally worth spending couple more hours trying to ensure this person does not have "dealbreaking" faults. You would not believe what kind of things I met in my past. Candidates who passed technical questions really well just to start googling solution to our coding task? Candidates we give the same critical hint 5 times and each time he/she tells me that's not right and dismissed to go continue with his/her faulty line of reasoning?

pdimitar 6y ago
I can't find a single point of disagreement with you. :) The problem with these HN discussions is that they attract the good apples from both sides while the bad apples won't ever read and correct their practices by participating in these threads. We kind of put ourselves in a rather positive filter bubble here and that can skew our reality a bit. I wish I've met more interviewers like you during my nightmarish 4 months of job hunting that just finished 1-2 weeks ago.
- aeronaute 6y ago
  I feel like chiming in because the way the parent described things makes me sad about the state of interviewing and I personally would be very turned off by this kind of interview. I'm actually a little shocked that this person whose job it is to interview and hire people seems to say that all these basic things like setting up for the interview, reading over the person's resume, and so on are /chores/. I mean, maybe they're not the most fun things I agree, but the approach seems way off, as if they're just trying to get it over with and check the boxes. Then they talk about defusing stressful situations multiple times, why? I get the feeling that they're creating a stressful environment for both sides. Then the coding while watching part. That sounds just awful, I'm sorry. While this is part of your job within normal hours, the candidate is likely taking time off or doing it after hours (unless they're unemployed, but still). I don't know how you're actually "giving hints", but this just sounds really uptight and stressful. I'd wager you're really taking people out of their environment and setting them up for failure by doing this. Why is it a problem that they google the answer to your question? That doesn't strike me as wrong at all. Sounds like a good developer and I could see this going into a very healthy discussion about how they'd solve problems perhaps that weren't so obvious from googling. I don't mean anything against the parent. Just adding my $0.02.
  - lmilcin 6y ago
    I did not say it is a chore. I wouldn't be doing interviews if I didn't like it. I just said it is difficult to do all of these well within 2h limit. This was to contrast with other people balking at longer interviews. Also, if I ask the candidate a question or give a coding problem to solve I expect them to be intelligent enough to understand I don't want them to google the solution. Everybody knows what the interview is and what it is for. If I wanted them to google the solution I would ask to perform the task at home EXCEPT I find giving the task to be done in own time unfair and unethical practice. It is unethical because by spending no effort at all I am motivating potential candidates to spend huge amount of their own time to polish the solution as much as possible. It is unfair because it does not let me to get to know the candidate at all. It promotes candidates who are willing to waste huge amount of their time.

pdimitar 6y ago

I can't find a single point of disagreement with you. :) The problem with these HN discussions is that they attract the good apples from both sides while the bad apples won't ever read and correct their practices by participating in these threads. We kind of put ourselves in a rather positive filter bubble here and that can skew our reality a bit. I wish I've met more interviewers like you during my nightmarish 4 months of job hunting that just finished 1-2 weeks ago.

aeronaute 6y ago
I feel like chiming in because the way the parent described things makes me sad about the state of interviewing and I personally would be very turned off by this kind of interview. I'm actually a little shocked that this person whose job it is to interview and hire people seems to say that all these basic things like setting up for the interview, reading over the person's resume, and so on are /chores/. I mean, maybe they're not the most fun things I agree, but the approach seems way off, as if they're just trying to get it over with and check the boxes. Then they talk about defusing stressful situations multiple times, why? I get the feeling that they're creating a stressful environment for both sides. Then the coding while watching part. That sounds just awful, I'm sorry. While this is part of your job within normal hours, the candidate is likely taking time off or doing it after hours (unless they're unemployed, but still). I don't know how you're actually "giving hints", but this just sounds really uptight and stressful. I'd wager you're really taking people out of their environment and setting them up for failure by doing this. Why is it a problem that they google the answer to your question? That doesn't strike me as wrong at all. Sounds like a good developer and I could see this going into a very healthy discussion about how they'd solve problems perhaps that weren't so obvious from googling. I don't mean anything against the parent. Just adding my $0.02.
- lmilcin 6y ago
  I did not say it is a chore. I wouldn't be doing interviews if I didn't like it. I just said it is difficult to do all of these well within 2h limit. This was to contrast with other people balking at longer interviews. Also, if I ask the candidate a question or give a coding problem to solve I expect them to be intelligent enough to understand I don't want them to google the solution. Everybody knows what the interview is and what it is for. If I wanted them to google the solution I would ask to perform the task at home EXCEPT I find giving the task to be done in own time unfair and unethical practice. It is unethical because by spending no effort at all I am motivating potential candidates to spend huge amount of their own time to polish the solution as much as possible. It is unfair because it does not let me to get to know the candidate at all. It promotes candidates who are willing to waste huge amount of their time.