4 ms·

If they don't need or want this job why are they coming for an interview at all? If after research and any questions they want to ask ahead of an extended inte

If they don't need or want this job why are they coming for an interview at all? If after research and any questions they want to ask ahead of an extended interview they still aren't sold on the reasonable possibility that it's an interesting opportunity it doesn't seem a good use of my time, let alone hard cash. How many sales have you made at that price? My figure isn't hypothetical, it's our standard day rate which we sell at and is the opportunity cost for those people's time. I'm not seriously saying that we'd ever consider charging candidates, just saying that the company is already making a significant investment in the person. Maybe this is a local thing and supply and demand are more out of whack where you are than here (the UK) but what's being proposed doesn't feel equitable to me even in a candidate driven market. (See also the edit above in response to your earlier deleted post).

bane 13y ago
> If they don't need or want this job why are they coming for an interview at all? If you can't answer that question yourself without assuming that every candidate is a desperate unemployed mook on their last dollar you can bend over a barrel to squeeze some free labor out of then you probably shouldn't be in a hiring position. Flip the question around, if you didn't need somebody to do work for you, then why are you bothering to open a position? > How many sales have you made at that price? You're the one with a problem so big and urgent that you're willing to take a random person off the street and put them onto your production code for a day. As the person solving that problem for you, I get to dictate the price, not you. If you think you can sustain your daily charge rate and grow your business without adding more people, why aren't you doing that instead?
- Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
  I don't assume every candidate is desperate, but I do assume that they have an interest in working for us. I think we're agreed that by the time you got to doing any extended technical interview you'd have gone through a fair bit - the company would have seen CVs, the candidate would have done research. There would have been a shorter first interview where both sides could ask questions. At that point I'd hope that the candidate would know whether they were interested enough. I'm not saying they should be certain but it should be more than just an idle "what's this?" situation. If that wasn't the case then the right thing to do would probably be to talk a little more about what the candidate was looking for, what concerns they had and whether we could address them and what (other than money) might convince them that an extended interview was a good use of their time. If they couldn't be convinced then we could either talk about a shorter interview (either instead of or ahead of a longer one) or we'd have to accept that we'd not sold the opportunity to them and ask why we felt that was likely to change during a day together but couldn't be addressed in any other way. To be willing to hand over cash to someone to attend an interview I'd pretty much have to be convinced enough that I'd be willing to offer them a job without the interview. As for desperation - I don't think I've ever been or would ever be as desperate as you make out and this isn't a "random person off the street". If I was I'd hire a freelancer and still take my time over the long term hire. As for the price, no you get to make an offer, and I get to politely decline and look elsewhere. Both my experience of recruitment (both recent and long term) and standard practice in the industry says that that's working out just fine. It may be that there are specific local conditions where you are that mean otherwise but I can only comment on what I see in the UK. Out of interest, your bio says that these days you're largely management. Would you ever pay someone to come for an interview? Do you think you'd be able to sell it within your organisation?
  - bane 13y ago
    > Out of interest, your bio says that these days you're largely management. Would you ever pay someone to come for an interview? Do you think you'd be able to sell it within your organisation? No, and I'd never try to do the practice that started the entire thread of getting somebody to work on my production code for free for a day either. It's probably illegal in both of our jurisdictions number one, opens you up to unbelievable liabilities number two if you don't hire the person (at least in the U.S.), and is just outright unethical. It keeps popping up here from time to time though and it makes me wonder about two things 1) What kind of people does HN attract that are in hiring positions? 2) What kind of abuse do engineers take for granted that they'd be willing to entertain the idea? > I think we're agreed that by the time you got to doing any extended technical interview you'd have gone through a fair bit - the company would have seen CVs, the candidate would have done research. There would have been a shorter first interview where both sides could ask questions. Personally, I've been very far along in interview processes before one side or the other decided to pull the plug. I've even been as far as starting to fill out initial employment paperwork before pulling out after finding out something about my future employer that hadn't been made clear to me during the earlier interview processes (in that case, I found out the people who I interviewed with were not going to be my supervisors. And after meeting him, I found him to be unsavory and that was that). I think we're probably talking about different subjects, I was referring to the rotten idea of grinding a day of slave labor out of candidates the OP brought up while it looks like you're focused on appropriate compensation for people's time during long interview processes. If I'm the one who got off track then I apologize.
collyw 13y ago
An interview is a two way process. The employer finds out about you, you find out bout the company. There are interviews where I thought my skillset was a complete mismatch, but got the job, and others where I got scared off by what appeared to be far too much enthusiasm for the company (seemed kind of false to me). I also realised I would be getting 8 days less holiday than I was on.

bane 13y ago

> If they don't need or want this job why are they coming for an interview at all? If you can't answer that question yourself without assuming that every candidate is a desperate unemployed mook on their last dollar you can bend over a barrel to squeeze some free labor out of then you probably shouldn't be in a hiring position. Flip the question around, if you didn't need somebody to do work for you, then why are you bothering to open a position? > How many sales have you made at that price? You're the one with a problem so big and urgent that you're willing to take a random person off the street and put them onto your production code for a day. As the person solving that problem for you, I get to dictate the price, not you. If you think you can sustain your daily charge rate and grow your business without adding more people, why aren't you doing that instead?

Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
I don't assume every candidate is desperate, but I do assume that they have an interest in working for us. I think we're agreed that by the time you got to doing any extended technical interview you'd have gone through a fair bit - the company would have seen CVs, the candidate would have done research. There would have been a shorter first interview where both sides could ask questions. At that point I'd hope that the candidate would know whether they were interested enough. I'm not saying they should be certain but it should be more than just an idle "what's this?" situation. If that wasn't the case then the right thing to do would probably be to talk a little more about what the candidate was looking for, what concerns they had and whether we could address them and what (other than money) might convince them that an extended interview was a good use of their time. If they couldn't be convinced then we could either talk about a shorter interview (either instead of or ahead of a longer one) or we'd have to accept that we'd not sold the opportunity to them and ask why we felt that was likely to change during a day together but couldn't be addressed in any other way. To be willing to hand over cash to someone to attend an interview I'd pretty much have to be convinced enough that I'd be willing to offer them a job without the interview. As for desperation - I don't think I've ever been or would ever be as desperate as you make out and this isn't a "random person off the street". If I was I'd hire a freelancer and still take my time over the long term hire. As for the price, no you get to make an offer, and I get to politely decline and look elsewhere. Both my experience of recruitment (both recent and long term) and standard practice in the industry says that that's working out just fine. It may be that there are specific local conditions where you are that mean otherwise but I can only comment on what I see in the UK. Out of interest, your bio says that these days you're largely management. Would you ever pay someone to come for an interview? Do you think you'd be able to sell it within your organisation?
- bane 13y ago
  > Out of interest, your bio says that these days you're largely management. Would you ever pay someone to come for an interview? Do you think you'd be able to sell it within your organisation? No, and I'd never try to do the practice that started the entire thread of getting somebody to work on my production code for free for a day either. It's probably illegal in both of our jurisdictions number one, opens you up to unbelievable liabilities number two if you don't hire the person (at least in the U.S.), and is just outright unethical. It keeps popping up here from time to time though and it makes me wonder about two things 1) What kind of people does HN attract that are in hiring positions? 2) What kind of abuse do engineers take for granted that they'd be willing to entertain the idea? > I think we're agreed that by the time you got to doing any extended technical interview you'd have gone through a fair bit - the company would have seen CVs, the candidate would have done research. There would have been a shorter first interview where both sides could ask questions. Personally, I've been very far along in interview processes before one side or the other decided to pull the plug. I've even been as far as starting to fill out initial employment paperwork before pulling out after finding out something about my future employer that hadn't been made clear to me during the earlier interview processes (in that case, I found out the people who I interviewed with were not going to be my supervisors. And after meeting him, I found him to be unsavory and that was that). I think we're probably talking about different subjects, I was referring to the rotten idea of grinding a day of slave labor out of candidates the OP brought up while it looks like you're focused on appropriate compensation for people's time during long interview processes. If I'm the one who got off track then I apologize.

collyw 13y ago

An interview is a two way process. The employer finds out about you, you find out bout the company. There are interviews where I thought my skillset was a complete mismatch, but got the job, and others where I got scared off by what appeared to be far too much enthusiasm for the company (seemed kind of false to me). I also realised I would be getting 8 days less holiday than I was on.