4 ms·

I don't think anyone would disagree with the statement that hiring is terribly, atrociously, and disastrously broken. It's been talked about ad nauseum. But I d

I don't think anyone would disagree with the statement that hiring is terribly, atrociously, and disastrously broken. It's been talked about ad nauseum. But I don't think I've ever seen (nor do I personally have) any practical solutions to improve it. Hiring is a two-way hard problem. On the company's side, they have conflicting interests where they want to hire someone as quickly and cheaply (cheap as in not spending hundreds of man hours interviewing just to fill a role), but also want to do due diligence so that they hire the right person. On the candidate's side, they also have conflicting interests where they just want a job and don't want to spend multiple entire days doing interviews, but they also need to do their due diligence to make sure the job is actually something they want. This almost necessitates spending a decent chunk of time with each other, but not too much. The balance that most big tech company's seem to go with is 6-7 hours total in interviews for each candidate (and then ~10+ additional hours for both the candidate and the company doing preparation/debriefs). I really don't know why or how this was the number arrived at, though. From my perspective as a candidate, even after 6-7 hours of interviews I often come away still knowing very little about what the job actually is. And from my perspective as an interviewer, I know that requiring so much time from internal employees serving as interviewers is draining and stressful. It seems like it ultimately comes out to a lose-lose, but for some reason it's still what big tech sticks with.

passivate 6y ago
I think you're way underselling the existing methods, or maybe I'm misunderstanding your words. To me if something is terribly, atrociously, disastrously broken you must stop using it immediately, because its harmful to use it any further. Are we really at that stage? I think having an honest dialogue about hiring is also about accepting that there are things that are working about the current system - even if it needs changes. Broadly, I feel like we need to work to get better at most processes that involve humans. Managers need to get better at setting expectations, giving feedback, appreciating people's work, etc, etc. Employees need to improve their communication skills, reliability at forecasting, etc, etc. HR needs to make sure employees feel comfortable, welcomed, valued etc. Leaders need to better convey a vision for the company, etc. Basically everyone needs to improve in whatever job function they're responsible for. Hiring is no different - its just one of the many functions of a company. People love to base arguments in data, but in what cases will data/models lie to you? If a company has been around for a while, has no obvious problems keeping their employees, does that mean that another company can simply adopt their model and be successful? Specifically, should we expect that companies which measure identically on key metrics (employee churn/turnover rate, employee work/life balance perception, employee retention, etc) are also similarly great at hiring?
mguerville 6y ago
Couldn’t agree more. I’m working on a tiny piece of the broken hiring process, Job Descriptions. Many of them (esp non technical role) are essentially illegible and absolute garbage. Hopefully it reduces the wasted time upfront by improving the quality of matching between job postings and job seekers
collyw 6y ago
I'll give you the best interviewing experience I had as some inspiration for improving it. (I have had far more with people wasting time or rejecting technical tests because of ridiculous reasons than pleasant experiences). The interviewer asked me to bring in a laptop with some code I could discuss. I did, we discussed. He asked me some questions, I added a simple feature at his request. No time wasted on my part (ok, I was in a position that I had code I could bring in). It was code I knew, so no gotcha or anything fancy. Relaxed, friendly, the interviewer learned something rather than trying to one up me. Like I say the only downside I can see to this approach is that people may not have a side project that they can share easily. In which case they will have to do the equivalent work of a normal technical test. So the worst case scenario using this method is the same as the standard scenario.

passivate 6y ago

I think you're way underselling the existing methods, or maybe I'm misunderstanding your words. To me if something is terribly, atrociously, disastrously broken you must stop using it immediately, because its harmful to use it any further. Are we really at that stage? I think having an honest dialogue about hiring is also about accepting that there are things that are working about the current system - even if it needs changes. Broadly, I feel like we need to work to get better at most processes that involve humans. Managers need to get better at setting expectations, giving feedback, appreciating people's work, etc, etc. Employees need to improve their communication skills, reliability at forecasting, etc, etc. HR needs to make sure employees feel comfortable, welcomed, valued etc. Leaders need to better convey a vision for the company, etc. Basically everyone needs to improve in whatever job function they're responsible for. Hiring is no different - its just one of the many functions of a company. People love to base arguments in data, but in what cases will data/models lie to you? If a company has been around for a while, has no obvious problems keeping their employees, does that mean that another company can simply adopt their model and be successful? Specifically, should we expect that companies which measure identically on key metrics (employee churn/turnover rate, employee work/life balance perception, employee retention, etc) are also similarly great at hiring?

mguerville 6y ago

Couldn’t agree more. I’m working on a tiny piece of the broken hiring process, Job Descriptions. Many of them (esp non technical role) are essentially illegible and absolute garbage. Hopefully it reduces the wasted time upfront by improving the quality of matching between job postings and job seekers

collyw 6y ago

I'll give you the best interviewing experience I had as some inspiration for improving it. (I have had far more with people wasting time or rejecting technical tests because of ridiculous reasons than pleasant experiences). The interviewer asked me to bring in a laptop with some code I could discuss. I did, we discussed. He asked me some questions, I added a simple feature at his request. No time wasted on my part (ok, I was in a position that I had code I could bring in). It was code I knew, so no gotcha or anything fancy. Relaxed, friendly, the interviewer learned something rather than trying to one up me. Like I say the only downside I can see to this approach is that people may not have a side project that they can share easily. In which case they will have to do the equivalent work of a normal technical test. So the worst case scenario using this method is the same as the standard scenario.