4 ms·

There's no mention of the flip side of this. I only have one position, and I interview multiple candidates, several of which are good. If I make you an offer,

by alex_c 15y ago

There's no mention of the flip side of this. I only have one position, and I interview multiple candidates, several of which are good. If I make you an offer, I can't afford to sit around waiting for weeks for you to make up your mind: if you turn it down, chances are my other candidates are already gone, and now I have to start the whole process again from scratch. Edit: fair enough, I missed that Joel was talking about the specific context of internships.

jarek 15y ago
Fair point, but this article is aimed at students looking for full-time jobs or co-ops, most of which become available at roughly the same time, many months from January.
cperciva 15y ago
Most such companies have far more than one position they're trying to fill. Small startups generally aren't recruiting at college career fairs.
- marshray 15y ago
  It depends on the size of the town. In smaller "university towns", often there are a few companies that are hiring specialized tech locally. They get the students who want to stay in town for whatever reason. I've been at a smaller company where we would typically get 0 or 1 new developers out of the local university each year. But if one of them verbally accepted and then didn't work out for whatever reason, it might be a disappointment, but it wasn't a crisis. Now that I think about it, it's probably that we would not realistically expect a new hire right out of school to be able to help with a short term deadline. Our products were complex and low-level, and the sense was that a new junior developer would probably not represent a net gain for about 6 months.
delinka 15y ago
In the context of student interns, you're in the wrong place to fill that position. Either that one position is important enough for hiring a Real Professional, or you'll survive not having an intern for a few more months. Having a single position that's critical to your company but attempting to fill it with an intern is disingenuous and perhaps even unethical (you're underpaying the intern based on the position's value to the company; you're not giving your shareholders actual value by hiring someone inexperienced; etc.)
tptacek 15y ago
There's no flip side to this. Spolsky is writing about college recruitment, where the idea is to interview at a bunch of companies and then pick one many weeks later. You are talking about a totally different kind of hiring, where exploding offers aren't (as much of) a problem.
deleted 15y ago
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tomjen3 15y ago
Then make sure you all do the interviews reasonably close to each other. Seriously I made so many mistakes getting my first job that the next time I am going to assume every company is out to rape me, at least financially, properly emotionally.

by alex_c 15y ago

jarek 15y ago

Fair point, but this article is aimed at students looking for full-time jobs or co-ops, most of which become available at roughly the same time, many months from January.

cperciva 15y ago

Most such companies have far more than one position they're trying to fill. Small startups generally aren't recruiting at college career fairs.

marshray 15y ago
It depends on the size of the town. In smaller "university towns", often there are a few companies that are hiring specialized tech locally. They get the students who want to stay in town for whatever reason. I've been at a smaller company where we would typically get 0 or 1 new developers out of the local university each year. But if one of them verbally accepted and then didn't work out for whatever reason, it might be a disappointment, but it wasn't a crisis. Now that I think about it, it's probably that we would not realistically expect a new hire right out of school to be able to help with a short term deadline. Our products were complex and low-level, and the sense was that a new junior developer would probably not represent a net gain for about 6 months.

delinka 15y ago

In the context of student interns, you're in the wrong place to fill that position. Either that one position is important enough for hiring a Real Professional, or you'll survive not having an intern for a few more months. Having a single position that's critical to your company but attempting to fill it with an intern is disingenuous and perhaps even unethical (you're underpaying the intern based on the position's value to the company; you're not giving your shareholders actual value by hiring someone inexperienced; etc.)

tptacek 15y ago

There's no flip side to this. Spolsky is writing about college recruitment, where the idea is to interview at a bunch of companies and then pick one many weeks later. You are talking about a totally different kind of hiring, where exploding offers aren't (as much of) a problem.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

tomjen3 15y ago

Then make sure you all do the interviews reasonably close to each other. Seriously I made so many mistakes getting my first job that the next time I am going to assume every company is out to rape me, at least financially, properly emotionally.