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I agree strongly this is the best way to interview a candidate. It's even relatively easy to set up for a new grad or junior candidate who isn't currently worki
by rcoder 12y ago
I agree strongly this is the best way to interview a candidate. It's even relatively easy to set up for a new grad or junior candidate who isn't currently working. They should of course also be local or have no family or professional commitments that make a week-long non-work trip difficult.
Sadly, many of the best engineers I've worked with do have families, are working, don't live in the same town, and would absolutely balk at the idea of taking a week away from all that to "try out" a new job.
Of course, there's a wide spectrum between "work together for a week" and "write some C++ on a whiteboard for 40 minutes" that gets dropped from most screening processes. That's the zone where I'm most interested in finding creative evaluation tools.
- fiachamp 12y agoWe've found a good middle ground. Giving the candidate a few days to do a test project that involves fixing a bug on the production site. Its something they can do at night after work, gets them resolving a real-life problem, seeing how fast they figure out the codebase.
- pkaye 12y agoReally good candidates will have multiple offers and given equal choices of companies, will choose those which make them not run through hoops.
- toomuchtodo 12y agoIn demand DevOps candidate here. I had multiple six figure offers from companies, and still picked the job that required a 4-6 hour project I completed over 2 weeks in the evenings (that I was paid for). Provide the right work environment and perks, and people will "jump through hoops" if they think its worth it.
- wernercd 12y agoThis. At the end of the day, what job/pay/perks do you want? If jobs require you to jump through some hoops, then they will be jumped through - within reason.
- pkaye 12y agoSo if two companies gave similar perks but one required you to jump through hoops, which one do you think a majority would consider?
- propelledjeans 12y agoThe job with the best team. Generally, the job where you have to jump through hoop will have a team who has jumped through those hoops as well. It's all about vetting.
- jghn 12y agoWhich is only meaningful if the vetting is for the sort of skills one actually uses day to day.
- ep103 12y agoI don't know, if a company asks me to complete a simple test application, I might be more inclined to talk with them, because it means my interview (ostensibly) would be about the code I'd submitted. Which in turn is much more like what a day in the life of a developer would be like at their company (I write code, review with team lead, repeat, or somesuch).
- kriro 12y agoI think really good candidates will enjoy working on relevant issues and not working on silly interview questions. If anything these "hoops" seem like exactly the filter you'd want. You want people who enjoy jumping through those hoops every day after all.
- mahyarm 12y agoThe key is to give this in liu of a 6 hour panel of interviews. So your project should be 4hrs max. And don't add in vague time waster 'bonus points' for doing more details.
- bvanslyke 12y agoKind of sounds like a sleazy way to get free labour. Unless these are made-up bugs or you are paying these candidates.
- gaius 12y agoFree consulting? No thanks. Paid gig? Well that'll make my taxes complicated. No thanks.
- mkramlich 12y agoit could be done evenings or weekends. i'd make it async/flextime as much as possible. the main point is to try a real project, however small, and pay the person, therefore it's real and fair for both parties. from my observation over a few decades, all other methods are noise and circuses and mysticism and propaganda in comparison. at least, I'm so done letting myself be the victim of other people's theories and guesses and unpaid meta makework.
- jghn 12y agoDon't forget, they might also have a non-compete which would be violated by such an arrangement regardless of timing/flexing