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Ask HN: Am I right to be angry about the interview process?

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Re: Ask HN: Am I right to be angry about the interview process?

#31

Post by fspear »

jfrisby wrote: post #21
fenwick67 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how companies / hiring managers always say they have trouble finding good candidates, and the people looking for jobs always say they are no jobs. It's probably an axiom of some sort.

It's a combination of two things: 1. We're bad at hiring, as an industry. We just aren't very good at identifying good candidates. 2. We're an industry where the average skill level is below the minimum threshold of competence for even low-level roles. I.E. there are lots of people looking for jobs, but most of them either couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag -- and identifying the good candidates is time c…

>1. We're bad at hiring, as an industry. We just aren't very good at identifying good candidates

How do we fix this? It seems that everyone who claims to be actively working to fix hiring in tech is only exacerbating the issue (see hacker rank, codility, etc).

Re: Ask HN: Am I right to be angry about the interview process?

#32

Post by fspear »

khedoros1 wrote: post #28
greyostrich wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a small company you never heard of. But yeah, probably something else. The rejection said based on my experience, answers, and resume. If so, it's disturbing that I had to do this challenge in order to get them to read my resume.

> If so, it's disturbing that I had to do this challenge in order to get them to read my resume. I'd read that more like "after considering all data points...". I'm sure they read your resume beforehand. Maybe the discussion on their hiring team was "Well, if he pulls out some magic in the coding challenge..." You never know. It's not helpful to be angry about it, although it's natural and understandable. It's not ev…

>Maybe the discussion on their hiring team was "Well, if he pulls out some magic in the coding challenge..."

This is an unreasonable expectation. If it gets to that point then it should be a no-hire, don't waste the candidates time.

Re: Ask HN: Am I right to be angry about the interview process?

#34

Post by flukus »

jackgolding wrote: post #30

Got three examples like this: First happened to me with Australian Department of Defence - invited to do online testing which took between 4 and 6 hours (4-6 online tests on computer theory, mathematics, logic, verbal deduction etc.) - never spoke to a person and was rejected within the week. I interviewed for an analyst position for an ASX20 company through a recruiter which involved giving a 30 minute presentation…

I was rejected for by one for not doing TDD because I checked in the new test and code in the same commit. I suspect some of it is part of their "we can't find any Australians to fill the role" 457 requirement.

Also, if a code test takes 7 hours (some take days) then they are limiting themselves to the already unemployed, so probably not paying well.

Re: Ask HN: Am I right to be angry about the interview process?

#35

Post by fspear »

paulcole wrote: post #5

>Am I right to be angry about the interview process? You have the right to be angry about it. But ask yourself if that anger is doing you any good? If not, why bother getting worked up? Are you in a position that allows you to decline interviews? Do you feel strongly that interviews should be conducted in a certain way? Feel free to turn down any that don't meet your requirements. But don't expect any company to acco…

>It's just the way it is.

And if we don't take a stand then it's going to be like that forever. We can't let companies continue to get away with this.

In the end they need devs more than we need them.

Re: Ask HN: Am I right to be angry about the interview process?

#36

Post by flukus »

danpalmer wrote: post #8

Was it definitely "auto rejection" or did a human read your code? I ask because we have a coding test that most people solve (that we invite to do it) but we reject most on code quality. The purpose might not have been to solve the task, but maybe to do it in a good way?

Why do you expect clean code from a code test? It's going to be thrown away anyway and there are time pressures.

Re: Ask HN: Am I right to be angry about the interview process?

#38

Post by bsvalley »

jfrisby wrote: post #21
fenwick67 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how companies / hiring managers always say they have trouble finding good candidates, and the people looking for jobs always say they are no jobs. It's probably an axiom of some sort.

It's a combination of two things: 1. We're bad at hiring, as an industry. We just aren't very good at identifying good candidates. 2. We're an industry where the average skill level is below the minimum threshold of competence for even low-level roles. I.E. there are lots of people looking for jobs, but most of them either couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag -- and identifying the good candidates is time c…

Exactly. I think companies are looking for great candidates and great candidates are looking for jobs. Problem is - Interviewers are screwing things up! big time!

One single person (an engineer of the hiring team, sometimes fresh out of college) is responsible for evaluating a candidate. That is extremely wrong. It's like a bottle neck, how can you evaluate a candidate in 45 minutes when you only have 1-2 years of experience working for the exact same employer on the same project? This just doesn't make any sense. Interviewers end up asking very specific details they've been exposed to, or they simply google for the "hardest XXX interview questions" an hour before the phone call. You, as a candidate, get judged and often eliminated based on something completely worthless. I bet you %50 of the rejected candidates would do the job better than their interviewers as soon as they would get up to speed at work.

Solution - They should create a new role in every engineering organizations and hire (or should I say - pick internally) extremely skilled software engineers who would interview candidates. That would be their full time job. Staying up to date with the latest technologies as well as learning how to evaluate a candidate properly. Right now it's completely random because interviewers aren't interviewers, they are resources allocated to projects and don't have time for that stuff. Crazy to see in 2017 that the actual hiring process is still at the very bottom of the priority list. I think it's the biggest problem in 2017.

Re: Ask HN: Am I right to be angry about the interview process?

#39

Post by greyostrich »

bcbrown wrote: post #18
greyostrich wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, I've been trying to find my first job of university. I wish I knew how to be competent enough. What do you look for?

If you're looking for a job, where do you live, and why don't you have your email in your profile? If you're in Seattle, send me an email; my email's in my profile.

I don't like associating the posts I make on this account with my name. I'm in NYC. I sent you an email, in case you're interested in finding out more about me.

Re: Ask HN: Am I right to be angry about the interview process?

#40

Post by flukus »

jfrisby wrote: post #21
fenwick67 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how companies / hiring managers always say they have trouble finding good candidates, and the people looking for jobs always say they are no jobs. It's probably an axiom of some sort.

It's a combination of two things: 1. We're bad at hiring, as an industry. We just aren't very good at identifying good candidates. 2. We're an industry where the average skill level is below the minimum threshold of competence for even low-level roles. I.E. there are lots of people looking for jobs, but most of them either couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag -- and identifying the good candidates is time c…

> I.E. there are lots of people looking for jobs, but most of them either couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag

I wonder if the average skill is that low (kind of) or if it seems that way because only the most desperate are willing to jump through the elaborate hoops we create for hiring.

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