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I think there are many upsides: - The candidate gets to know the company better. - The company gets to know the candidate better. - You can check for fit as

I think there are many upsides: - The candidate gets to know the company better. - The company gets to know the candidate better. - You can check for fit as well as technical competency. Some of the downsides people raise make less sense: - Yes it's a week of vacation lost, but you can get it back if you switch companies and you're paid for your time. - Yes, it's expensive, but it's cheaper than a bad hire. - It's entirely voluntary, there's no exploitation. There's only two downsides in my mind: You won't be able to pry any superstars away with this, and sometimes a week isn't enough. The solution is to go further in the direction that this company is going - offers lots of real-work internships to college students. You need to identify the best while they're still sophomores and juniors. It's usually too tough to get them after they're seniors, and they're usually too happy in their jobs to take a week off to work somewhere else.

VLM 13y ago
"There's only two downsides in my mind: You won't be able to pry any superstars away with this" There is an unexplored dimension to this situation. If I understand the situation correctly, this is hiring at weebly. My impression is they're a 50 or so employee webhoster with an integrated custom CMS and a slick UI. They seem to be in maintain/upgrade mode rather than invent a product mode. They don't want or need a superstar. This is not a binary world, claiming they don't want or need a superstar does NOT imply I think they're dirtbags or losers, solely implying average people doing an average job at an average company doing very average and traditional business. Anyone vaguely near the median skill level would be a perfect fit and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. I agree that their unusual hiring plan would be a horrible idea for a startup doing something new or challenging where they need high end skills. If they were developing their platform in, say, '96 they would have needed a superstar for the development phase. In 2013 during maintenance of an existing product, its the equivalent of stamping out license plates. Filtering out "super stars" or "rock stars" might be a perfectly valid design goal of a hiring process where you don't want or need super stars. What would a "super star" do at a webhost in 2013 other than get really bored? The business model or UI or internal processes might be very innovative; that doesn't mean every job there is currently innovative. "Oh great, I get to maintain an existing CRUD app for the customer database, how cutting edge"
- mathattack 13y ago
  You're correct here. Superstars are expensive, and need certain types of roles to stay. If you don't have that offer, it's better to not design recruiting strategies around that.

VLM 13y ago

"There's only two downsides in my mind: You won't be able to pry any superstars away with this" There is an unexplored dimension to this situation. If I understand the situation correctly, this is hiring at weebly. My impression is they're a 50 or so employee webhoster with an integrated custom CMS and a slick UI. They seem to be in maintain/upgrade mode rather than invent a product mode. They don't want or need a superstar. This is not a binary world, claiming they don't want or need a superstar does NOT imply I think they're dirtbags or losers, solely implying average people doing an average job at an average company doing very average and traditional business. Anyone vaguely near the median skill level would be a perfect fit and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. I agree that their unusual hiring plan would be a horrible idea for a startup doing something new or challenging where they need high end skills. If they were developing their platform in, say, '96 they would have needed a superstar for the development phase. In 2013 during maintenance of an existing product, its the equivalent of stamping out license plates. Filtering out "super stars" or "rock stars" might be a perfectly valid design goal of a hiring process where you don't want or need super stars. What would a "super star" do at a webhost in 2013 other than get really bored? The business model or UI or internal processes might be very innovative; that doesn't mean every job there is currently innovative. "Oh great, I get to maintain an existing CRUD app for the customer database, how cutting edge"

mathattack 13y ago
You're correct here. Superstars are expensive, and need certain types of roles to stay. If you don't have that offer, it's better to not design recruiting strategies around that.