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I don’t agree - I’d rather wait than take on someone that can’t meet the standard, because they’re likely to be an active drag rather than a help. I can hire co

I don’t agree - I’d rather wait than take on someone that can’t meet the standard, because they’re likely to be an active drag rather than a help. I can hire contractors if I need to fill a seat that quickly.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
more_corn 4y ago
I’ve never met a tech screen that adequately measured candidate quality (actually I take that back Okta’s SRE interview was fantastic). I tried to hire a known, trusted, high performing engineer at Google. He was rejected. After reading his packet I could not figure out why. I had to call the recruiter and ask her if he’d said something so unmentionable they couldn’t even write it down. They decided to pass on him because he was so good his promotion path at the role would be inadequate. I could have told them that before they wasted his time flying him out and sitting him through 8 hours of tech screen. I literally had to fly him back out and do it all again, because “that’s the process” I hate to break it to you but the process is broken.
- physicsguy 4y ago
  Our process is not particularly difficult, I’m not doing Leetcode or anything. I just ask questions at interview which test whether people have a surface level understanding or whether we’ll have to hand hold people through things. For e.g. I’ve interviewed backend devs with 5+ years of Django experience who haven’t been able to tell me the general methods of how they might go about tackling a poor performing ORM query. I’m not asking them to even be able to write the code here, I’m just asking them to tell me roughly what their approach would be. If people aren’t able to talk me through that in general terms, they’re not going to help much. I had one this week where a guy took user input on an API and then used “eval” to run it as code. Where do you even start with that? On CV terms, this person had 10 years of decent looking experience.
  - anon50118810 4y ago
    OP here. Failing surface level tests is not an issue for me. I agree you should not pass through a candidate who can't demonstrate basic coding skills in front of you, or more specialized skills like simple Django knowledge if that's essential to the position. I've been on the hiring side and watched at least one otherwise qualified candidate fall apart in front of me on a simple coding exercise, probably due to nerves. It can be heartbreaking to watch but at some point you have to draw the line.
toast0 4y ago
If you're willing to wait, I don't think you're desperate, IMHO. You're also probably right, most of the time, of course.
- wins32767 4y ago
  I once lowered my hiring bar because I was desperate. I ended up with a few bad employees that slowed us down more than the ones that turned out good accelerated us. Not worth the tradeoff IMO.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

more_corn 4y ago

I’ve never met a tech screen that adequately measured candidate quality (actually I take that back Okta’s SRE interview was fantastic). I tried to hire a known, trusted, high performing engineer at Google. He was rejected. After reading his packet I could not figure out why. I had to call the recruiter and ask her if he’d said something so unmentionable they couldn’t even write it down. They decided to pass on him because he was so good his promotion path at the role would be inadequate. I could have told them that before they wasted his time flying him out and sitting him through 8 hours of tech screen. I literally had to fly him back out and do it all again, because “that’s the process” I hate to break it to you but the process is broken.

physicsguy 4y ago
Our process is not particularly difficult, I’m not doing Leetcode or anything. I just ask questions at interview which test whether people have a surface level understanding or whether we’ll have to hand hold people through things. For e.g. I’ve interviewed backend devs with 5+ years of Django experience who haven’t been able to tell me the general methods of how they might go about tackling a poor performing ORM query. I’m not asking them to even be able to write the code here, I’m just asking them to tell me roughly what their approach would be. If people aren’t able to talk me through that in general terms, they’re not going to help much. I had one this week where a guy took user input on an API and then used “eval” to run it as code. Where do you even start with that? On CV terms, this person had 10 years of decent looking experience.
- anon50118810 4y ago
  OP here. Failing surface level tests is not an issue for me. I agree you should not pass through a candidate who can't demonstrate basic coding skills in front of you, or more specialized skills like simple Django knowledge if that's essential to the position. I've been on the hiring side and watched at least one otherwise qualified candidate fall apart in front of me on a simple coding exercise, probably due to nerves. It can be heartbreaking to watch but at some point you have to draw the line.

toast0 4y ago

If you're willing to wait, I don't think you're desperate, IMHO. You're also probably right, most of the time, of course.

wins32767 4y ago
I once lowered my hiring bar because I was desperate. I ended up with a few bad employees that slowed us down more than the ones that turned out good accelerated us. Not worth the tradeoff IMO.