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This advise seems like it's suited for the business world and not well placed here. In the tech/startup world, I would advise against doing this sort of in-dep

by xb95 14y ago

This advise seems like it's suited for the business world and not well placed here. In the tech/startup world, I would advise against doing this sort of in-depth questioning of references. Really, most of these checks are going to be done by your HR team/recruiter and all they're really trying to establish is that they are who they say they are. They're not trying to establish how awesome the candidate is. The "awesomeness" part is something you need to establish through the rest of the process: * interviews with the hiring manager and team * code samples via Github or some other project * a coding challenge that is reviewed by several people There are some other things you can do. I for one am a proponent of the "social interview" idea. I like to have candidates come over for some part of the event where they aren't sitting in a conference room and you aren't asking them technical questions. See if you can have a conversation with her, figure out if he's friendly and interesting, decide if you're willing to spend the next two years "in the trenches" with this person.

harryh 14y ago
So you're saying that in the startup world, where companies are smaller and each employee matters more, companies should do less work when trying to validate candidates before making offers?
- thedudemabry 14y ago
  I believe he's proposing that startups do more effective validation of candidates, not less work. The information reported by references (or cold calls) can be vague, misleading, and limited by anti-defamation policies. On the other hand, information gathered from their publicly shared code, interviews, hanging out, pairing, coding problems, etc. is much more relevant to your question. Will this person fit our startup?
  - harryh 14y ago
    He's saying that a particular avenue of information gathering shouldn't be used at all. That's doing less! Elad is saying that all of those things (interviews, hanging out, looking at shared code, etc etc) should be done and ALSO reference checks should be done. And of course the information from references can sometimes be vague and misleading. All information about candidates can be vague and misleading. It's the job of a good hiring manager to sort through all of this information and do they best that can to form a complete picture. The more information the better!

by xb95 14y ago

harryh 14y ago

So you're saying that in the startup world, where companies are smaller and each employee matters more, companies should do less work when trying to validate candidates before making offers?

thedudemabry 14y ago
I believe he's proposing that startups do more effective validation of candidates, not less work. The information reported by references (or cold calls) can be vague, misleading, and limited by anti-defamation policies. On the other hand, information gathered from their publicly shared code, interviews, hanging out, pairing, coding problems, etc. is much more relevant to your question. Will this person fit our startup?
- harryh 14y ago
  He's saying that a particular avenue of information gathering shouldn't be used at all. That's doing less! Elad is saying that all of those things (interviews, hanging out, looking at shared code, etc etc) should be done and ALSO reference checks should be done. And of course the information from references can sometimes be vague and misleading. All information about candidates can be vague and misleading. It's the job of a good hiring manager to sort through all of this information and do they best that can to form a complete picture. The more information the better!