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Interviews are for weeding out poor candidates; what you have left are the good ones. Weeding out poor candidates is not possible with 10-15 minutes informal ch

by Maro 3y ago

Interviews are for weeding out poor candidates; what you have left are the good ones. Weeding out poor candidates is not possible with 10-15 minutes informal chats.

CogitoCogito 3y ago
> Weeding out poor candidates is not possible with 10-15 minutes informal chats. You do realize you’re replying to a comment showing it _is_ possible right?
- plugin-baby 3y ago
  The previous comment doesn’t show that - it just shows that there are companies without arduous interview processes.
  - CogitoCogito 3y ago
    It _does_ show that. It’s obvious that /u/intelVISA is presenting this as a success story. If /u/intelVISA decides the candidates were good enough then they were good enough. Who else is there to judge but the one making the hiring decisions? Who are you to second guess someone else’s hiring decisions knowing nothing of the role, the pay, the performance, or really _anything_ at all?
- recursive 3y ago
  I don't realize that. We know that there was a short chat, and that it resulted in filling a position. We don't know whether it's an effective way to filter out poor candidates. Have you done it? What's your success rate?
  - Clubber 3y ago
    If you can't figure out someone is a dud in 60 minutes you are doing it wrong. If you can't figure out someone is a dud in 60 minutes, 360 minutes isn't going to make a difference. Why waste the extra 300 minutes?
    - recursive 3y ago
      Merely knowing I'm doing it wrong isn't actionable. In addition, I need to know what to change to do it right.
      - rvnx 3y ago
        You can ask for precise details about the implementation or the weirdest bug they had encountered. Great tech guys are able to explain to you complex systems quite easily; not by making them overly complex, but quite the opposite, to keep them simple, and regarding the bug you can understand the depth of troubleshooting the person went through.
        recursive 3y ago
        I do ask questions like this. You might be surprised to learn that there are a fair number of candidates who can answer stuff like this, but really struggle to write any code at all. I'm not totally sure how to account for it.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    Different scales different approaches. You don't need to throw a distrubuted server to sort 100 objects. I'm sure for a small and even medium sized company looking for a technical role it's fine to look at resumes, have a quick chat, and get them in. Not as safe to use when sorting through thousands of candidates at a FAANG.
  - CogitoCogito 3y ago
    Yes I have done it. My success rate has been fine. I can’t remember poor hires coming in this way. That said I’m getting the feeling you’re more interested in confirming your world view than anything else here. Continue hiring however you wish. Continue believing it’s the only effective way of you wish.
NickC25 3y ago
It most certainly IS possible. That's the whole point of resumes and LinkedIn...especially in technical fields. You self-select for the hiring criteria you're looking for. You then speak to the candidate to understand a bit more about their experience as it relates to the job you're seeking a candidate for. That's why it often makes sense for such roles, for technical people to interview other technical people. "Oh, you have experience with XYZ technology stack, and you worked with it for a few years, awesome. That's what we use here, but could you please talk about some of the projects you worked on with said technology?" But no, tell me how that's not possible to do quickly.
- rthomas6 3y ago
  People lie about what they personally did as part of a larger team. They claim to have skills and expertise they don't actually have. I'm not saying you need a gauntlet of tests. I liked the approach mentioned elsewhere of a technical discussion about what they did. But it takes, like, an hour or two to make sure they're not BSing and that they're actually as much of an expert as they claim to be.
  - strken 3y ago
    Does that matter? I mean, of course it would be better to find the most qualified candidates every time with perfect accuracy. Does having a longer interview process help with that goal, or does it deter the exact candidates you want? Is it okay to end up with the guy who wrote the FrobNizzle compactor instead of the woman who wrote the FrobNizzle extractor?
- tick_tock_tick 3y ago
  > But no, tell me how that's not possible to do quickly. I mean your low ball easy to answer question gives you exactly zero information other then yes they in fact worked on a team that did stuff. They just talk about what their peers did you've got such a short interview your not going to figure out they didn't actually do that shit.
- lmm 3y ago
  Aside from the fact that you'll eliminate a lot of good people, how does that let you screen out people who can't do anything but are decent bullshitters? In a 10-15 minute chat you might catch them contradicting themselves or say something you're lucky enough to remember is wrong (if you're lucky enough to know one of the things they claim experience with in detail), but that's not going to be reliable (and if you eliminate people who get product trivia wrong, that will also have a pretty high false positive rate).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kube-system 3y ago
Depends on the role, applicant pool, experience, and risk tolerance.
agrippanux 3y ago
You can definitely weed out poor candidates in 10-15 minutes of informal chats. What you can't do is weed them all out, and you usually can't tell if someone is a good fit yet.

by Maro 3y ago

Interviews are for weeding out poor candidates; what you have left are the good ones. Weeding out poor candidates is not possible with 10-15 minutes informal chats.

CogitoCogito 3y ago

> Weeding out poor candidates is not possible with 10-15 minutes informal chats. You do realize you’re replying to a comment showing it _is_ possible right?

plugin-baby 3y ago
The previous comment doesn’t show that - it just shows that there are companies without arduous interview processes.
- CogitoCogito 3y ago
  It _does_ show that. It’s obvious that /u/intelVISA is presenting this as a success story. If /u/intelVISA decides the candidates were good enough then they were good enough. Who else is there to judge but the one making the hiring decisions? Who are you to second guess someone else’s hiring decisions knowing nothing of the role, the pay, the performance, or really _anything_ at all?
recursive 3y ago
I don't realize that. We know that there was a short chat, and that it resulted in filling a position. We don't know whether it's an effective way to filter out poor candidates. Have you done it? What's your success rate?
- Clubber 3y ago
  If you can't figure out someone is a dud in 60 minutes you are doing it wrong. If you can't figure out someone is a dud in 60 minutes, 360 minutes isn't going to make a difference. Why waste the extra 300 minutes?
  - recursive 3y ago
    Merely knowing I'm doing it wrong isn't actionable. In addition, I need to know what to change to do it right.
    - rvnx 3y ago
      You can ask for precise details about the implementation or the weirdest bug they had encountered. Great tech guys are able to explain to you complex systems quite easily; not by making them overly complex, but quite the opposite, to keep them simple, and regarding the bug you can understand the depth of troubleshooting the person went through.
      - recursive 3y ago
        I do ask questions like this. You might be surprised to learn that there are a fair number of candidates who can answer stuff like this, but really struggle to write any code at all. I'm not totally sure how to account for it.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  Different scales different approaches. You don't need to throw a distrubuted server to sort 100 objects. I'm sure for a small and even medium sized company looking for a technical role it's fine to look at resumes, have a quick chat, and get them in. Not as safe to use when sorting through thousands of candidates at a FAANG.
- CogitoCogito 3y ago
  Yes I have done it. My success rate has been fine. I can’t remember poor hires coming in this way. That said I’m getting the feeling you’re more interested in confirming your world view than anything else here. Continue hiring however you wish. Continue believing it’s the only effective way of you wish.

NickC25 3y ago

It most certainly IS possible. That's the whole point of resumes and LinkedIn...especially in technical fields. You self-select for the hiring criteria you're looking for. You then speak to the candidate to understand a bit more about their experience as it relates to the job you're seeking a candidate for. That's why it often makes sense for such roles, for technical people to interview other technical people. "Oh, you have experience with XYZ technology stack, and you worked with it for a few years, awesome. That's what we use here, but could you please talk about some of the projects you worked on with said technology?" But no, tell me how that's not possible to do quickly.

rthomas6 3y ago
People lie about what they personally did as part of a larger team. They claim to have skills and expertise they don't actually have. I'm not saying you need a gauntlet of tests. I liked the approach mentioned elsewhere of a technical discussion about what they did. But it takes, like, an hour or two to make sure they're not BSing and that they're actually as much of an expert as they claim to be.
- strken 3y ago
  Does that matter? I mean, of course it would be better to find the most qualified candidates every time with perfect accuracy. Does having a longer interview process help with that goal, or does it deter the exact candidates you want? Is it okay to end up with the guy who wrote the FrobNizzle compactor instead of the woman who wrote the FrobNizzle extractor?
tick_tock_tick 3y ago
> But no, tell me how that's not possible to do quickly. I mean your low ball easy to answer question gives you exactly zero information other then yes they in fact worked on a team that did stuff. They just talk about what their peers did you've got such a short interview your not going to figure out they didn't actually do that shit.
lmm 3y ago
Aside from the fact that you'll eliminate a lot of good people, how does that let you screen out people who can't do anything but are decent bullshitters? In a 10-15 minute chat you might catch them contradicting themselves or say something you're lucky enough to remember is wrong (if you're lucky enough to know one of the things they claim experience with in detail), but that's not going to be reliable (and if you eliminate people who get product trivia wrong, that will also have a pretty high false positive rate).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

kube-system 3y ago

Depends on the role, applicant pool, experience, and risk tolerance.

agrippanux 3y ago

You can definitely weed out poor candidates in 10-15 minutes of informal chats. What you can't do is weed them all out, and you usually can't tell if someone is a good fit yet.