6 ms·

I did quite a bit of interviews (on the hiring side) for almost a decade and I find the current recruitment processes to be basically stupid and over-complicate

I did quite a bit of interviews (on the hiring side) for almost a decade and I find the current recruitment processes to be basically stupid and over-complicated --both for the applicant and the employer is a huge waste of time. Look, if you are hiring an engineer, it's easier than it seems. Just sit an hour with them and have a good talk about his career on the business domain or the technical field. At the end of that hour you should have a non-100% accurate but solid perspective on these things: "Does this person communicate effectively? Would I want to work with this applicant?" And that's it.

jonahbenton 4y ago
True! Except that this process is discriminatory because people communicate best with people who are like themselves.
- vt85 4y ago
  [dead]
- zsoltkacsandi 4y ago
  Yeah, people who share similar values can communicate and work together better, but this isn't discrimination. On this basis the whole hiring field and each and every interview is discriminatory because the companies want to select who they want to work together with based on the candidates skills/values.
  - marcinzm 4y ago
    >Yeah, people who share similar values can communicate and work together better, but this isn't discrimination. This isn't really my experience. Similar people will have a better initial perception of each other as it takes less time to synchronize with each other however in most jobs that's of little importance. What matters is how they work together in the long term and most people don't need clones to work well with. If anything else having too many similar people is a problem for a team since you get overlapping blind spots which tends to cause serious issues over time.
    - xenonite 4y ago
      I consider it quite important how well people synchronize. It is much more fun to work with like-minded people where you can have good private talks as well because you’re sharing many values.
    - zsoltkacsandi 4y ago
      My point was that there isn't any discrimination in the phenomenon that people with similar values can work together better. >most people don't need clones to work well with Having similar values doesn't mean that they have exactly the same value/skill set, they aren't "clones". > having too many similar people similar values != similar people
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    > Yeah, people who share similar values can communicate and work together better, but this isn't discrimination. You would think it was if you were a member of e.g. a minority religion and no one would hire you for a job you were capable of doing.
- pantulis 4y ago
  That's why during interviews I preferred to put my hacker hat instead of more corporate-business-look-how-big-we-are-this-is-our-vision-bullshit.
- constantcrying 4y ago
  All hiring processes are discrimnatory. That is in fact the point of a hiring process. If you don't want discrimination select the applicant by lottery.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    People are obviously using discriminatory as a shorthand for pointlessly discriminatory. It's an argument against using qualities other than actual productivity in a hiring process. You're on the side defending that.
    - constantcrying 4y ago
      Being able to communicate effectively seems not pointless.
grey_earthling 4y ago
> Look, if you are hiring an engineer, it's easier than it seems. Just sit an hour with them and have a good talk about his career on the business domain or the technical field. “his”? Doesn't sound like a very fair recruitment process.
- pantulis 4y ago
  You totally hit the nail here. I am sorry.
culopatin 4y ago
Assuming your team knows what questions to ask in that meeting, which is not a given.
mikebenfield 4y ago
In my experience the kind of simple interview you describe is vulnerable to BS artists. For all their flaws, the common coding challenge kind of interview at least gives you concrete evidence about whether the candidate can solve a technical problem.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Anyone who's a good enough bullshit artist to fool you while talking tech for an hour should be in a totally different field, because such extremely high levels of bullshitting ability are themselves quite lucrative. I just can't believe there are so many people out there with the skill and will to do that, who also haven't found a better way to employ those skills directly, that our field can be awash in them. I believe there are plenty who try, but I doubt there are very many who could talk about tech and their career for an hour without tipping their hand.
  - KajMagnus 4y ago
    Software jobs pay $X00k in some places. And working remote with software, if you're in a low income country, can make you wealthy compared to those around you.
marcinzm 4y ago
I've also done a lot of interviews for over a decade. I figure I'm an average or above average interviewer. Talked to people for an hour, discussed projects, they looked good. Failed basic coding screens. Over and over. Maybe you've got an amazing sense for interviewing people. I doubt many others do and processes need to accommodate the average interviewer and not the amazing outliers.
- pantulis 4y ago
  I am not saying that all the people I hired were x10 performers, but they were certainly better than average, imho, with a leaner process. For example I did not hire anyone that lacked basic coding skills. Perhaps I am a great interviewer or, more probably, the fact that the specific profile I was targeting (RoR developers) included a high-pass filter.
  - KajMagnus 4y ago
    No idea if this could be related, but @pantulis you're in Madrid (says your profile. Well, "from"), whilst @marcinzm you are (I'm guessing) statistically in the US, maybe SF? Is it possible that it works better to "just talk to people" in some parts of the world, than other parts? In SF, software engineer salaries can be $X00k/year, but a lot less in Madrid. I wonder if this can influence people's behavior. (Nonetheless personally I'd never do only such unstructured interviews.)
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Raises hand Dude here who designed and built an early multitenant mobile app server-side support system from scratch, serving millions of daily users (the spikes in traffic when our users sent out pushes to some of those apps... yikes), among a bunch of other stuff. Actually, in-fact did that. Code-language-polyglot, often considered the one to go to for low-level stuff (nothing I seek out, I just keep getting that reputation), getting paid to write code for ~22 years now, et c., et c. I've nonetheless bombed "basic coding screens" a couple times, including after having done years of nontrivial and highly-independent coding for pay. And I don't mean leetcode shit, I mean really basic stuff. Some percentage of those folks who seemed great in the interview but failed your basic screens are false negatives, no matter how much you believe no one who had a tenth of a clue could possibly fail them. Maybe that rate's negligible, but maybe it's not. I do think unjustified confidence that very simple tests can't have a significant false-negative rate is part of why so many people are convinced our industry is drowning in expert-level bullshit artists who can't even write a for loop.
rojobuffalo 4y ago
Agreed. If you, as the interviewer, can't ascertain an applicant's ability to do the job, after chatting with them for an hour or two, you aren't qualified to hire for that position. The idea that you can pinpoint someone's skill level (and estimate their performance potential) through additional hours-long exams is arrogant. Job performance has more to do with the environment than the incoming skill set. When it comes to promotions, there was a paper this year that won an Ig Nobel prize, which made the case that promotions are awarded at worse-than-random https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.07068.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.07068.pdf

jonahbenton 4y ago

True! Except that this process is discriminatory because people communicate best with people who are like themselves.

vt85 4y ago
[dead]
zsoltkacsandi 4y ago
Yeah, people who share similar values can communicate and work together better, but this isn't discrimination. On this basis the whole hiring field and each and every interview is discriminatory because the companies want to select who they want to work together with based on the candidates skills/values.
- marcinzm 4y ago
  >Yeah, people who share similar values can communicate and work together better, but this isn't discrimination. This isn't really my experience. Similar people will have a better initial perception of each other as it takes less time to synchronize with each other however in most jobs that's of little importance. What matters is how they work together in the long term and most people don't need clones to work well with. If anything else having too many similar people is a problem for a team since you get overlapping blind spots which tends to cause serious issues over time.
  - xenonite 4y ago
    I consider it quite important how well people synchronize. It is much more fun to work with like-minded people where you can have good private talks as well because you’re sharing many values.
  - zsoltkacsandi 4y ago
    My point was that there isn't any discrimination in the phenomenon that people with similar values can work together better. >most people don't need clones to work well with Having similar values doesn't mean that they have exactly the same value/skill set, they aren't "clones". > having too many similar people similar values != similar people
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > Yeah, people who share similar values can communicate and work together better, but this isn't discrimination. You would think it was if you were a member of e.g. a minority religion and no one would hire you for a job you were capable of doing.
pantulis 4y ago
That's why during interviews I preferred to put my hacker hat instead of more corporate-business-look-how-big-we-are-this-is-our-vision-bullshit.
constantcrying 4y ago
All hiring processes are discrimnatory. That is in fact the point of a hiring process. If you don't want discrimination select the applicant by lottery.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  People are obviously using discriminatory as a shorthand for pointlessly discriminatory. It's an argument against using qualities other than actual productivity in a hiring process. You're on the side defending that.
  - constantcrying 4y ago
    Being able to communicate effectively seems not pointless.

grey_earthling 4y ago

> Look, if you are hiring an engineer, it's easier than it seems. Just sit an hour with them and have a good talk about his career on the business domain or the technical field. “his”? Doesn't sound like a very fair recruitment process.

pantulis 4y ago
You totally hit the nail here. I am sorry.

culopatin 4y ago

Assuming your team knows what questions to ask in that meeting, which is not a given.

mikebenfield 4y ago

In my experience the kind of simple interview you describe is vulnerable to BS artists. For all their flaws, the common coding challenge kind of interview at least gives you concrete evidence about whether the candidate can solve a technical problem.

yamtaddle 4y ago
Anyone who's a good enough bullshit artist to fool you while talking tech for an hour should be in a totally different field, because such extremely high levels of bullshitting ability are themselves quite lucrative. I just can't believe there are so many people out there with the skill and will to do that, who also haven't found a better way to employ those skills directly, that our field can be awash in them. I believe there are plenty who try, but I doubt there are very many who could talk about tech and their career for an hour without tipping their hand.
- KajMagnus 4y ago
  Software jobs pay $X00k in some places. And working remote with software, if you're in a low income country, can make you wealthy compared to those around you.

marcinzm 4y ago

I've also done a lot of interviews for over a decade. I figure I'm an average or above average interviewer. Talked to people for an hour, discussed projects, they looked good. Failed basic coding screens. Over and over. Maybe you've got an amazing sense for interviewing people. I doubt many others do and processes need to accommodate the average interviewer and not the amazing outliers.

pantulis 4y ago
I am not saying that all the people I hired were x10 performers, but they were certainly better than average, imho, with a leaner process. For example I did not hire anyone that lacked basic coding skills. Perhaps I am a great interviewer or, more probably, the fact that the specific profile I was targeting (RoR developers) included a high-pass filter.
- KajMagnus 4y ago
  No idea if this could be related, but @pantulis you're in Madrid (says your profile. Well, "from"), whilst @marcinzm you are (I'm guessing) statistically in the US, maybe SF? Is it possible that it works better to "just talk to people" in some parts of the world, than other parts? In SF, software engineer salaries can be $X00k/year, but a lot less in Madrid. I wonder if this can influence people's behavior. (Nonetheless personally I'd never do only such unstructured interviews.)
yamtaddle 4y ago
Raises hand Dude here who designed and built an early multitenant mobile app server-side support system from scratch, serving millions of daily users (the spikes in traffic when our users sent out pushes to some of those apps... yikes), among a bunch of other stuff. Actually, in-fact did that. Code-language-polyglot, often considered the one to go to for low-level stuff (nothing I seek out, I just keep getting that reputation), getting paid to write code for ~22 years now, et c., et c. I've nonetheless bombed "basic coding screens" a couple times, including after having done years of nontrivial and highly-independent coding for pay. And I don't mean leetcode shit, I mean really basic stuff. Some percentage of those folks who seemed great in the interview but failed your basic screens are false negatives, no matter how much you believe no one who had a tenth of a clue could possibly fail them. Maybe that rate's negligible, but maybe it's not. I do think unjustified confidence that very simple tests can't have a significant false-negative rate is part of why so many people are convinced our industry is drowning in expert-level bullshit artists who can't even write a for loop.

rojobuffalo 4y ago

Agreed. If you, as the interviewer, can't ascertain an applicant's ability to do the job, after chatting with them for an hour or two, you aren't qualified to hire for that position. The idea that you can pinpoint someone's skill level (and estimate their performance potential) through additional hours-long exams is arrogant. Job performance has more to do with the environment than the incoming skill set. When it comes to promotions, there was a paper this year that won an Ig Nobel prize, which made the case that promotions are awarded at worse-than-random https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.07068.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.07068.pdf