5 ms·
I'm wondering if much of the discussion here is even about the article, which advocates for things we long know work better: * Structured interviews * Blind a
by jaaron 6y ago
I'm wondering if much of the discussion here is even about the article, which advocates for things we long know work better:
* Structured interviews
* Blind auditions
* Competency-related evaluations
The title "Job interviews don't work" is rather bait-clicky when clearly they advocate that _some_ form of job interviews work. Or are at least better.
As a technical hiring manager for over a decade, here's where I'm at:
- The best interview is an internship. We can't always do that and often we need senior talent now.
- The next best interview would be a portfolio. I am so envious of artists with their public portfolios. If there's one thing I wish we as an industry could figure out, it would be some way of stopping to test and retests ourselves as if we have to constantly reprove what we've already done and instead find a way to better showcase our work.
- The next best technical interview would be a "homework" project, but I've come around to the mentality that this just isn't fair to candidates. As a hiring manager I love it, but most folks just don't have the time to do a bunch of unpaid work. Even if you compensate them, it's unrealistic for many.
So we're mostly back to the suggestions in the article. They're good. A good hiring process is not easy but it's worth it.
And finally, a bit of anecdotal evidence: yes, there are folks out there you probably shouldn't hire. They aren't a good fit for the role. You want to set them and yourself up for success. That said, there are probably more people who can excel than you realize. A major factor in their success is the maturity of the team and leadership that's already in your company. Sometimes you'll get lucky and hire some rare talent, but if all you're doing is looking for "rare" talent, then you're likely poorly calibrated and relying too much on outside talent to come in an fix the mess already on your hands.
- RangerScience 6y ago> The next best interview would be a portfolio. I tried using my (limited) open source hobby project portfolio as a substitute for coding interviews. Companies either didn't take me up on it, or still also required me to do their regular take-home. Twice now, I have had two companies ask for the same take-home, although in the first case they asked me to re-do the work in their preferred language.
- jaaron 6y agoI think it's a great idea and you should keep trying. Lots of places (somewhat understandably) won't deviate from their policy because consistency of the interview process is a good goal. But at places that are a bit more flexible, it may work.
- chucky_z 6y agoFWIW, as a hiring manager, if someone has a portfolio I definitely judge them on it, and if it's good it allows me to bypass huge swaths of technical/coding interview stuff and dig much deeper into where/what I want. I always take it as a positive, even if it's old stuff.
- RangerScience 6y agoWhat do you find makes a portfolio better or worse for these purposes? Not so much "more likely to get them the job", more... I felt like my projects weren't actually suitable to take the place of coding interviews, largely because I couldn't actually drop in and work on them in the way that coding interviews show me actually doing work.
- chucky_z 6y agoLiterally anything. If I see someone with a lot of relevant forked repos, even if they're old, I take that as interest and something I can bring up. If I see a repo of rcfiles I know they care about working efficiently. If I see abandoned stuff with more than 1 commit that's OK, that's something that was cared about at one point. These are just two super generic examples. Almost everything is a positive. The only thing I don't like to see is repos with 1 commit, and nothing other than a README with the repo title in it. Not really negative, more of a 'cmon gimme more.'
- decafninja 6y agoIf you are creating a portfolio for the primary purpose of showcasing it to get a job, I don't think it's worth the effort. Maybe there is an exception if you are a high profile contributor to high profile projects. Otherwise the number of companies that care about a candidate's portfolio is small. Just studying leetcode problems is still the most scalable way to a job, unfortunately. A shame, because there are so many things I want to build, work on, or contribute to, but all of that is put on hold until I can land the job first via leetcode.