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For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

blog.hackerrank.com

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Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#191

Post by fapjacks »

busterarm wrote: post #29
bgribble wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I appreciate that this process has been great for you, I would think that it probably sucks for all the engineers and managers whose time you took up interviewing "for fun". Have you ever tried to hire engineers? It is a pain in the ass, and giving serious consideration to every candidate takes up a huge amount of time even before the interview, much less taking a significant chunk of a day for a significant ch…

You go into this process knowing that it consumes time and that not everything is going to pan out. If you had the data and processes to identify the perfect candidate, you wouldn't need to bring people in to interview. It's not waste, it's data collection. If you're not building usable data out of your interview process, your hiring process sucks. My team was interviewing candidates recently and we brought in a guy…

Here's really the meat of it (and well said!): I interview "for fun" because 1) I've always got my ear to the rail for a better opportunity, and 2) I love meeting cool, smart people working on awesome projects! I'm not a VC so this is my way of touring the technology industry and networking. The thought that I'm "wasting" someone's time I think is really strange.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#192

Post by lqdc13 »

mstrem wrote: post #119
lqdc13 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most applications are quizzes + resume. There is only one way of applying for it. I got turned down by over 100 companies before I even had an interview. The process is really random.

Right, I personally literally change my resume based on each application focusing on the experience which I think would be most relevant for each position. I also change the introduction sentence and when I respond to open ended questions (in the quizzes) I always refer back to the company and relevant examples. Cover letter, when requested, also takes me a lot of time to write up.

I did that too. Perhaps it's a skill of some sort.

The only thing that worked was making a site that went viral. Then I got like 20 unsolicited messages/requests for an interview.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#193

Post by fapjacks »

ryandrake wrote: post #183
fapjacks wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep! I have been interviewing for fun for the last few years (averaging maybe one or two interviews every few months), and I've seen all kinds of stuff. Way too many whiteboards. In fact, even after all these years, whiteboards still make me nervous, and basically makes it impossible to get into flow, or have a reasonably nice mindset for solving problems. And if I do this for fun, you can bet that people who depend…

I love the idea of interviewing for practice, and would do it myself, but I only have 10 vacation days a year to blow. How do you manage it? Pretend to be sick? (naughty, naughty)

Most companies are pretty flexible about interviewing you if you ask, and also my work hours are flexible where I'm at, in addition to my already being able to work from anywhere at least some of the time (in fact this is near the top of the list of non-negotiable things I look for in a job). I can work around an interview pretty easily, especially because I'm already nearby. I have only had to take vacation to interview one or two times. All the other times I just make it work. But to address your question, I do in fact sometimes "pretend to be sick", because someone very wise once taught me as a young programmer to take "blue flu" days away from the office to help maintain a good work-life balance. I think this alone has been instrumental in preventing burn-out, because I am also at times the kind of person to work hard without any kind of break, which I think can be detrimental. When I mentor, I try to pass this along. You should take blue flu days, too!

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#194

Post by tsax »

vonmoltke wrote: post #67
dsmithatx wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't really make any changes and I'm still using the same resume 14 years later. At the time it had 10 years of job history. Obviously now it has 24 years but, my experience level is the same and I'm still basically working with the same technologies. I haven't looked for a job in one year and my resume/profile is posted no where online. I get about 30-40 emails per week and 5-10 phone calls because I put out the…

This is highly location-dependent. I get a fraction of your volume even when posting mine on careers sites and constantly tweaking my LinkedIn profile. Of course, I'm in Dallas and wee seem to be invisible to most of the tech world.

Just wanted to say - cool handle! World War 1 history fan?

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#195

Post by p4wnc6 »

yeukhon wrote: post #161
p4wnc6 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the candidates look like garbage, why are you screening them? You can't always tell. You begin part of the process, then the company says how great their Agile teams are, or how "collaborative" their open-plan surveillance workspace is, or they invite you to do a HackerRank test, and only now do you know the company is shit and you pass. It's the same problem you face with the 60-80% unqualified applicants. I get…

Most people don't get to choose who to interview. Your manager or your recruiter does not have enough data to eliminate the 60% unfit. But the first 40% are already eliminated because those candidates did not pass even the first phone interview with a recruiter (think Google hiring process).

My point is that candidates face that exact same problem when trying to weed out bad employers. That's why good developers reject the employers who try to use commodity tests like HackerRank. We do it for the same reason that the employer wants to use the commodity tests to weed out bad candidates. But somehow the employers don't understand they are just signalling how bad they are (apart from a very rare few companies).

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#196

Post by manyxcxi »

beebs93 wrote: post #120
hijinks wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rejection is just a part of life.. I was really scared of rejection till one day I just gave in and told myself that, I'll never get anywhere playing the safe hand. My advice is go on interviews you don't even care about in hopes to get rejected. Some places might tell you to leave like half way through an interview which is awkward, but most will shoot you an email or you just never hear from them. Once you get a fe…

> My advice is go on interviews you don't even care about in hopes to get rejected. This was an immense help when I recently decided to switch companies. I applied to places I didn't really want to work at so that I could either: 1. Get rejected and get used to hearing/reading those words while not taking it personally. 2. Work on my negotiation skills if I actually got an offer. Either way it was a win-win for me in…

I've recommended this to everyone I've mentored, even when I was their boss. Interviewing is a skill that can be honed. Some people are naturally better than others, but most people can at least get comfortable.

Up until recently I would take two or three interviews a year at minimum just to see what people were asking about, how they asked, and just to stay comfortable with the process.

Worst case scenario, they say no, and you might get a hint as to why. So now you have an idea of something you can improve on.

Best case scenario you wind up interested in a new company, get a raise, and learn something new.

Either way, it's time you're spending to improve your career- and it is likely more monetarily valuable than the same amount of time you would have spent writing code.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#197

Post by accidc »

There have been a few articles on the hiring/interviewing practices. As someone who has not worked/interviewed in a startup, I have a few rhetorical yet sincere questions:

Does every startup implement their own algorithms etc. from scratch. Isn't it the reason why we have libraries? I thought most software was mostly glue/crud.

Do engineers at startup only code? Do they never talk to customers or need to clarify requirements or work on timelines or deal with scope creep, since it seems that these skills aren't evaluated at interviews.

If the answer to these questions is what I think it should be, to what end do we have this dog and pony show?

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#198

Post by p4wnc6 »

frcknfrckn wrote: post #125
gingerrr wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a coding test as the initial barrier to even a phone screen is what I have a severe problem with. I think coding tests absolutely have their place - after a 30m high-level skillcheck over the phone, let's ask for a brief 30-45m timed code challenge to rule out the applicants who were effective enough bullshitters to clear the phone screen. But I too have seen this trend that GP calls out re: "auditions" to even…

But look at it from the company's point of view - why would they invest time in a 30-minute skill check interview for every applicant if they can just as easily run the code challenge up front and eliminate a large proportion of the unsuitable applicants?

The problem is that you can't "just as easily" run the code test. The code test is unreliable -- bad developers who overfit their knowledge to trivia make it through. The code test also causes the really good developers to simply reject you, so you don't even get a chance to hire them, or even find out who they are.

You're basically saying you want to lop off the bottom 60% of an imagined Normal distribution. Except you're really only lopping off some of the bottom 60%, and some fraction of that bottom 60% gets through, and you're paying the cost of also lopping off the top 5% who think you're a joke of an employer for being way too worried about the costs for you to more substantively evaluate those bottom 60% folks -- especially since you, as an employer, are probably in the bottom 60% of employers anyway, yet are cargo culting to try to act like you only hire the top 0.000001% or something.

You get what you pay for. If you go cheap on candidate evaluation (e.g. lazy commodity HackerRank), you get the McDonald's version of a developer, all while acting like you're being extremely selective.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#199

Post by TranquilMarmot »

santaclaus wrote: post #56
exabrial wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My answer to #2: Being from the midwest, doing interviews in silicon valley was like stepping into Charlie's Chocolate Factory at a few places in LA and SF. It made me smile to see people using their freedom to do whatever they wanted, but I really felt like -I- was being judged: you know for not wearing skinning jeans, feeling comfortable in my (literal) boots, being clean shaven, dressed in a long sleeve, and of co…

I thought the common stereotype is that most 'hipsters' are from the midwest? Go to any gentrifying neighborhood on the east or west coast and a common refrain is 'go back to Ohio!'.

That's so funny- I've been living on the west coast for around 6 years now, and I originally hail from Ohio (but mostly Colorado).

But, I'm decidedly not a hipster; no flannel, no beard, no skinny jeans, no boots, the sides of my head aren't shaved. I always had the impression that the hipsters were native to the west coast and it's always felt like I'm encroaching on their territory.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#200

Post by TranquilMarmot »

karterk wrote: post #177

> You don’t get to use to your own IDE, you have an absurdly limited amount of time and you’re in an incredibly high-pressure environment. Ironically, HackerRank itself is a part of this problem. All of those are true for HackerRank coding challenges. As another commenter has pointed out here, HackerRank (and other coding test platforms) want to commoditize the hiring process, but in a way that ensures that candidate…

My favorite interviews have been ones that started with the company giving me a choice between a few small programming projects. They usually let you do it in your own time, over a week or so. When you turn it in, they can see how cleanly you write code, how careful you are about edge cases, whether or not you write unit tests, etc. etc.

Of course, then they call you in to their office and...... give you a whiteboard interview that lasts 5 hours.

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