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Three points of contention, and then a pointer to more valuable advice from a fellow HNer: 1) Union Square Ventures is a leading name in this space - everyone

Three points of contention, and then a pointer to more valuable advice from a fellow HNer: 1) Union Square Ventures is a leading name in this space - everyone knows Fred Wilson's blog. On top of that, they only have three "staff" listed on their site. USV can ask would-be employees to fly up to NYC to deliver resumes in person and they'll still get plenty of applicants. 2) The job openings in the article that focus on surveys and personality tests - supposedly instead of resumes - are clearly unskilled labor (e.g. social media intern). This is exactly as it was when I applied to work as a waiter at Olive Garden in 2000. 3) IGN's coding challenges are similarly suspect as a representatitve example because game dev is a glamor industry with a surfeit of naifs lining up for these underpaid jobs. Prized developers aren't going to participate in many coding-contest-as-hiring-lottery situations unless they're just really interested in the problem. Ask a YC company who's ever posted a hiring puzzle: what percentage of your correct submissions were from people who didn't even want the job? The tactics cited above wrongheadedly invert the recruiting plan tptacek uses at Matasano: Start from the assumption that you want the best people possible and that those people will have plenty of great alternatives to working for you. Do your best to get your company's name in front of those people and to convince them that they'd have a rewarding time if they joined your team. I trust Thomas's experience in identifying and recruiting talent far more than I do a career WSJ reporter's [1] trend spotting. [1] http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rachel-emma-silverman/31/331/507 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rachel-emma-silverman/31/331/507

spamizbad 15y ago
> what percentage of your correct submissions were from people who didn't even want the job? Probably pretty low. But it's not designed to have a high conversion rate. It's really just to scare off pretenders and the under-qualified. I like to solve "Cover Letter Problems" for fun, but I've never bothered to apply to a company that had them. I don't think that means they're a failure. The applicants themselves probably benefit the most as it gives them a window into the company's dev culture. Cutesy "gotcha!" problems that are abstract and removed too far from coding are generally a warning sign that it's a shop full of people who may be smart but are perhaps mediocre developers and/or the shop has non-technical management. On the flip side, problems that explore an applicants coding style and thought process tends to be an indicator the shop wants actual coders who can get shit done in an efficient manner, and that they care about things like Code quality, their tool chain, and care just enough about process to achieve repeatable results, but not so much as to become dogmatic.
- tptacek 15y ago
  I can't get my head around why anyone would design a hiring process to "scare off" anyone. Sure, you'll chase away superficial candidates... but some fraction of all the real talent will also blow you off. I really think the problem here is how people do outreach to candidates. I feel like too many companies haven't figured out that recruiting is a marketing problem, just like software sales. Companies get all kinds of creative addressing marketing problems --- but when it comes to hiring, they plug "reqs" into "job boards" and then try to "deflect" the "pretenders". Calibrate your outreach so that you can safely pay individual attention to all candidates. Don't post reqs to Craigslist or Monster or Dice or whatever your HR person --- in fact don't let your HR person near recruiting --- thinks is the place you're supposed to post ads. You will still be giving "early no" responses to lots and lots of candidates, but it'll be manageable, and it'll be very unlikely for your process to cost you talented candidates.
  - spamizbad 15y ago
    You're absolutely correct. "scare off" may have been projecting my own biases onto the company based on passed experience. However, overwhelmingly I've found managers are terrified of hiring under-qualified candidates, and often do not make a concerted effort to rope in exceptional people who will obviously shine bright enough to be recognized.
    - tptacek 15y ago
      Which is totally understandable if the biggest component of your recruiting pipeline is leads from job boards. The average quality of a job board candidate is so _low_ that there's a reasonable concern about defining expectations downwards, so that anyone who can talk coherently about programming and solve FizzBuzz might look artificially qualified. The solution to this is, again, have an outreach process that gets you Glengarry Leads, at a much lower volume. Where do your best candidates congregate? What are they most interested in? What do they like to talk about? What do they have opinions about? Think about those questions and then, for God's sake, don't just pick a job board based on them.
  - 15y ago
ben1040 15y ago
Prized developers aren't going to participate in many coding-contest-as-hiring-lottery situations unless they're just really interested in the problem. For a competent developer, a "cover letter brainteaser" that takes an hour to do is essentially equivalent to a $100+ application fee (in terms of opportunity cost).
- nopassrecover 15y ago
  Right and many disagree with the idea of paying for application (see also the similar concepts of "no spec work" and "don't pay to pitch")
- hessenwolf 15y ago
  I actually haven't applied to Google specifically because they require at least 6 interviews. Maybe they wouldn't want me anyway, but we're certainly not going to find out.
kd1220 15y ago
I've solved some coding challenges I come across, but mostly because I wanted a little diversion. Generally those problems give me an excuse to practice lesser used languages or languages I want to learn. I've been contacted by companies after solving these, but I always decline. In regard to the change in hiring practices, "social presence resumes" are just a passing trend. It may result in better candidates in the short term, but people will learn to pad these new resumes and it won't be much more effective than paper resumes. The best hiring practice will still be tapping your employees' social network and hunting down talented people who aren't happy in their current positions. Anything else is usually a shot in the dark.

spamizbad 15y ago

> what percentage of your correct submissions were from people who didn't even want the job? Probably pretty low. But it's not designed to have a high conversion rate. It's really just to scare off pretenders and the under-qualified. I like to solve "Cover Letter Problems" for fun, but I've never bothered to apply to a company that had them. I don't think that means they're a failure. The applicants themselves probably benefit the most as it gives them a window into the company's dev culture. Cutesy "gotcha!" problems that are abstract and removed too far from coding are generally a warning sign that it's a shop full of people who may be smart but are perhaps mediocre developers and/or the shop has non-technical management. On the flip side, problems that explore an applicants coding style and thought process tends to be an indicator the shop wants actual coders who can get shit done in an efficient manner, and that they care about things like Code quality, their tool chain, and care just enough about process to achieve repeatable results, but not so much as to become dogmatic.

tptacek 15y ago
I can't get my head around why anyone would design a hiring process to "scare off" anyone. Sure, you'll chase away superficial candidates... but some fraction of all the real talent will also blow you off. I really think the problem here is how people do outreach to candidates. I feel like too many companies haven't figured out that recruiting is a marketing problem, just like software sales. Companies get all kinds of creative addressing marketing problems --- but when it comes to hiring, they plug "reqs" into "job boards" and then try to "deflect" the "pretenders". Calibrate your outreach so that you can safely pay individual attention to all candidates. Don't post reqs to Craigslist or Monster or Dice or whatever your HR person --- in fact don't let your HR person near recruiting --- thinks is the place you're supposed to post ads. You will still be giving "early no" responses to lots and lots of candidates, but it'll be manageable, and it'll be very unlikely for your process to cost you talented candidates.
- spamizbad 15y ago
  You're absolutely correct. "scare off" may have been projecting my own biases onto the company based on passed experience. However, overwhelmingly I've found managers are terrified of hiring under-qualified candidates, and often do not make a concerted effort to rope in exceptional people who will obviously shine bright enough to be recognized.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    Which is totally understandable if the biggest component of your recruiting pipeline is leads from job boards. The average quality of a job board candidate is so _low_ that there's a reasonable concern about defining expectations downwards, so that anyone who can talk coherently about programming and solve FizzBuzz might look artificially qualified. The solution to this is, again, have an outreach process that gets you Glengarry Leads, at a much lower volume. Where do your best candidates congregate? What are they most interested in? What do they like to talk about? What do they have opinions about? Think about those questions and then, for God's sake, don't just pick a job board based on them.
- 15y ago

ben1040 15y ago

Prized developers aren't going to participate in many coding-contest-as-hiring-lottery situations unless they're just really interested in the problem. For a competent developer, a "cover letter brainteaser" that takes an hour to do is essentially equivalent to a $100+ application fee (in terms of opportunity cost).

nopassrecover 15y ago
Right and many disagree with the idea of paying for application (see also the similar concepts of "no spec work" and "don't pay to pitch")
hessenwolf 15y ago
I actually haven't applied to Google specifically because they require at least 6 interviews. Maybe they wouldn't want me anyway, but we're certainly not going to find out.

kd1220 15y ago

I've solved some coding challenges I come across, but mostly because I wanted a little diversion. Generally those problems give me an excuse to practice lesser used languages or languages I want to learn. I've been contacted by companies after solving these, but I always decline. In regard to the change in hiring practices, "social presence resumes" are just a passing trend. It may result in better candidates in the short term, but people will learn to pad these new resumes and it won't be much more effective than paper resumes. The best hiring practice will still be tapping your employees' social network and hunting down talented people who aren't happy in their current positions. Anything else is usually a shot in the dark.