3 ms·

The solution is simple. — make prospective employers pay for the time of the people they’re interviewing. We can argue the rate and which industries it should

by Teever 8mo ago

The solution is simple. — make prospective employers pay for the time of the people they’re interviewing. We can argue the rate and which industries it should apply to, but if companies had to pay even a moderate amount out to even just some people to interview them you’ll fix this problem almost overnight.

koliber 8mo ago
The problem is on both sides. Companies are sometimes too selective and too indecisive. Many candidates can't code well. I screen candidates all the time. I regularly meet Sr. Java Engineers who are not aware of the classes that exist in the standard collections framework and can't pick the right one for the job. People who claim to be "performance experts" who can't explain how a HashMap performs an addition in amortized constant time. I get it -- this is not required knowledge for all roles. But don't call yourself an expert and use some judgement as to the kinds of roles you apply for.
i_think_so 8mo ago
I agree with your basic premise that prospective employers should have a financial disincentive from wasting candidates' time. The problem is that charlatans and scammers could just keep applying to every possible employer and in about 3 weeks the entire industry would collapse. The solution needs to be a bit more robust than that. Simple is great but not when it doesn't work.[1] One of the best contract stipulations I've ever come across was that Company would agree to take on Recruiter's Candidate for 2 weeks of probation, and if it turned out that the Candidate was so bad that they needed to be fired immediately, Recruiter had to pay Company for those 2 weeks. So Recruiter was on the hook for double, unless they passed the penalty on to the Candidate. (Which I'm not sure was/is legal.) I can see how tweaking that just a bit and applying it to the probationary period can protect the employer. Now the FizzBuzz failure has a very real risk if they lie, cheat and steal to get hired. But how do you protect the candidate from having days of their time wasted with interviews and such without turning the company into a cash cow for scammers? Most employers can afford to be very inefficient at interviewing as long as they get a usable body in the door eventually. How can that be structured so that both parties have an incentive to make the process efficient? 1. https://www.azquotes.com/quote/360631 https://www.azquotes.com/quote/360631

by Teever 8mo ago

koliber 8mo ago

The problem is on both sides. Companies are sometimes too selective and too indecisive. Many candidates can't code well. I screen candidates all the time. I regularly meet Sr. Java Engineers who are not aware of the classes that exist in the standard collections framework and can't pick the right one for the job. People who claim to be "performance experts" who can't explain how a HashMap performs an addition in amortized constant time. I get it -- this is not required knowledge for all roles. But don't call yourself an expert and use some judgement as to the kinds of roles you apply for.

i_think_so 8mo ago

I agree with your basic premise that prospective employers should have a financial disincentive from wasting candidates' time. The problem is that charlatans and scammers could just keep applying to every possible employer and in about 3 weeks the entire industry would collapse. The solution needs to be a bit more robust than that. Simple is great but not when it doesn't work.[1] One of the best contract stipulations I've ever come across was that Company would agree to take on Recruiter's Candidate for 2 weeks of probation, and if it turned out that the Candidate was so bad that they needed to be fired immediately, Recruiter had to pay Company for those 2 weeks. So Recruiter was on the hook for double, unless they passed the penalty on to the Candidate. (Which I'm not sure was/is legal.) I can see how tweaking that just a bit and applying it to the probationary period can protect the employer. Now the FizzBuzz failure has a very real risk if they lie, cheat and steal to get hired. But how do you protect the candidate from having days of their time wasted with interviews and such without turning the company into a cash cow for scammers? Most employers can afford to be very inefficient at interviewing as long as they get a usable body in the door eventually. How can that be structured so that both parties have an incentive to make the process efficient? 1. https://www.azquotes.com/quote/360631 https://www.azquotes.com/quote/360631