71–80 of 116 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd rather wish for being open, honest and direct with the rejection then tolerant and polite. It saves a lot of time and emotional investment.
I'm sure it's not for no reason. Is it difficult to imagine a (particularly bad) candidate throwing a miniature temper tantrum if s/he knew that leaving before lunch was a rejection?
This happens?
I wish companies didn't think their interviews were some weird "secret sauce" -- I've had companies flat out refuse to tell me what the interview process would be like, or even how long I should expect for the interview beyond "1-4 hours". Well, you know 1 hour is a lot different than 4 hours! Personally I think all companies should be using pair-programming or contract to hire, as I think trivia questions and whiteb…
A long time ago I was interviewing with Facebook. They told me exactly what to expect from the process. I was actually shocked that they were giving away so much information. I studied for the interview and did very well in the first half, and then horribly the second half. Overall I enjoyed it because of how honest they were.
So that is what I'll do next time I want to interview at FB. Overall, I really enjoyed the process as an interviewee. I've been on both sides and I'm curious how well the other side is done at FB but I left with a good impression and thought the outcome was fair.
Also bonus points to them for asking real world questions. I was asked about making a web-based text editor and a couple months later, Draft.js came out.
If I could blacklist companies that do whiteboard interviews, for example, I'd do it. I'm not expecting most companies to show their hand, though, precisely because of how unpopular these practices have become.
> precisely because of how unpopular these practices have become. I've been interviewing for past 1 month and every single company made me do whiteboard, big O stuff past phonescreen. I think you are over estimating how much HN leaks into real world.
I don't doubt that at all, and I know whiteboarding is popular with interviewers. I'm talking about its popularity with interviewees.
Tokenadult isn't around to chime in here, so I'll take his place today. Hunter and Schmit did a meta-study of 70 years of research on hiring criteria. [1] There are three attributes you need to select for to identify performing employees in intellectual fields.
- General mental ability (Are they generally smart)
Use WAIS or if there are artifacts of GMA(Complex work they've done themselves) available use them as proxies.
- Work sample test. NOT HAZING! As close as possible to the actual work they'd be doing. Try to make it apples-to-apples comparison.
- Integrity (The first two won't matter if the candidate is a sociopath).
One of these companies should hire me to do data driven recruiting.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure it's not for no reason. Is it difficult to imagine a (particularly bad) candidate throwing a miniature temper tantrum if s/he knew that leaving before lunch was a rejection?
> candidate throwing a miniature temper tantrum This happens?
Company (and interviewer) decided not to bring charges so I assume he continues to interview at other places. There are non-zero number of unstable individuals who do not handle rejections or criticism well.
I wish companies didn't think their interviews were some weird "secret sauce" -- I've had companies flat out refuse to tell me what the interview process would be like, or even how long I should expect for the interview beyond "1-4 hours". Well, you know 1 hour is a lot different than 4 hours! Personally I think all companies should be using pair-programming or contract to hire, as I think trivia questions and whiteb…
"Trivia questions" are not useless. I've put out job ads only to receive hundreds of applications from all over the world, many not even in English or without even a word accompanying a CV. Of the "proper" applicants, I've then had to deal with dozens of candidates that claimed a competence they did not have. And guess what - that's a lot of effort and time which is taken away from the business. In my case, that's a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd rather wish for being open, honest and direct with the rejection then tolerant and polite. It saves a lot of time and emotional investment.
As an employer, I have found that if you honestly tell 10 people the reason that you did not hire them that a minimum of 3 people will have hostile reactions to you. I do agree that it would be a better way for all employees to give feedback to all candidates and for those candidates to handle the rejection in an emotionally mature way.
Assuming that you are like the other 90% or so of employers who treat employees and candidates exceptionally poorly (I'm not saying you are, just assuming for a second), then getting only a 30% rate of feedback calling you out on use of superficial, inconsistent, and (in some cases) borderline (or even blatantly) illegal reasons for rejecting a candidate doesn't sound so bad.
It suggests to me that candidates on the whole are more professional than companies, but companies can use certain bureaucratic policies and processes to make sure they effectively hide the unprofessionalism from ways in which it could come back to negatively affect them.
Before even that, I'd rather see salaries posted. Only a disappointingly small number of companies post salary information.
In my company, it's very rare that we'll have a need that's so specific that we could actually know the salary within $10k before we hire. It's far more common that we have openings for "Software Engineers", and we end up hiring one very junior, one very senior engineer, and some folks in between. Thus, from the same ad, compensation could range from $90k w/1,000 shares to $280k w/20,000 shares. And, frankly, saying…
And every rational person says "I don't negotiate against myself", right?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> precisely because of how unpopular these practices have become. I've been interviewing for past 1 month and every single company made me do whiteboard, big O stuff past phonescreen. I think you are over estimating how much HN leaks into real world.
>I've been interviewing for past 1 month and every single company made me do whiteboard, big O stuff past phonescreen. I don't doubt that at all, and I know whiteboarding is popular with interviewers. I'm talking about its popularity with interviewees.
I also understand why some people hate such interviews especially if the are not good at algo or do not like pressure of interviewing.
I wish companies didn't think their interviews were some weird "secret sauce" -- I've had companies flat out refuse to tell me what the interview process would be like, or even how long I should expect for the interview beyond "1-4 hours". Well, you know 1 hour is a lot different than 4 hours! Personally I think all companies should be using pair-programming or contract to hire, as I think trivia questions and whiteb…
A long time ago I was interviewing with Facebook. They told me exactly what to expect from the process. I was actually shocked that they were giving away so much information. I studied for the interview and did very well in the first half, and then horribly the second half. Overall I enjoyed it because of how honest they were.
After my interview (in which I felt I did very well), I did not hear anything back within the time frame they told me, and then many days afterwards I finally heard back.
They said they were not going to move forward with me, and also they specifically said they were sorry but they could not provide any feedback.
So I actually felt like for one of the most important parts (the feedback) they were actually not straightforward or honest with me. Had I known I could not have feedback, I would not have agreed to the interview in the first place.