6 ms·

Tech Hiring Lessons Learned

27 points by danielrm26 15y ago

scottshea 15y ago
Examples make a huge difference. I try to keep a few personal projects around for people to look at so that I do not have to worry about proprietary code issues.
jammus 15y ago
I'd be interested to know how common credit scoring applicants is. I understand why they'd be necessary for financial institutions but as a general method of filtering candidates it seems rather intrusive.
danberger 15y ago
The conclusions the author draws are very similar to the conclusions the I/O Psychology community has proven scientifically. The best predictor of future performance is IQ and sample work product. Period.
- danielrm26 15y ago
  Links?
  - danberger 15y ago
    My I/O psychology class in grad school :) Seriously though, if you're interested in this, check out Applied Psychology in HR Management: http://www.amazon.com/Applied-Psychology-Human-Resource-Management/dp/0131484109 http://www.amazon.com/Applied-Psychology-Human-Resource-Mana...
johngalt 15y ago
While you can't train experience, the value of experience decreases steeply over time. Sure someone at year 0 has less utility than someone at year 10, but the difference may all but disappear when comparing year 5 vs 10. Edit: I started out as a BBS sysop. So you can see which side of the equation I'm on. The value of knowing how to admin door games is practically zero at this point.
- synnik 15y ago
  This may or may not be true... it is an example of the old statement that I learned in martial arts" There is a vast difference between having 10 years of experience, and having 1 year of experience repeated 10 times. The reason there are often few differences between a 5-year career and a 10-year career is that most people find a niche after a few years, and comfortably sit there. But if you can find someone who spent 10 year actively learning and broadening their skills, never settling in... those extra 5 years are immensely valuable.
- aidos 15y ago
  I see where you're coming from but when I put myself in that statement it just doesn't work. My now self, with nearer to 10 years experience would tear my 5 year experienced self to pieces on all things technical. I'm doing things now with great efficiency whereas 5 years ago I would probably have made a bit of a mess of them. Though obviously at year 5, if asked, I would have happily told you I knew it all already :)
- jfischer 15y ago
  I think you can divide (useful) experience into two components: 1) a person's maturity as a programmer / team member, and 2) their level of practical knowledge with a given technology stack or your problem domain. I think that maturity is undervalued in this industry and is a must-have for senior developers. For practical knowledge, it can be extremely helpful to have someone who knows where the bodies are buried in the tech stack you are using. However, if you already have the knowledge on your team, then getting someone who can pick things up quickly might be a better focus.
jimbobimbo 15y ago
Nothing beats "work samples", agreed. However, interviews should not be discounted. If interview is "deceptive" in your environment, you need to work on your questions. It took me about 10 face-to-faces with candidates in order to get my questions right. Couple of my own face-to-faces with other companies added even more insight into what I need to focus on in order to get better results for my questions. Education is something that I always forget to look at while reading the resume.
tptacek 15y ago
If you're a developer, and someone asks for your credit score, refuse. Inform them that it's none of their business. If they demand it as part of their hiring process, get up and walk out of the interview. Whatever credit scores may signal about a candidate's future performance, the request for a credit score signals far more about the quality of an employer. You are not going to like working for any company that credit checks employees. (You may get asked to authorize a credit check as part of a background check process; background checks can be reasonable, for instance if you're going to work for an exchange. But a background check happens after an offer is made; it's not part of the decision process.) As always on threads like these, I like to plug our recruitment process, which we've been tuning for 4 years or so: http://www.matasano.com/careers/ http://www.matasano.com/careers/ There's more to it than what's on the page, but, long story short, we do two interview phases separated by a battery of "challenges", calibrated to take about as much time as a serious on-site tech-out interview would take, but designed to be done in a candidate's spare time in bits and pieces if necessary.
- johngalt 15y ago
  Completely agree; additionally there are legislative requirements on the employer if any decision is based on credit score (FCRA).
- theorique 15y ago
  Does an employer (or anyone) even need to "ask" for your score though? They can just pull a credit report. Granted, they would need to know your SSN. It could be done as part of a background check and you wouldn't even know it happened unless you're tracking your credit events.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    I believe they have to ask. Incidentally, they have to ask to do real background checks too. Or at least, I've been asked every time my background checks have run, and they haven't been run until I faxed (ugh) a signed consent.
- danielrm26 15y ago
socratic 15y ago
My question is: what has led current hiring practices, and specifically interviews, to be the way they are? I've been doing a job search recently, and to me at least, the process seems almost as arbitrary as management consulting interviews. The common case is: (a) a (very nice) recruiter who largely doesn't understand your background calls to ask about which part of the company you should work in, then (b) you have a few phone interviews where you are asked what might as well be trick coding questions ("with some fancy bit manipulation this could be O(n)!") that are mostly collected in a few books or online anyway, and then (c) you do an on-site where you get another three to six of these questions, with maybe a simple "system design" question thrown in. My hypothesis has been that the hiring process is largely aimed at Computer Science undergraduates with no significant prior work experience, and that the best way to distinguish just graduated CS undergrads is by testing them on the hardest class they are likely to have all taken: Introduction to Algorithms. Or maybe interviewing is just rarely rewarded and thus the lowest priority for engineers? In any case, insight into the design and implementation of this process would be really interesting.
- msg 15y ago
  For me, if you can't do the intro to CS stuff and write simple programs in an interview, that serves as a proxy that you can't do the advanced CS stuff and write complex programs on the job. There are many many candidates who make it to the phone screen who can't Fizzbuzz. Also it can be difficult to separate out people who actually did significant work on a product on their resume from people who were just "on the team" and didn't contribute effectively. Time is limited and resumes are full of lies and BS. But you can't BS your way through a program and make it run.
artmageddon 15y ago
The IQ and grades part worry me. I had maybe a 2.9 out of 4.0 in university, and my IQ score has fluctuated between 127-134 depending on the day and test. I'm not the brightest person around, but I can do things, damn it :(
- Too 15y ago
  Your problem is not your iq, it's that you're too worried. 120+ is considered very smart, even for engineers.
mazelife 15y ago
Looking at sample work is definitely a good idea. But I'd disagree with pretty strenuously with both credit score and IQ and would walk away immediately if a potential employer asked for these. Re credit score: In the US this appears to be legal in some states, illegal in others, so as an employer I'd investigate carefully before asking asking for a credit dscore. But outside of of a banking industry job or a situation where one is attempting to obtain security clearance, this is pretty egregious. Plenty of families have had their credit wrecked by the recession and there are lots of reasons (e.g. unforeseen medical problems) that could result in a lowered score that have no predictive value whatsoever. So, even if what you're doing is legal in your locality, it's morally dubious outside of a certain types of jobs. Finally, it looks like this can cut both ways: "If you do agree to let [a prospective employer] see the report, and they base their decision not to hire you on something in it, you have the right under the Fair Credit Reporting Act to see it, says EFL’s Meschke. This will give you an opportunity to try to explain or rectify any issues or errors that may be on there." (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31923358/ns/business-careers/t/can-employer-ask-my-credit-report/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31923358/ns/business-careers/t/c...) As for IQ, there is literature out there on this subject (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/merrill-palmer_quarterly/v047/47.1sternberg.pdf http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/merrill-palmer_quarterly/v047/4...). It's not that it has _no_ predictive value, but that there are a lot of confounding factors (e.g. the country you were raised in). Furthermore results need to be interpreted very carefully and I don't necessarily trust an employer to do that. I think a lot of people would rightfully see this is intrusive. Having interviewed a fair number of job candidates in my time, I agree it's hard and there is definitely an art to it. But if someone can't get a accurate assessment of a candidate through sample work and direct interaction, and have to resort to things like credit score and IQ to help them decide, then they have no business interviewing candidates.
rickmb 15y ago
Good [insert profession here] can recognize good [insert profession here] by just having a real conversation with them, with a focus on listening. Sure, there are outliers in the form of pathological liars and psychopaths, but these tend to gravitate towards professions with a major ego-boost factor (and they're often actually good at those professions). Most of these kind of tips and "lessons" come down to: how to desperately compensate for being the wrong person to do the hiring in the first place. Here's another tip: any experience professional who's skill is in demand will recognize such a flawed hiring process, understand that this is probably pervasive in the rest of the company, and run like hell in the opposite direction.

27 points by danielrm26 15y ago

Examples make a huge difference. I try to keep a few personal projects around for people to look at so that I do not have to worry about proprietary code issues.

jammus 15y ago

I'd be interested to know how common credit scoring applicants is. I understand why they'd be necessary for financial institutions but as a general method of filtering candidates it seems rather intrusive.

danberger 15y ago

The conclusions the author draws are very similar to the conclusions the I/O Psychology community has proven scientifically. The best predictor of future performance is IQ and sample work product. Period.

danielrm26 15y ago
Links?
- danberger 15y ago
  My I/O psychology class in grad school :) Seriously though, if you're interested in this, check out Applied Psychology in HR Management: http://www.amazon.com/Applied-Psychology-Human-Resource-Management/dp/0131484109 http://www.amazon.com/Applied-Psychology-Human-Resource-Mana...

johngalt 15y ago

While you can't train experience, the value of experience decreases steeply over time. Sure someone at year 0 has less utility than someone at year 10, but the difference may all but disappear when comparing year 5 vs 10. Edit: I started out as a BBS sysop. So you can see which side of the equation I'm on. The value of knowing how to admin door games is practically zero at this point.

synnik 15y ago
This may or may not be true... it is an example of the old statement that I learned in martial arts" There is a vast difference between having 10 years of experience, and having 1 year of experience repeated 10 times. The reason there are often few differences between a 5-year career and a 10-year career is that most people find a niche after a few years, and comfortably sit there. But if you can find someone who spent 10 year actively learning and broadening their skills, never settling in... those extra 5 years are immensely valuable.
aidos 15y ago
I see where you're coming from but when I put myself in that statement it just doesn't work. My now self, with nearer to 10 years experience would tear my 5 year experienced self to pieces on all things technical. I'm doing things now with great efficiency whereas 5 years ago I would probably have made a bit of a mess of them. Though obviously at year 5, if asked, I would have happily told you I knew it all already :)
jfischer 15y ago
I think you can divide (useful) experience into two components: 1) a person's maturity as a programmer / team member, and 2) their level of practical knowledge with a given technology stack or your problem domain. I think that maturity is undervalued in this industry and is a must-have for senior developers. For practical knowledge, it can be extremely helpful to have someone who knows where the bodies are buried in the tech stack you are using. However, if you already have the knowledge on your team, then getting someone who can pick things up quickly might be a better focus.

jimbobimbo 15y ago

Nothing beats "work samples", agreed. However, interviews should not be discounted. If interview is "deceptive" in your environment, you need to work on your questions. It took me about 10 face-to-faces with candidates in order to get my questions right. Couple of my own face-to-faces with other companies added even more insight into what I need to focus on in order to get better results for my questions. Education is something that I always forget to look at while reading the resume.

tptacek 15y ago

If you're a developer, and someone asks for your credit score, refuse. Inform them that it's none of their business. If they demand it as part of their hiring process, get up and walk out of the interview. Whatever credit scores may signal about a candidate's future performance, the request for a credit score signals far more about the quality of an employer. You are not going to like working for any company that credit checks employees. (You may get asked to authorize a credit check as part of a background check process; background checks can be reasonable, for instance if you're going to work for an exchange. But a background check happens after an offer is made; it's not part of the decision process.) As always on threads like these, I like to plug our recruitment process, which we've been tuning for 4 years or so: http://www.matasano.com/careers/ http://www.matasano.com/careers/ There's more to it than what's on the page, but, long story short, we do two interview phases separated by a battery of "challenges", calibrated to take about as much time as a serious on-site tech-out interview would take, but designed to be done in a candidate's spare time in bits and pieces if necessary.

johngalt 15y ago
Completely agree; additionally there are legislative requirements on the employer if any decision is based on credit score (FCRA).
theorique 15y ago
Does an employer (or anyone) even need to "ask" for your score though? They can just pull a credit report. Granted, they would need to know your SSN. It could be done as part of a background check and you wouldn't even know it happened unless you're tracking your credit events.
- tptacek 15y ago
  I believe they have to ask. Incidentally, they have to ask to do real background checks too. Or at least, I've been asked every time my background checks have run, and they haven't been run until I faxed (ugh) a signed consent.
danielrm26 15y ago

socratic 15y ago

My question is: what has led current hiring practices, and specifically interviews, to be the way they are? I've been doing a job search recently, and to me at least, the process seems almost as arbitrary as management consulting interviews. The common case is: (a) a (very nice) recruiter who largely doesn't understand your background calls to ask about which part of the company you should work in, then (b) you have a few phone interviews where you are asked what might as well be trick coding questions ("with some fancy bit manipulation this could be O(n)!") that are mostly collected in a few books or online anyway, and then (c) you do an on-site where you get another three to six of these questions, with maybe a simple "system design" question thrown in. My hypothesis has been that the hiring process is largely aimed at Computer Science undergraduates with no significant prior work experience, and that the best way to distinguish just graduated CS undergrads is by testing them on the hardest class they are likely to have all taken: Introduction to Algorithms. Or maybe interviewing is just rarely rewarded and thus the lowest priority for engineers? In any case, insight into the design and implementation of this process would be really interesting.

msg 15y ago
For me, if you can't do the intro to CS stuff and write simple programs in an interview, that serves as a proxy that you can't do the advanced CS stuff and write complex programs on the job. There are many many candidates who make it to the phone screen who can't Fizzbuzz. Also it can be difficult to separate out people who actually did significant work on a product on their resume from people who were just "on the team" and didn't contribute effectively. Time is limited and resumes are full of lies and BS. But you can't BS your way through a program and make it run.

artmageddon 15y ago

The IQ and grades part worry me. I had maybe a 2.9 out of 4.0 in university, and my IQ score has fluctuated between 127-134 depending on the day and test. I'm not the brightest person around, but I can do things, damn it :(

Too 15y ago
Your problem is not your iq, it's that you're too worried. 120+ is considered very smart, even for engineers.

mazelife 15y ago

Looking at sample work is definitely a good idea. But I'd disagree with pretty strenuously with both credit score and IQ and would walk away immediately if a potential employer asked for these. Re credit score: In the US this appears to be legal in some states, illegal in others, so as an employer I'd investigate carefully before asking asking for a credit dscore. But outside of of a banking industry job or a situation where one is attempting to obtain security clearance, this is pretty egregious. Plenty of families have had their credit wrecked by the recession and there are lots of reasons (e.g. unforeseen medical problems) that could result in a lowered score that have no predictive value whatsoever. So, even if what you're doing is legal in your locality, it's morally dubious outside of a certain types of jobs. Finally, it looks like this can cut both ways: "If you do agree to let [a prospective employer] see the report, and they base their decision not to hire you on something in it, you have the right under the Fair Credit Reporting Act to see it, says EFL’s Meschke. This will give you an opportunity to try to explain or rectify any issues or errors that may be on there." (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31923358/ns/business-careers/t/can-employer-ask-my-credit-report/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31923358/ns/business-careers/t/c...) As for IQ, there is literature out there on this subject (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/merrill-palmer_quarterly/v047/47.1sternberg.pdf http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/merrill-palmer_quarterly/v047/4...). It's not that it has _no_ predictive value, but that there are a lot of confounding factors (e.g. the country you were raised in). Furthermore results need to be interpreted very carefully and I don't necessarily trust an employer to do that. I think a lot of people would rightfully see this is intrusive. Having interviewed a fair number of job candidates in my time, I agree it's hard and there is definitely an art to it. But if someone can't get a accurate assessment of a candidate through sample work and direct interaction, and have to resort to things like credit score and IQ to help them decide, then they have no business interviewing candidates.

rickmb 15y ago

Good [insert profession here] can recognize good [insert profession here] by just having a real conversation with them, with a focus on listening. Sure, there are outliers in the form of pathological liars and psychopaths, but these tend to gravitate towards professions with a major ego-boost factor (and they're often actually good at those professions). Most of these kind of tips and "lessons" come down to: how to desperately compensate for being the wrong person to do the hiring in the first place. Here's another tip: any experience professional who's skill is in demand will recognize such a flawed hiring process, understand that this is probably pervasive in the rest of the company, and run like hell in the opposite direction.