4 ms·

I remember when on-site interviews were an hour and that was it. All this stuff companies do now is insane. If a person isn't performant, you'll know within 30

I remember when on-site interviews were an hour and that was it. All this stuff companies do now is insane. If a person isn't performant, you'll know within 30 days, but you'll never know by interviewing them. I haven't had to cold interview in 20+ years. I hope I never have to based on how it works now. I get all my jobs from previous colleagues. Companies are closing the door to a lot of great talent based on this silliness, but they'll never learn.

Klonoar 3y ago
I hate the modern interview loop as much as the next person, but from a business perspective why would you want to risk 30 days of nothing vs a few extra hours to verify? We should fix the modern interview loop (very hard) but the idea we’d ever go back to one hour is kind of out there.
- Clubber 3y ago
  That is making the assumption that any time spent over the traditional 1 hour helps you confirm whether the candidate is performant or not. I dispute that assumption and figure any time outside of that initial hour makes a hiring mistake that much more expensive. Calculate it this way. I can spend 3x 1 hour (3 people interviewing a candidate for 1 hour) and have a 60% chance of hiring a performant person. I could also spend 3x 6 hours and have about the same chance. When that 40% non-performant candidate shows up and I have to repeat the hiring cycle, It's significantly less expensive in both labor costs and opportunity costs for the 3x1 interview style than the 3x6 interview style. This doesn't take into account all the talent that has no need or interest to go through a 3x6 interview process (I am one of them). >the idea we’d ever go back to one hour is kind of out there. Ya like I said, the industry just kinda does what it does, complains about not being able to find talent, and will never learn.
  - Klonoar 3y ago
    > I dispute that assumption and figure any time outside of that initial hour makes a hiring mistake that much more expensive. Okay, sure - dispute it if you want. It doesn't change the fact that the industry seemingly collectively decided that 1 hour isn't a sufficient amount of time to gauge fit/effectiveness/etc. My point to you is that given the above, you have to make a choice. Spending the extra few hours gives you some hopeful assurance of what you're getting. I once again will note it's not a good system, but there is to date seemingly no widely agreed upon good system.
sgustard 3y ago
Microsoft in the early 90s was a half day of onsite interviews with 5 or 6 people, plus lunch. And this was for a summer internship.
- usr1106 3y ago
  In the late eighties I got an internship at IBM with no interview at all. Just sent in my university papers via a student organization.
eloisant 3y ago
I interviewed at Google nearly 15 years ago and it was already phone screen + a marathon of on-site interviews. Maybe 4 in a row.
- askonomm 3y ago
  Most companies are not Google however. ~10 years ago when I applied for jobs in small-to-medium non-FAANG companies it was really just a 1hr onsite at most.
- Clubber 3y ago
  Ya Google kinda pioneered that. It helps that Google makes millionaires out of many of its employees over 15 years. Would you go through that process for say Baskin and Robbins corporate?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- khokhol 3y ago
  The problem is companies are having people run the gauntlet -- or in any case displaying a cavalier attitude about milking folks for their time and patience -- despite not offering anything comparable (in terms of intrinsic attractiveness of the role or compensation) to what FAANG-tier companies do. On top of flaky (or flakier than the used to be), sometimes weird even, communications, etc.
lazide 3y ago
Sometimes you’ll know during interviews. A long time ago, I interviewed someone who claimed something like 5+ years of Java development, and literally couldn’t write: class Foo { } On the whiteboard. In any context. That one saved us a lot of time. It wasn’t some weird out of context thing either, he just literally didn’t know how to write Java at all. Even approximately.
- Clubber 3y ago
  Yes, but you knew that within 1 hour. It (hopefully) didn't take you 6 hours to realize this person was a dud.
  - lazide 3y ago
    Of course. I apologized for wasting their time and walked them out within 30 minutes. They had clearly flat out lied about their qualifications. I also got lectured by senior management for exposing them to liability since I didn’t ’go through the whole process’. And this was a middle aged white dude candidate, a small company, and about 20 years ago. The risk tolerance has only decreased since then.
    - Clubber 3y ago
      >I also got lectured by senior management for exposing them to liability since I didn’t ’go through the whole process’. I work in an "at will" state. Our 3 people are usually on teams chatting about the interview going on and will decide to end it early and not waste everyone's time if it's not going well. We've never had anyone tell us they were concerned about that. What liability was senior management at your company concerned about?
      - lazide 3y ago
        The same one FAANG used to tell us that we couldn't do it either. To paraphase "We want to give the candidate every chance to prove themselves, and cutting the interview short gives them a bad impression of the company (and it would make it easier to sue us for unfair discrimination)." Since it was just a few (or in this case 1) interviews, and that makes it easier to claim that I cut it short because queue whatever protected class. Which, if someone was going to be that kind of jerk to a candidate, I guess doing it on the first interview WOULD be the one, eh? It would just be my word against theirs, instead of x interviewers vs theirs. And I guess the riskiest type of candidate for that kind of crazy behavior WOULD be the person who felt okay blatantly lying on their resume about such a fundamental fact AND EVEN SHOWING UP FOR THE INTERVIEW, come to think about it. We didn't get sued in this case though. I think the interviewee was just surprised someone was interviewing him who actually knew how to code.

Klonoar 3y ago

I hate the modern interview loop as much as the next person, but from a business perspective why would you want to risk 30 days of nothing vs a few extra hours to verify? We should fix the modern interview loop (very hard) but the idea we’d ever go back to one hour is kind of out there.

Clubber 3y ago
That is making the assumption that any time spent over the traditional 1 hour helps you confirm whether the candidate is performant or not. I dispute that assumption and figure any time outside of that initial hour makes a hiring mistake that much more expensive. Calculate it this way. I can spend 3x 1 hour (3 people interviewing a candidate for 1 hour) and have a 60% chance of hiring a performant person. I could also spend 3x 6 hours and have about the same chance. When that 40% non-performant candidate shows up and I have to repeat the hiring cycle, It's significantly less expensive in both labor costs and opportunity costs for the 3x1 interview style than the 3x6 interview style. This doesn't take into account all the talent that has no need or interest to go through a 3x6 interview process (I am one of them). >the idea we’d ever go back to one hour is kind of out there. Ya like I said, the industry just kinda does what it does, complains about not being able to find talent, and will never learn.
- Klonoar 3y ago
  > I dispute that assumption and figure any time outside of that initial hour makes a hiring mistake that much more expensive. Okay, sure - dispute it if you want. It doesn't change the fact that the industry seemingly collectively decided that 1 hour isn't a sufficient amount of time to gauge fit/effectiveness/etc. My point to you is that given the above, you have to make a choice. Spending the extra few hours gives you some hopeful assurance of what you're getting. I once again will note it's not a good system, but there is to date seemingly no widely agreed upon good system.

sgustard 3y ago

Microsoft in the early 90s was a half day of onsite interviews with 5 or 6 people, plus lunch. And this was for a summer internship.

usr1106 3y ago
In the late eighties I got an internship at IBM with no interview at all. Just sent in my university papers via a student organization.

eloisant 3y ago

I interviewed at Google nearly 15 years ago and it was already phone screen + a marathon of on-site interviews. Maybe 4 in a row.

askonomm 3y ago
Most companies are not Google however. ~10 years ago when I applied for jobs in small-to-medium non-FAANG companies it was really just a 1hr onsite at most.
Clubber 3y ago
Ya Google kinda pioneered that. It helps that Google makes millionaires out of many of its employees over 15 years. Would you go through that process for say Baskin and Robbins corporate?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
khokhol 3y ago
The problem is companies are having people run the gauntlet -- or in any case displaying a cavalier attitude about milking folks for their time and patience -- despite not offering anything comparable (in terms of intrinsic attractiveness of the role or compensation) to what FAANG-tier companies do. On top of flaky (or flakier than the used to be), sometimes weird even, communications, etc.

lazide 3y ago

Sometimes you’ll know during interviews. A long time ago, I interviewed someone who claimed something like 5+ years of Java development, and literally couldn’t write: class Foo { } On the whiteboard. In any context. That one saved us a lot of time. It wasn’t some weird out of context thing either, he just literally didn’t know how to write Java at all. Even approximately.

Clubber 3y ago
Yes, but you knew that within 1 hour. It (hopefully) didn't take you 6 hours to realize this person was a dud.
- lazide 3y ago
  Of course. I apologized for wasting their time and walked them out within 30 minutes. They had clearly flat out lied about their qualifications. I also got lectured by senior management for exposing them to liability since I didn’t ’go through the whole process’. And this was a middle aged white dude candidate, a small company, and about 20 years ago. The risk tolerance has only decreased since then.
  - Clubber 3y ago
    >I also got lectured by senior management for exposing them to liability since I didn’t ’go through the whole process’. I work in an "at will" state. Our 3 people are usually on teams chatting about the interview going on and will decide to end it early and not waste everyone's time if it's not going well. We've never had anyone tell us they were concerned about that. What liability was senior management at your company concerned about?
    - lazide 3y ago
      The same one FAANG used to tell us that we couldn't do it either. To paraphase "We want to give the candidate every chance to prove themselves, and cutting the interview short gives them a bad impression of the company (and it would make it easier to sue us for unfair discrimination)." Since it was just a few (or in this case 1) interviews, and that makes it easier to claim that I cut it short because queue whatever protected class. Which, if someone was going to be that kind of jerk to a candidate, I guess doing it on the first interview WOULD be the one, eh? It would just be my word against theirs, instead of x interviewers vs theirs. And I guess the riskiest type of candidate for that kind of crazy behavior WOULD be the person who felt okay blatantly lying on their resume about such a fundamental fact AND EVEN SHOWING UP FOR THE INTERVIEW, come to think about it. We didn't get sued in this case though. I think the interviewee was just surprised someone was interviewing him who actually knew how to code.