Quiz != Interview
For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
211–220 of 306 posts
Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
#212Rejection massively reduces IQ http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2051
Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
#213The current state of the hiring process in tech companies has really affected me. I'm, by nature, a very shy person who doesn't deal with rejection very well. Because of this, I tend to apply at jobs where my hiring is a slam-dunk because it's so routine and easily within my skill-set. It results in jobs that aren't particularly fulfilling but gives me plenty of time to work on technology I'm interested in my spare t…
What are you more afraid of? Rejection from a company you never have to talk to again OR your family being unhappy as a result of you 1) being unhappy with your job 2) feeling like you aren't doing as much as you can or should.
This might just be something you have to confront. But I think constantly confronting your fears is healthy, even if it's difficult and stressful.
It sounds like you're genuinely enthusiastic about engineering and computer science. I think talking about your side projects (deep learning, blockchain, etc) will show this very effectively. Actually, having side projects to talk about is sort of like a secret weapon at job interviews. You'll find if you learn how to talk about these your interviews will go really well, so long as you can do a somewhat above average job on the technical questions (which can happen with practice and luck).
That being said, I can't give much help on being shy as I've never really dealt with that. I did used to be kind of.... not the best with social situations, and I found that by being chatty and going out of your way to meet people randomly, you end up getting good at it pretty quickly. Of course I sucked at this at first, but I had a friend who was extremely chatty and whenever we hanged out in public he would always be talking to random people. By joining in I sorta got the hang of it, and that helped a lot.
Also never be afraid of being silly. Making mistakes can make people feel more comfortable around you because they stop worrying about keeping up their own image of being a normal human being (what does normal even mean?). That works more for meeting people and MUCH LESS in job interviews, but meeting people will make you less shy, which in turn can help with interviews.
Don't fall into the trap of believing you can't change yourself. Simply by acknowledging what you'd like to change about yourself, you've already begun the first step. I think you already know you need to do something. Hopefully this is the impetus. I've seen friends totally change personalities and go from being shy to confident, or silly to mature. You can overcome your fear of rejection. Just get rejected a lot so that it becomes a trivial thing you can laugh at.
Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
#214I celebrate my failures
Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Gonna have to disagree on that one. If some fraction of that bottom 60% gets through, that's perfectly fine - this is only the first step after all, and there are real interviews still to come.
And if this mystical top 5% can't spare the ten minutes to run through what is essentially an interviewing captcha - for a job they were obviously interested in enough to apply for in the first place - then how do I know they won't consider themselves too good to do their actual work if I do end up hiring then? I'm happy to hire the next 5% down the list of it means they have a good attitude and a willingness to do their job.
And what's the alternative? I waste my team's time setting up screening phone interviews for every halfway decent resume that comes down the pipe? With the number of applications that we get, we'd be losing days of time every time we look to hire, before we even got to the actual interviewing.
Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 compani…
Don't be so quick to speak for all developers. Most good developers I've encountered are willing to put some effort in to find the right job.
Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, if someone fresh out of college who has time to spend lot of time on the sample interview questions he/she is better than someone with experience/expertise in a particular area? Sure if the experienced person spends enough time practicing, can ace the interview as well. But he/she would rather spend time on interesting stuff than say, how to print a tree spirally and hundreds of other silly questions out there :)
Who said anything about grading results or comparing applicants? This should be a screening test, nothing more. Pass/fail. Any decent developer should be able to knock out decent responses to simple problems in very little time with no prep. The goal is simply to eliminate the ones who can't even do that.
Do you think printing a matrix in spiral order is a simple problem. If an experienced person who spent 10 yrs on file systems didn't get that in a 30mts period, would you eliminate him/her? And oh btw, you are supposed to talk through your thinking process as well in that 30 mts... while youre at it, don't forget that semicolons :)
Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
#218The current state of the hiring process in tech companies has really affected me. I'm, by nature, a very shy person who doesn't deal with rejection very well. Because of this, I tend to apply at jobs where my hiring is a slam-dunk because it's so routine and easily within my skill-set. It results in jobs that aren't particularly fulfilling but gives me plenty of time to work on technology I'm interested in my spare t…
This is essentially an anxiety issue. It's definitely possible to hack anxiety - it might be a good idea to see a psychologist/psychiatrist to help figure out how, cause that's essentially what they do.
And if CBT doesn't work there's always beta-blockers, heh.
Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
#219The current state of the hiring process in tech companies has really affected me. I'm, by nature, a very shy person who doesn't deal with rejection very well. Because of this, I tend to apply at jobs where my hiring is a slam-dunk because it's so routine and easily within my skill-set. It results in jobs that aren't particularly fulfilling but gives me plenty of time to work on technology I'm interested in my spare t…
This is essentially an anxiety issue. It's definitely possible to hack anxiety - it might be a good idea to see a psychologist/psychiatrist to help figure out how, cause that's essentially what they do. And if CBT doesn't work there's always beta-blockers, heh.
It is not an anxiety issue. Interviews are structured ridiculously, most being the equivalent of a dick wagging contest or a beauty pageant. Companies are falling over themselves not to hire the best talent, but just the youngest people who can recite the algorithm to find a subtree in a tree.
Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who said anything about grading results or comparing applicants? This should be a screening test, nothing more. Pass/fail. Any decent developer should be able to knock out decent responses to simple problems in very little time with no prep. The goal is simply to eliminate the ones who can't even do that.
Do you think printing a matrix in spiral order is a simple problem. If an experienced person who spent 10 yrs on file systems didn't get that in a 30mts period, would you eliminate him/her? And oh btw, you are supposed to talk through your thinking process as well in that 30 mts... while youre at it, don't forget that semicolons :)
Are you thinking of white board problems? Because that is not at all what I'm talking about here.