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This is great. All hiring should work like this. The issue with many companies is that they alienate good candidates and routinely waste a lot of time on bad ca

This is great. All hiring should work like this. The issue with many companies is that they alienate good candidates and routinely waste a lot of time on bad candidates. Basically, you waste several rounds of interviews before the candidate even gets to talk to somebody that has decision power (or even a clue). It's very expensive to reject people late into the process. And it's stupid to have good candidates walk away from you because your process is prioritizing your convenience at the cost of their time. The trick is dealing with the signal to noise ratio. If you have recruiters feeding you an endless stream of mediocre, vaguely buzzword compatible resumes, it's not feasible to stay on top of that. IMHO, that kind of process is in any case unlikely to produce good candidates other than by accident. I've interviewed plenty of people this way and you can end up wasting a lot of time like this. The way out is to fix the lead pipeline to be less desperate than that. I work on the principle that the best people usually come in via your network and are highly employable. So, that puts the pressure on to act quickly and decisively when you come across a good reference. The next best thing is people applying to a job and reaching out. If they look remotely legit, talk to them. Ten minutes is enough to figure people out. This doesn't actually happen a lot. If you must use recruiters, make them work for a living and push back when they waste your time with a lot of poorly fitting candidates. Buzzword compatibility is not good enough. Make sure they can tell the difference between a good and a bad candidate. There's no better way than selling good people on the notion of working for you than just escalating really quickly and having them talk to a decision maker. Have a quick call to verify key assumptions, fit, and expectation management (salary, skills, seniority, eagerness, etc.). First impressions matter. If that's all fine, immediately set up interviews with key stake holders and make an offer if everyone still agrees. Coding interviews don't really factor into this process. I don't use them and I decline to take them. If you've had multiple conversations and then still are wondering if the person can actually code, you messed up. Badly. If you do have a coding interview as part of your process and you get people reluctant to take those, escalate and talk to them immediately. IMHO nothing qualifies a person more than being mature enough to walk away from a bad deal. Chances are that those are the best leads coming through your filters. And you can find out at the cost of a ten minute screening call.

floydian10 4y ago
> I work on the principle that the best people usually come in via your network and are highly employable. So, that puts the pressure on to act quickly and decisively when you come across a good reference. I completely agree. However, at my current job, referring someone for an open position just means throwing their CV in the mix along with everyone else's. There is no way to bypass even a single step in the weeks-long hiring process. And I suspect this is slowly becoming the norm.
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
  I feel so too, but I think it's a self-inflicted wound. When we were hiring last year I contacted people who referred candidates and well more than half of them never worked with the person, some admitted to have never been in contact outside of having gone to the same university. The first kind of referral is weak, the other one is purely useless.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  > However, at my current job, referring someone for an open position just means throwing their CV in the mix along with everyone else's. There is no way to bypass even a single step in the weeks-long hiring process. I thought this was the case everywhere, except maybe very small companies. In the companies I’ve worked, if a candidate asks for a referral, I can’t do much more than input their resume into our internal tool, and then tell him “It’s job req. 54401, go apply online for it!” There’s no button on the page that I push to indicate “This candidate is a special referral! Bypass the interviews!” Maybe it’s different higher up. At the VP level it’s more important who you golf with, and who were your buddies from business school, and who you did coke with at one of last year’s private CES parties. I doubt at that level they even have to apply to job reqs. I’m not even sure that a CxO even interviews!
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  Luckily, I'm the CTO, so I run the hiring process exactly like this and I wouldn't have it any other way. If somebody comes in via one of our existing people, I talk to them or at least make sure they talk to one of my team leads (i.e. their direct manager if the whole thing goes through). If somebody approaches me directly with a good pitch (I get some spectacularly bad ones of course), I generally hear them out. We are also planning to put referral rewards in place too when the time comes (too small right now). The company I run is close to opening its doors for new candidates soon (pending on budget/revenue), so this is not hypothetical. If you are excited about using Kotlin in frontend and backend and are in the Berlin area, feel free to reach out and find out if what I preach lines up with reality.

floydian10 4y ago

> I work on the principle that the best people usually come in via your network and are highly employable. So, that puts the pressure on to act quickly and decisively when you come across a good reference. I completely agree. However, at my current job, referring someone for an open position just means throwing their CV in the mix along with everyone else's. There is no way to bypass even a single step in the weeks-long hiring process. And I suspect this is slowly becoming the norm.

isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
I feel so too, but I think it's a self-inflicted wound. When we were hiring last year I contacted people who referred candidates and well more than half of them never worked with the person, some admitted to have never been in contact outside of having gone to the same university. The first kind of referral is weak, the other one is purely useless.
ryandrake 4y ago
> However, at my current job, referring someone for an open position just means throwing their CV in the mix along with everyone else's. There is no way to bypass even a single step in the weeks-long hiring process. I thought this was the case everywhere, except maybe very small companies. In the companies I’ve worked, if a candidate asks for a referral, I can’t do much more than input their resume into our internal tool, and then tell him “It’s job req. 54401, go apply online for it!” There’s no button on the page that I push to indicate “This candidate is a special referral! Bypass the interviews!” Maybe it’s different higher up. At the VP level it’s more important who you golf with, and who were your buddies from business school, and who you did coke with at one of last year’s private CES parties. I doubt at that level they even have to apply to job reqs. I’m not even sure that a CxO even interviews!
jillesvangurp 4y ago
Luckily, I'm the CTO, so I run the hiring process exactly like this and I wouldn't have it any other way. If somebody comes in via one of our existing people, I talk to them or at least make sure they talk to one of my team leads (i.e. their direct manager if the whole thing goes through). If somebody approaches me directly with a good pitch (I get some spectacularly bad ones of course), I generally hear them out. We are also planning to put referral rewards in place too when the time comes (too small right now). The company I run is close to opening its doors for new candidates soon (pending on budget/revenue), so this is not hypothetical. If you are excited about using Kotlin in frontend and backend and are in the Berlin area, feel free to reach out and find out if what I preach lines up with reality.