4 ms·

My rule for interviews is the company has to spend equal human time or I decline. This means no 8 hour tests, no talking to computers, no special little projec

My rule for interviews is the company has to spend equal human time or I decline. This means no 8 hour tests, no talking to computers, no special little projects for me to evaluate me. You get equal face time and no more than 45 minutes of me doing anything by myself (that's the max leeway). If you want me to do anything else either I'm getting paid short term contractor rates or making you make a sizable donation to charity.

jghn 1y ago
I agree with the philosophy although I'll note you're not taking one thing into account. And that is how much human time is spent *reviewing* whatever special little project they assign to you. If the answer is zero, then you're exactly right. However, speaking just for myself as an interviewer, I will generally spend a couple of hours per-candidate reviewing any work samples, etc that are asked of a candidate. If we've asked them to invest their time in such a thing, it only makes sense to respect their time by investing my own.
- colechristensen 1y ago
  That's what the leeway is for. Two hours per candidate seems like quite a lot of time and is nothing like any of the interviews I have been involved in on either side of the table.
  - jghn 1y ago
    I would agree that it's not typical. However I firmly believe that it is imperative for interviewers to treat the candidate as the more valuable commodity. As such, I will spend a fair amount of time per-candidate as I know they themselves are investing a good bit of their own time & energy.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  That's interesting. My expectation was that, if I did a four-hour assignment, they were going to spend 5 minutes evaluating it. I wonder if you are typical, or if typical is closer to my 5 minute impression?
  - jghn 1y ago
    My observation has been that the 5 minute angle is far more common. But it's also not like I'm the only person out there like myself on this topic.
  - aplummer 1y ago
    I spend a lot longer than candidates do on themselves if they have open source (or if an internal transfer, internal) code I can review. 50% that I’m terrified of bad hires, 50% I recognize the opportunity and gravity from their side so try to respect that.
    - at-fates-hands 1y ago
      >> if they have open source (or if an internal transfer, internal) code I can review. I give you a lot of credit for doing this. When I was still in development, I had a pretty robust github page, a sizable portfolio of stuff I had built and other side projects I was working on with various other platforms like Salesforce. Not once did an interviewer review any of that. I would find myself referring to my github page several times over during the interview. I got so frustrated with interviewers asking me how to do simple things in interviews, I finally walked out of several and told them if they had just taken five minutes and looked at any of my github projects, they would've saved themselves a lot of time asking stupid questions about basic stuff.
      - sgerenser 1y ago
        Unfortunately, most people’s GitHub accounts are just a smattering of forked repos with maybe one or two (or no) commits done by them. Unless you look closely, it would be easy to be fooled by the average candidates github that is essentially meaningless.
        RugnirViking 1y ago
        then don't hire most people? idk, I really can't imagine hiring someone that not only had such a github profile, but saw fit to send it to the interviewer look for repos that aren't forked, especially one that doesn't have all or most of its code committed in a single commit (i.e. forked with extra steps)
- erikerikson 1y ago
  And yet, I can't recall receiving a counter submission of feedback and summary of the review for the work I've submitted, whether I got the job or not.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    I gave feedback like this when I first started doing interviews I had to stop very quickly when I realized how many candidates take it as an invitation to argue, accuse me of being wrong, or see it as an invite to redo the problem and resubmit. I also had one case where someone tried to go on a rampage against me and the company because they though our rejection was unfair (the candidate wasn’t even top 5 among the applicants)
    - erikerikson 1y ago
      Thank you, I appreciate that you made the effort. Many companies won't allow it due to legal risk, not to mention the social risks you report and related. Our solving and counter-solving leads us into fairly dysfunctional places.
    - bartread 1y ago
      I’ve had people come back at me after giving feedback, which I always do give for anyone I’ve spoken to. They argue, they ask for a second chance, etc. I simply tell them my decision is final and stop responding to further communication attempts. I have no problem doing that. But that’s a minority: most people just appreciate getting some feedback, and not being ghosted. And if they’ve taken an hour out of their day to speak to me, providing a short piece of (ideally actionable) feedback, or at least that explains where their experience or skills didn’t match up to other applicants, is the least I can do. It’s also an opportunity to provide encouragement on positive aspects of the interview, even if those weren’t enough to carry the day. You have to understand that even - perhaps especially - unsuccessful applicants will talk about their experience of your hiring process. Unless you work somewhere that people really want to work, and where they’ll be willing to wade through shit to do it (cough, Google, cough - perhaps Google of yore anyway), you want to be doing everything you can to ensure that even unsuccessful applicants are treated well and have as positive an experience as possible. It won’t always work out but, in my experience, the extra effort is worthwhile.
jijijijij 1y ago
I think it’s fair, if tests etc. are unconditionally compensated (paid) for the time spent. Some companies do that.
andy99 1y ago
I have a background selling projects with long sales cycles, and I think partly from that, I have no problem putting in lots of work for a company that I think is making a good faith effort to get to know me, for an appropriate job that will provide a high expected return on my efforts. The problem with AI interviews (and much of the hiring automation in general) is that (a) it's not good faith, it scales so that all the candidates can be made to do work that nobody ever looks at. If I'm on a short list of two people for a Director level position, I'd happily spend 8 hours making a presentation to give. If I'm one of a thousand and haven't even had an indication that I've passed some basic screening, not so much. And (b), all this stuff usually applies to junior positions where the same payoff isn't there. I've worked for months with customers to get consulting contracts before, and obviously price accordingly so it nets out to be worth it. Doesn't work if you're putting in all the free work for a low probability chance at an entry level job.
Aurornis 1y ago
In my experience, candidates who demand equivalent face time always underestimate how much time is spent selecting candidates, reviewing resumes, scheduling interviews, preparing the interview structure, reviewing interviews, advocating for candidates to progress, getting their offers approved, dealing with HR, and the countless other things that go into getting someone from the application phase to being hired. If you reduce an interview to “face time” and start trying to keep score on that metric you’re not seeing the full picture. Though to be honest, whenever a candidate vocally removes themselves from the candidate pipeline for something like this (which is very rare) it feels like we dodged a bullet.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  The candidate also has their share of non-face time: Grinding leetcode and filling out HTML forms that are asking for the same information contained on their resume.
  - atrettel 1y ago
    Your comment made me wonder how much time I've spent in face-to-face interviews over the last year of job hunting. It comes out to 7 percent of all of the time that I spend applying to jobs. For every minute that I spend in an interview, I spend roughly 14 minutes preparing for it in some way (or applying to a different job). Perhaps I can get more efficient with my time, but as you said, the process is naturally inefficient as it stands already.
- colechristensen 1y ago
  I have been the hiring manager several times, I know full well the amount of time it takes, and the overhead from "selecting candidates, reviewing resumes, scheduling interviews, preparing the interview structure, reviewing interviews, advocating for candidates to progress, getting their offers approved, dealing with HR, and the countless other things" as a hiring manager is not that much time, and that's your business not the candidate's. I respect the candidates I put through the process and consider large amounts of time required for each candidate to be discriminatory and disrespectful. >Though to be honest, whenever a candidate vocally removes themselves from the candidate pipeline for something like this (which is very rare) it feels like we dodged a bullet. If you want an underfoot character with no respect for their own worth then yes... you both dodged bullets.
doug_durham 1y ago
What you are saying resonates deeply with me. I flipped the logic with a thought experiment. As a job seeker you send your resume to the black hole of a company's recruiting department. That's your only input which can be frustrating because it is difficult to express your abilities in static text. What if instead the company offered you the opportunity to spend 30 minutes with an automated system where you could provide more information and demonstrate your skills. That sounds very appealing. That said there are certainly too many companies that will abuse the technology to further dehumanize the recruiting process.
- colechristensen 1y ago
  >the opportunity to spend 30 minutes with an automated system where you could provide more information and demonstrate your skills. I'm positive that a system like this would be flooded with awful candidates of the "I have 12 certifications but can't keep up in a basic technical discussion" type.

jghn 1y ago

I agree with the philosophy although I'll note you're not taking one thing into account. And that is how much human time is spent *reviewing* whatever special little project they assign to you. If the answer is zero, then you're exactly right. However, speaking just for myself as an interviewer, I will generally spend a couple of hours per-candidate reviewing any work samples, etc that are asked of a candidate. If we've asked them to invest their time in such a thing, it only makes sense to respect their time by investing my own.

colechristensen 1y ago
That's what the leeway is for. Two hours per candidate seems like quite a lot of time and is nothing like any of the interviews I have been involved in on either side of the table.
- jghn 1y ago
  I would agree that it's not typical. However I firmly believe that it is imperative for interviewers to treat the candidate as the more valuable commodity. As such, I will spend a fair amount of time per-candidate as I know they themselves are investing a good bit of their own time & energy.
AnimalMuppet 1y ago
That's interesting. My expectation was that, if I did a four-hour assignment, they were going to spend 5 minutes evaluating it. I wonder if you are typical, or if typical is closer to my 5 minute impression?
- jghn 1y ago
  My observation has been that the 5 minute angle is far more common. But it's also not like I'm the only person out there like myself on this topic.
- aplummer 1y ago
  I spend a lot longer than candidates do on themselves if they have open source (or if an internal transfer, internal) code I can review. 50% that I’m terrified of bad hires, 50% I recognize the opportunity and gravity from their side so try to respect that.
  - at-fates-hands 1y ago
    >> if they have open source (or if an internal transfer, internal) code I can review. I give you a lot of credit for doing this. When I was still in development, I had a pretty robust github page, a sizable portfolio of stuff I had built and other side projects I was working on with various other platforms like Salesforce. Not once did an interviewer review any of that. I would find myself referring to my github page several times over during the interview. I got so frustrated with interviewers asking me how to do simple things in interviews, I finally walked out of several and told them if they had just taken five minutes and looked at any of my github projects, they would've saved themselves a lot of time asking stupid questions about basic stuff.
    - sgerenser 1y ago
      Unfortunately, most people’s GitHub accounts are just a smattering of forked repos with maybe one or two (or no) commits done by them. Unless you look closely, it would be easy to be fooled by the average candidates github that is essentially meaningless.
      - RugnirViking 1y ago
        then don't hire most people? idk, I really can't imagine hiring someone that not only had such a github profile, but saw fit to send it to the interviewer look for repos that aren't forked, especially one that doesn't have all or most of its code committed in a single commit (i.e. forked with extra steps)
erikerikson 1y ago
And yet, I can't recall receiving a counter submission of feedback and summary of the review for the work I've submitted, whether I got the job or not.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  I gave feedback like this when I first started doing interviews I had to stop very quickly when I realized how many candidates take it as an invitation to argue, accuse me of being wrong, or see it as an invite to redo the problem and resubmit. I also had one case where someone tried to go on a rampage against me and the company because they though our rejection was unfair (the candidate wasn’t even top 5 among the applicants)
  - erikerikson 1y ago
    Thank you, I appreciate that you made the effort. Many companies won't allow it due to legal risk, not to mention the social risks you report and related. Our solving and counter-solving leads us into fairly dysfunctional places.
  - bartread 1y ago
    I’ve had people come back at me after giving feedback, which I always do give for anyone I’ve spoken to. They argue, they ask for a second chance, etc. I simply tell them my decision is final and stop responding to further communication attempts. I have no problem doing that. But that’s a minority: most people just appreciate getting some feedback, and not being ghosted. And if they’ve taken an hour out of their day to speak to me, providing a short piece of (ideally actionable) feedback, or at least that explains where their experience or skills didn’t match up to other applicants, is the least I can do. It’s also an opportunity to provide encouragement on positive aspects of the interview, even if those weren’t enough to carry the day. You have to understand that even - perhaps especially - unsuccessful applicants will talk about their experience of your hiring process. Unless you work somewhere that people really want to work, and where they’ll be willing to wade through shit to do it (cough, Google, cough - perhaps Google of yore anyway), you want to be doing everything you can to ensure that even unsuccessful applicants are treated well and have as positive an experience as possible. It won’t always work out but, in my experience, the extra effort is worthwhile.

jijijijij 1y ago

I think it’s fair, if tests etc. are unconditionally compensated (paid) for the time spent. Some companies do that.

andy99 1y ago

I have a background selling projects with long sales cycles, and I think partly from that, I have no problem putting in lots of work for a company that I think is making a good faith effort to get to know me, for an appropriate job that will provide a high expected return on my efforts. The problem with AI interviews (and much of the hiring automation in general) is that (a) it's not good faith, it scales so that all the candidates can be made to do work that nobody ever looks at. If I'm on a short list of two people for a Director level position, I'd happily spend 8 hours making a presentation to give. If I'm one of a thousand and haven't even had an indication that I've passed some basic screening, not so much. And (b), all this stuff usually applies to junior positions where the same payoff isn't there. I've worked for months with customers to get consulting contracts before, and obviously price accordingly so it nets out to be worth it. Doesn't work if you're putting in all the free work for a low probability chance at an entry level job.

Aurornis 1y ago

In my experience, candidates who demand equivalent face time always underestimate how much time is spent selecting candidates, reviewing resumes, scheduling interviews, preparing the interview structure, reviewing interviews, advocating for candidates to progress, getting their offers approved, dealing with HR, and the countless other things that go into getting someone from the application phase to being hired. If you reduce an interview to “face time” and start trying to keep score on that metric you’re not seeing the full picture. Though to be honest, whenever a candidate vocally removes themselves from the candidate pipeline for something like this (which is very rare) it feels like we dodged a bullet.

ryandrake 1y ago
The candidate also has their share of non-face time: Grinding leetcode and filling out HTML forms that are asking for the same information contained on their resume.
- atrettel 1y ago
  Your comment made me wonder how much time I've spent in face-to-face interviews over the last year of job hunting. It comes out to 7 percent of all of the time that I spend applying to jobs. For every minute that I spend in an interview, I spend roughly 14 minutes preparing for it in some way (or applying to a different job). Perhaps I can get more efficient with my time, but as you said, the process is naturally inefficient as it stands already.
colechristensen 1y ago
I have been the hiring manager several times, I know full well the amount of time it takes, and the overhead from "selecting candidates, reviewing resumes, scheduling interviews, preparing the interview structure, reviewing interviews, advocating for candidates to progress, getting their offers approved, dealing with HR, and the countless other things" as a hiring manager is not that much time, and that's your business not the candidate's. I respect the candidates I put through the process and consider large amounts of time required for each candidate to be discriminatory and disrespectful. >Though to be honest, whenever a candidate vocally removes themselves from the candidate pipeline for something like this (which is very rare) it feels like we dodged a bullet. If you want an underfoot character with no respect for their own worth then yes... you both dodged bullets.

doug_durham 1y ago

What you are saying resonates deeply with me. I flipped the logic with a thought experiment. As a job seeker you send your resume to the black hole of a company's recruiting department. That's your only input which can be frustrating because it is difficult to express your abilities in static text. What if instead the company offered you the opportunity to spend 30 minutes with an automated system where you could provide more information and demonstrate your skills. That sounds very appealing. That said there are certainly too many companies that will abuse the technology to further dehumanize the recruiting process.

colechristensen 1y ago
>the opportunity to spend 30 minutes with an automated system where you could provide more information and demonstrate your skills. I'm positive that a system like this would be flooded with awful candidates of the "I have 12 certifications but can't keep up in a basic technical discussion" type.