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I'm currently writing a book on the subject of bad hiring practices, and other management mistakes. Allow me to share some of what I wrote: -------------------

I'm currently writing a book on the subject of bad hiring practices, and other management mistakes. Allow me to share some of what I wrote: --------------------- Homework assignments and personality quizzes won’t give you excellence This year I was once again hiring junior level developers, and the same dynamic was at work, but I got a surprising reaction from the person I spoke to. I’ll call her Zareen, who had just come through the Grace Hopper program. Zareen had been interviewing at a few different places, but I assumed she was still open to hearing about the specific job that I was hiring for, so we arranged a phone call. We chatted for 15 minutes, and then I suggested she should come by the office and meet the whole team. She was just absolutely stunned. "Wow, I didn't expect things to move this fast!" she exclaimed. Let's think about that for a minute. She wants a job, I might want to hire her, I ask her to come by the office for an interview, and so she is stunned. It says a lot about how broken our hiring processes have become if what used to be the absolutely boring, dull, and standard process now provokes the response, "Wow, I didn't expect things to move this fast!" Apparently other companies were giving her homework assignments and personality quizzes and phone interviews. “Please go to this website and take this test, we are trying to figure out what your skills are.” At two other companies, she had already done 20 minute interviews, but never with anyone on the tech team. Instead she got a call from someone in the HR department, who read a checklist of words, which the HR person did not understand, but they were all requirements: “Have you ever heard of HTML? Do you know how to use that? What about CSS? Do you have that? How many years of skill do you have with CSS? And Java? I mean, Javascript? Are those different? Yes? Okay, I think we want Javascript. Do you have that? Yes? How many years?” What an empty ritual; reading words that are not understood.

lkrubner 5y ago
And a bit more from my book: ---------- Homework assignments and personality quizzes won’t give you excellence This year I was once again hiring junior level developers, and the same dynamic was at work, but I got a surprising reaction from the person I spoke to. I’ll call her Zareen, who had just come through the Grace Hopper program. Zareen had been interviewing at a few different places, but I assumed she was still open to hearing about the specific job that I was hiring for, so we arranged a phone call. We chatted for 15 minutes, and then I suggested she should come by the office and meet the whole team. She was just absolutely stunned. "Wow, I didn't expect things to move this fast!" she exclaimed. Let's think about that for a minute. She wants a job, I might want to hire her, I ask her to come by the office for an interview, and so she is stunned. It says a lot about how broken our hiring processes have become if what used to be the absolutely boring, dull, and standard process now provokes the response, "Wow, I didn't expect things to move this fast!" Apparently other companies were giving her homework assignments and personality quizzes and phone interviews. “Please go to this website and take this test, we are trying to figure out what your skills are.” At two other companies, she had already done 20 minute interviews, but never with anyone on the tech team. Instead she got a call from someone in the HR department, who read a checklist of words, which the HR person did not understand, but they were all requirements: “Have you ever heard of HTML? Do you know how to use that? What about CSS? Do you have that? How many years of skill do you have with CSS? And Java? I mean, Javascript? Are those different? Yes? Okay, I think we want Javascript. Do you have that? Yes? How many years?” What an empty ritual; reading words that are not understood. If you are lost at sea, don’t drink the brine Stories abound of people lost at sea, perhaps because their ship engine died, or their ship sank and they escaped in a life raft. Once the clean drinking water runs out, the temptation to drink the sea water is strong. But of course, that is a fatal step: the sea has more salt than than the human body can tolerate; drinking makes you more thirsty, not less so. And yet the sea is vast. What a paradox, to die of thirst amid such an abundance. “Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink,” as Coleridge said. I’ve had this conversation with tech team leads: Me: Where are you looking for candidates? Them: I’ve put a job posting up at LinkedIn and Indeed and StackOverflow. Me: Did you get any candidates that you like? Them: Well, the problem is, I’ve gotten several thousand. The problem is trying to narrow down the pile. I cannot possibly look through all of them. I’ve decided to post the job a second time, but this time I created quiz that people have to take. Me: What is the quiz about? Them: It’s 100 questions about the technologies we use, plus some algorithm questions that should help cut down the number of applicants who get through. Me: You created the questions yourself? Them: No, I copy-and-pasted them from various online sources. Most of them are about standard stuff. I put in a few trick questions to help filter out the weak candidates. Me: Are you sure you want the candidates who get your trick questions? Them: Well, if they get the trick questions, then they must know some fairly obscure stuff. Me: Is that what you need right now, people who happen to know some fairly obscure stuff? Them: Well, not really, our work here is fairly standard, but I need some way to screen the applicants because the first time I posted the job we got way too many responses. Me: Are you sure the people who get your most obscure questions are the candidates who will work out the best once you hire them? Them: No, but I’m not sure what else to do. You never really know about a person until you’ve seen them actually work. Me: How many people do you need to hire? Them: I need 3 developers for the frontend, and 2 more for the backend. Me: That seems like a manageable number. Have you tried to find some good candidates from friends of friends? Them: Oh, I don’t have time for that. We need to move quickly with these hires. Me: Is that any slower than making up quizzes for Indeed? Them: Well, I’m not sure how I would even start. Me: Something simple. You could go through your email contacts and make a special list with the email addresses of those who you know work in tech. Software developers, project managers, designers, anyone who might be able to give a meaningful recommendation. Send out an email explaining what you’re looking for. Them: Hmm, well, some people might feel that I’m trying to poach talent from their team. Me: They don’t have to respond. They can simply remain silent. Them: I worry it would feel like I’m asking for a favor. Me: That’s exactly what you are doing, you are asking for a favor. And then later on, when they are hiring, you could potentially pay them back by recommending someone, if at that later time you know of a good software developer who is looking for a job, when you yourself are not hiring. Them: Yeah, but, if they don’t know of anyone, then it’s just a big waste of time. Me: But it sounds like your original effort with Indeed was a waste of time. Them: Sure, but now that I’ve got a quiz in place, I’m hoping to filter out more of the applicants, so I’ll get a smaller number. Me: But the process does take time, right? No matter what you do, you have to invest some time in this? Them: Yeah, it really sucks. I’ve got a lot of work to do, but instead I have to waste time hiring. Me: But hiring is work. This is the work that you are doing right now. This is important. Them: Sure, I guess that’s true, but I’ve also got a lot of software that I’m supposed to write. Me: But as your team grows, you’ll need to spend less time writing code and more time focused on management tasks, such as hiring people. Them: I’m afraid so. Me: Is that something to be afraid of? Your team is growing, it sounds like things are going well. Them: Yes, I guess that’s true, but I’m worried, once I’m no longer writing code every day, and reading everyone else’s code, how can I be sure the quality of the work will still be strong? Me: You could hire excellent people and then expect excellent results from them. Them: Yeah, but that’s a lot easier said than done. You should see some of the resumes that I got from the applicants. Full of typos, obvious exaggerations, mistakes about dates, or dates that overlap, stuff that makes no sense. Some of these resumes are so bad it’s funny. I’ve started sharing them with the team so we can all have a laugh about it. Me: It sounds like Indeed isn’t really giving you what you want. Them: That’s true, Indeed sucks. The applicants we’re getting from these online sites, most of them are really awful. Me: Are you sure you don’t want to reach out to your acquaintances and ask them for recommendations? Them: Oh, gosh, no. Like I said, that would take too much time. For many categories of job applicants, job sites like Monster or LinkedIn or Indeed or StackOverflow are basically like drinking the brine: they offer such a abundance of material that you are tricked into thinking “Surely we can drink an endless amount from this source.” And yet, they waste so much of your time that they are effectively a kind of poison.
- Kinrany 5y ago
  It seems you repeated the first part twice.
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    It seems you repeated
- lkrubner 5y ago
  And a bit more from the book I'm writing: --------------- Beware of fake, dishonest attempts at establishing an "objective" hiring process In the tech industry, I've seen good people, full of good intentions, invest serious time in developing what they felt was an unbiased, fact-based system of hiring, but they were blind to extent their own preferences were being treated as facts. A specific example of this: there was a CTO, a man I've worked with and who I largely respect, who put serious time into developing a code base, and then deliberately adding some errors and redundancy to it. This code base would then be given to job candidates, as a homework assignment. Could they find all the mistakes, fix them, and remove all of the redundancy? Many people in the tech industry now rely on tests like this, which are seen as being more objective than older job interview techniques. But this overlooks how much of the assignment is actually subjective in nature. In particular, what does it mean to reduce redundancy in a code base? Anyone who's done much programming is aware that one can refactor a code base almost to infinity. One can create more and more abstractions. At the extreme, one can create a new programming language where the program is represented by just a single character, perhaps the letter "w"": w There it is, the whole entire program that runs a major website. Of course, you also need to create a compiler that knows how to parse that letter into a lower level language that would do the real work of running the website. But if you ask a software developer to remove the redundancy in your code base and they come back to you with code that has more than 1 letter in it, then they've clearly failed the assignment. Am I being ridiculous? Yes, absolutely, because I'm ignoring nuance, subtlety, reasonableness and proportionality ALL OF WHICH ARE SUBJECTIVE. If you want a truly objective standard, one needs to accept absurd, surreal, and almost psychotic behavior, because that's what human behavior becomes when you try to remove all subjective factors. Does this mean the hiring process can never be truly objective? Yes. Does this mean the hiring process must be unfair, unjust, corrupt and cruel? No.
itronitron 5y ago
This supports the view that any interview is really focused on finding a reason not to hire someone rather than finding reasons to hire them. Because if the candidate isn't already someone that could do the job then the company wouldn't be talking to them. I think I first read that view in the book "What Does Somebody Have to Do to Get a Job Around Here??" by Cynthia Shapiro. Some of the advice in that book is a bit dated but it does a good job of conveying the main challenges from both sides of the hiring process.
- visarga 5y ago
  > Because if the candidate isn't already someone that could do the job then the company wouldn't be talking to them. No, there are a huge number of unprepared applicants. Most are just a time waste, knowing just enough to get to the technical interviews without being able to pass them.
  - oblio 5y ago
    The fact that you're expecting prepared candidates is a red flag on its own. As an experienced professional I shouldn't have to prepare for your interview except for maybe reading up on the company.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    It’s not my fault everyone wants to hear stuff during the interviews that has nothing to do with the job of programming. If you go asking me about bullshit you’ll get it.
- pydry 5y ago
  This happens when there is a glut of qualified candidates relative to demand - as there is for junior devs. The more qualified applicants for every job the more hiring criteria will become increasingly arbitrary and subject to the interviewers whims. I reckon this is where racism, sexism and other idiosyncratic personal biases also have the most room to flourish. Take home tests are popular when there is a glut because the time cost of assessing the candidate can be shifted to the interviewee.
harish_yadav 5y ago
It's surprising how acclimatized people are to bad hiring practices that good treatment seems fishy. We at UpSkillie, help companies hire engineers by certifying with a round of interviews. Candidates win because now they get someone vouching for them past the gatekeepers. For a 1yr experience developer, one of our client just took a single round of interview after our recommendation and made an offer the same day, the exact amount the candidate wanted. The candidate didn't join this company this company because he felt the HR process wasn't streamlined as he got an offer in just one interview. He settled for a 20% lower offer. We asked him that if he wishes we can set a meeting with leadership if he wanted. But he just didn't feel it right because the process was fast. There was proper introduction before the technical interview, so there is no chance of lack of familiarisation.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  Funny. It's like people have been brainwashed into thinking you have to go through the whole "20 minute chat with recruiter, then phone screen, then 6 rounds of hazing" before it's a legit interview process or something. It's not like we're talking about some shady WFH scam or MLM where everybody gets the "job."
moritonal 5y ago
What'd you think of this method for homework. I asked a junior candidate (web-dev) for their portfolio, they didn't have one. I told them that was okay, but advised that they complete a generic exercise I gave them and host it publicly on their Github for extra credit. Candidate get's a better portfolio of work, and I get to see their style. Seemed fair to me?
Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
I think of the coding challenge as a way to understand what kind of code can I expect from the candidate. Having seen many (from who we hire), helps me determine what kind of training I need for the team, what kind of standards need to be set to prevent some type of code and how can I expect the codebase to evolve. It helps dramatically in determining the level of the person (junior, intermediate, senior, etc.). The level is subjective to the company, that's why it's important: definition of senior at one company is very different from the other. Notice that a coding challenge without a technical chat first is kind of useless though. Various strong developers would just write the shortest code to complete the challenge, instead of trying to show off, so you have to read between the lines. A cool thing about this is that you can have an idea of the level of interest of the candidate. Finally, isn't everything just signal? The entire goal is just to have many conversations so that by the end of it, we have a rough idea if we like each other and can work together.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > I think of the coding challenge as a way to understand what kind of code can I expect from the candidate. So giving me that test leads you to believe I don’t produce any code at all.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
    No, just a candidate with low interest in the job. As I said the challenge must come after a chat with a technical person. It's a good way to assess the level and filter out the kind of code you want or don't want to deal with. Or just help identify what you are looking for. In the end every suggestion misses _some_ data points that could be useful in a form or another to hiring. Either way, our process is flexible. The tech screening comes first, so depending on the candidate we might not ask about a coding challenge at all, it would be even embarassing to ask given the seniority of some people (masters).
- foxfluff 5y ago
  > I think of the coding challenge as a way to understand what kind of code can I expect from the candidate. I think you get the "coding challenge kind of code" with varying degrees of the subject's personal flavor on it. People can and will produce different kind of code in a different setting, or if you just ask them to do so. So it might not tell you as much as you think? EDIT: Virtually every employer / project I've worked on has had completely different requirements for what the code should be like. And my own style(s) for my own projects is again completely different. There's no "here's the kind of code I produce", but "what kind of code would you like?". And it's ok not to get it right in the first sitting, these things are discussed and they evolve internally in reviews, style guidelines, meetings, etc. > A cool thing about this is that you can have an idea of the level of interest of the candidate. Towards what? The coding challenge? The long overdue neo-legacy project you're going to hand them? Just having a job? How does that interest show? > Finally, isn't everything just signal? The signal doesn't necessarily say what you think it says. That's the biggest issue I find in all these hiring threads. If you do such and such, you suck. Good candidates do this and that. I wouldn't hire someone who X. The best candidates Y. Bla bla, yada yada, on and on. I feel like there's an immense amount of assumptions that hold.. in the interviewer's mental image of the ideal candidate / stereotypical poor candidate. In reality it smells like prejudice and "no true scotsman" all over, at least when taken with the limited context we're given. And my anecdote is that the signal is very often wrong. This comes mainly from helping out newbies and/or joining educational groups. Many times the first impressions mislead: I can't help but think "this dude has no clue" and I'm almost ready to write them off as a hopeless case. But give them a few weeks and many of them turn out to be very competent, fast learners, good thinkers. It's easy to underappreciate how diverse people.
zerocount 5y ago
I'm confused. Did you suggest she 'come by the office and meet the whole team' or did you 'ask her to come by the office for an interview?' I can see how she'd be so excited because it implies she's getting hired or is very close to getting hired, while the invitation to interview is just a standard hiring event. Did you hire her? If not, the meeting before the interview wasted everyone's time.
gwbas1c 5y ago
As a candidate, I personally liked the short (30 minute) online coding quizes. First, they're an easy-for-me filter to pass. There are a lot of unqualified candidates just spamming their resumes, so I totally empathize with a company needing a low-effort filter on their side. Second, if the company doesn't like my code, I don't want to waste any time. I've been in a few situations where an interviewer has a chip on their shoulder and rejected my perfectly fine solution that didn't have a microoptimization or other detail that I could only infer from mind reading.
pc86 5y ago
Like @zerocount alluded to, asking her to come by the office "and meet the whole team" has a completely different connotation than "for an interview." You could probably spend an entire chapter of your book on the differences.

lkrubner 5y ago

And a bit more from my book: ---------- Homework assignments and personality quizzes won’t give you excellence This year I was once again hiring junior level developers, and the same dynamic was at work, but I got a surprising reaction from the person I spoke to. I’ll call her Zareen, who had just come through the Grace Hopper program. Zareen had been interviewing at a few different places, but I assumed she was still open to hearing about the specific job that I was hiring for, so we arranged a phone call. We chatted for 15 minutes, and then I suggested she should come by the office and meet the whole team. She was just absolutely stunned. "Wow, I didn't expect things to move this fast!" she exclaimed. Let's think about that for a minute. She wants a job, I might want to hire her, I ask her to come by the office for an interview, and so she is stunned. It says a lot about how broken our hiring processes have become if what used to be the absolutely boring, dull, and standard process now provokes the response, "Wow, I didn't expect things to move this fast!" Apparently other companies were giving her homework assignments and personality quizzes and phone interviews. “Please go to this website and take this test, we are trying to figure out what your skills are.” At two other companies, she had already done 20 minute interviews, but never with anyone on the tech team. Instead she got a call from someone in the HR department, who read a checklist of words, which the HR person did not understand, but they were all requirements: “Have you ever heard of HTML? Do you know how to use that? What about CSS? Do you have that? How many years of skill do you have with CSS? And Java? I mean, Javascript? Are those different? Yes? Okay, I think we want Javascript. Do you have that? Yes? How many years?” What an empty ritual; reading words that are not understood. If you are lost at sea, don’t drink the brine Stories abound of people lost at sea, perhaps because their ship engine died, or their ship sank and they escaped in a life raft. Once the clean drinking water runs out, the temptation to drink the sea water is strong. But of course, that is a fatal step: the sea has more salt than than the human body can tolerate; drinking makes you more thirsty, not less so. And yet the sea is vast. What a paradox, to die of thirst amid such an abundance. “Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink,” as Coleridge said. I’ve had this conversation with tech team leads: Me: Where are you looking for candidates? Them: I’ve put a job posting up at LinkedIn and Indeed and StackOverflow. Me: Did you get any candidates that you like? Them: Well, the problem is, I’ve gotten several thousand. The problem is trying to narrow down the pile. I cannot possibly look through all of them. I’ve decided to post the job a second time, but this time I created quiz that people have to take. Me: What is the quiz about? Them: It’s 100 questions about the technologies we use, plus some algorithm questions that should help cut down the number of applicants who get through. Me: You created the questions yourself? Them: No, I copy-and-pasted them from various online sources. Most of them are about standard stuff. I put in a few trick questions to help filter out the weak candidates. Me: Are you sure you want the candidates who get your trick questions? Them: Well, if they get the trick questions, then they must know some fairly obscure stuff. Me: Is that what you need right now, people who happen to know some fairly obscure stuff? Them: Well, not really, our work here is fairly standard, but I need some way to screen the applicants because the first time I posted the job we got way too many responses. Me: Are you sure the people who get your most obscure questions are the candidates who will work out the best once you hire them? Them: No, but I’m not sure what else to do. You never really know about a person until you’ve seen them actually work. Me: How many people do you need to hire? Them: I need 3 developers for the frontend, and 2 more for the backend. Me: That seems like a manageable number. Have you tried to find some good candidates from friends of friends? Them: Oh, I don’t have time for that. We need to move quickly with these hires. Me: Is that any slower than making up quizzes for Indeed? Them: Well, I’m not sure how I would even start. Me: Something simple. You could go through your email contacts and make a special list with the email addresses of those who you know work in tech. Software developers, project managers, designers, anyone who might be able to give a meaningful recommendation. Send out an email explaining what you’re looking for. Them: Hmm, well, some people might feel that I’m trying to poach talent from their team. Me: They don’t have to respond. They can simply remain silent. Them: I worry it would feel like I’m asking for a favor. Me: That’s exactly what you are doing, you are asking for a favor. And then later on, when they are hiring, you could potentially pay them back by recommending someone, if at that later time you know of a good software developer who is looking for a job, when you yourself are not hiring. Them: Yeah, but, if they don’t know of anyone, then it’s just a big waste of time. Me: But it sounds like your original effort with Indeed was a waste of time. Them: Sure, but now that I’ve got a quiz in place, I’m hoping to filter out more of the applicants, so I’ll get a smaller number. Me: But the process does take time, right? No matter what you do, you have to invest some time in this? Them: Yeah, it really sucks. I’ve got a lot of work to do, but instead I have to waste time hiring. Me: But hiring is work. This is the work that you are doing right now. This is important. Them: Sure, I guess that’s true, but I’ve also got a lot of software that I’m supposed to write. Me: But as your team grows, you’ll need to spend less time writing code and more time focused on management tasks, such as hiring people. Them: I’m afraid so. Me: Is that something to be afraid of? Your team is growing, it sounds like things are going well. Them: Yes, I guess that’s true, but I’m worried, once I’m no longer writing code every day, and reading everyone else’s code, how can I be sure the quality of the work will still be strong? Me: You could hire excellent people and then expect excellent results from them. Them: Yeah, but that’s a lot easier said than done. You should see some of the resumes that I got from the applicants. Full of typos, obvious exaggerations, mistakes about dates, or dates that overlap, stuff that makes no sense. Some of these resumes are so bad it’s funny. I’ve started sharing them with the team so we can all have a laugh about it. Me: It sounds like Indeed isn’t really giving you what you want. Them: That’s true, Indeed sucks. The applicants we’re getting from these online sites, most of them are really awful. Me: Are you sure you don’t want to reach out to your acquaintances and ask them for recommendations? Them: Oh, gosh, no. Like I said, that would take too much time. For many categories of job applicants, job sites like Monster or LinkedIn or Indeed or StackOverflow are basically like drinking the brine: they offer such a abundance of material that you are tricked into thinking “Surely we can drink an endless amount from this source.” And yet, they waste so much of your time that they are effectively a kind of poison.

Kinrany 5y ago
It seems you repeated the first part twice.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  It seems you repeated
lkrubner 5y ago
And a bit more from the book I'm writing: --------------- Beware of fake, dishonest attempts at establishing an "objective" hiring process In the tech industry, I've seen good people, full of good intentions, invest serious time in developing what they felt was an unbiased, fact-based system of hiring, but they were blind to extent their own preferences were being treated as facts. A specific example of this: there was a CTO, a man I've worked with and who I largely respect, who put serious time into developing a code base, and then deliberately adding some errors and redundancy to it. This code base would then be given to job candidates, as a homework assignment. Could they find all the mistakes, fix them, and remove all of the redundancy? Many people in the tech industry now rely on tests like this, which are seen as being more objective than older job interview techniques. But this overlooks how much of the assignment is actually subjective in nature. In particular, what does it mean to reduce redundancy in a code base? Anyone who's done much programming is aware that one can refactor a code base almost to infinity. One can create more and more abstractions. At the extreme, one can create a new programming language where the program is represented by just a single character, perhaps the letter "w"": w There it is, the whole entire program that runs a major website. Of course, you also need to create a compiler that knows how to parse that letter into a lower level language that would do the real work of running the website. But if you ask a software developer to remove the redundancy in your code base and they come back to you with code that has more than 1 letter in it, then they've clearly failed the assignment. Am I being ridiculous? Yes, absolutely, because I'm ignoring nuance, subtlety, reasonableness and proportionality ALL OF WHICH ARE SUBJECTIVE. If you want a truly objective standard, one needs to accept absurd, surreal, and almost psychotic behavior, because that's what human behavior becomes when you try to remove all subjective factors. Does this mean the hiring process can never be truly objective? Yes. Does this mean the hiring process must be unfair, unjust, corrupt and cruel? No.

itronitron 5y ago

This supports the view that any interview is really focused on finding a reason not to hire someone rather than finding reasons to hire them. Because if the candidate isn't already someone that could do the job then the company wouldn't be talking to them. I think I first read that view in the book "What Does Somebody Have to Do to Get a Job Around Here??" by Cynthia Shapiro. Some of the advice in that book is a bit dated but it does a good job of conveying the main challenges from both sides of the hiring process.

visarga 5y ago
> Because if the candidate isn't already someone that could do the job then the company wouldn't be talking to them. No, there are a huge number of unprepared applicants. Most are just a time waste, knowing just enough to get to the technical interviews without being able to pass them.
- oblio 5y ago
  The fact that you're expecting prepared candidates is a red flag on its own. As an experienced professional I shouldn't have to prepare for your interview except for maybe reading up on the company.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  It’s not my fault everyone wants to hear stuff during the interviews that has nothing to do with the job of programming. If you go asking me about bullshit you’ll get it.
pydry 5y ago
This happens when there is a glut of qualified candidates relative to demand - as there is for junior devs. The more qualified applicants for every job the more hiring criteria will become increasingly arbitrary and subject to the interviewers whims. I reckon this is where racism, sexism and other idiosyncratic personal biases also have the most room to flourish. Take home tests are popular when there is a glut because the time cost of assessing the candidate can be shifted to the interviewee.

harish_yadav 5y ago

It's surprising how acclimatized people are to bad hiring practices that good treatment seems fishy. We at UpSkillie, help companies hire engineers by certifying with a round of interviews. Candidates win because now they get someone vouching for them past the gatekeepers. For a 1yr experience developer, one of our client just took a single round of interview after our recommendation and made an offer the same day, the exact amount the candidate wanted. The candidate didn't join this company this company because he felt the HR process wasn't streamlined as he got an offer in just one interview. He settled for a 20% lower offer. We asked him that if he wishes we can set a meeting with leadership if he wanted. But he just didn't feel it right because the process was fast. There was proper introduction before the technical interview, so there is no chance of lack of familiarisation.

actually_a_dog 5y ago
Funny. It's like people have been brainwashed into thinking you have to go through the whole "20 minute chat with recruiter, then phone screen, then 6 rounds of hazing" before it's a legit interview process or something. It's not like we're talking about some shady WFH scam or MLM where everybody gets the "job."

moritonal 5y ago

What'd you think of this method for homework. I asked a junior candidate (web-dev) for their portfolio, they didn't have one. I told them that was okay, but advised that they complete a generic exercise I gave them and host it publicly on their Github for extra credit. Candidate get's a better portfolio of work, and I get to see their style. Seemed fair to me?

Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago

I think of the coding challenge as a way to understand what kind of code can I expect from the candidate. Having seen many (from who we hire), helps me determine what kind of training I need for the team, what kind of standards need to be set to prevent some type of code and how can I expect the codebase to evolve. It helps dramatically in determining the level of the person (junior, intermediate, senior, etc.). The level is subjective to the company, that's why it's important: definition of senior at one company is very different from the other. Notice that a coding challenge without a technical chat first is kind of useless though. Various strong developers would just write the shortest code to complete the challenge, instead of trying to show off, so you have to read between the lines. A cool thing about this is that you can have an idea of the level of interest of the candidate. Finally, isn't everything just signal? The entire goal is just to have many conversations so that by the end of it, we have a rough idea if we like each other and can work together.

Aeolun 5y ago
> I think of the coding challenge as a way to understand what kind of code can I expect from the candidate. So giving me that test leads you to believe I don’t produce any code at all.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
  No, just a candidate with low interest in the job. As I said the challenge must come after a chat with a technical person. It's a good way to assess the level and filter out the kind of code you want or don't want to deal with. Or just help identify what you are looking for. In the end every suggestion misses _some_ data points that could be useful in a form or another to hiring. Either way, our process is flexible. The tech screening comes first, so depending on the candidate we might not ask about a coding challenge at all, it would be even embarassing to ask given the seniority of some people (masters).
foxfluff 5y ago
> I think of the coding challenge as a way to understand what kind of code can I expect from the candidate. I think you get the "coding challenge kind of code" with varying degrees of the subject's personal flavor on it. People can and will produce different kind of code in a different setting, or if you just ask them to do so. So it might not tell you as much as you think? EDIT: Virtually every employer / project I've worked on has had completely different requirements for what the code should be like. And my own style(s) for my own projects is again completely different. There's no "here's the kind of code I produce", but "what kind of code would you like?". And it's ok not to get it right in the first sitting, these things are discussed and they evolve internally in reviews, style guidelines, meetings, etc. > A cool thing about this is that you can have an idea of the level of interest of the candidate. Towards what? The coding challenge? The long overdue neo-legacy project you're going to hand them? Just having a job? How does that interest show? > Finally, isn't everything just signal? The signal doesn't necessarily say what you think it says. That's the biggest issue I find in all these hiring threads. If you do such and such, you suck. Good candidates do this and that. I wouldn't hire someone who X. The best candidates Y. Bla bla, yada yada, on and on. I feel like there's an immense amount of assumptions that hold.. in the interviewer's mental image of the ideal candidate / stereotypical poor candidate. In reality it smells like prejudice and "no true scotsman" all over, at least when taken with the limited context we're given. And my anecdote is that the signal is very often wrong. This comes mainly from helping out newbies and/or joining educational groups. Many times the first impressions mislead: I can't help but think "this dude has no clue" and I'm almost ready to write them off as a hopeless case. But give them a few weeks and many of them turn out to be very competent, fast learners, good thinkers. It's easy to underappreciate how diverse people.

zerocount 5y ago

I'm confused. Did you suggest she 'come by the office and meet the whole team' or did you 'ask her to come by the office for an interview?' I can see how she'd be so excited because it implies she's getting hired or is very close to getting hired, while the invitation to interview is just a standard hiring event. Did you hire her? If not, the meeting before the interview wasted everyone's time.

gwbas1c 5y ago

As a candidate, I personally liked the short (30 minute) online coding quizes. First, they're an easy-for-me filter to pass. There are a lot of unqualified candidates just spamming their resumes, so I totally empathize with a company needing a low-effort filter on their side. Second, if the company doesn't like my code, I don't want to waste any time. I've been in a few situations where an interviewer has a chip on their shoulder and rejected my perfectly fine solution that didn't have a microoptimization or other detail that I could only infer from mind reading.

pc86 5y ago

Like @zerocount alluded to, asking her to come by the office "and meet the whole team" has a completely different connotation than "for an interview." You could probably spend an entire chapter of your book on the differences.