Ask HN: Can the “Who is Hiring?” post include a bit about the interview process? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Can the “Who is Hiring?” post include a bit about the interview process?

#81

Post by burger_moon » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 5:09 PM UTC

salarynope wrote: post #56

JDiculous wrote: post #17

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…

Thank you I appreciate the explanation.

I have a question, are the job ads written in a way that would attract both a junior(I'm picturing 1yr out of college experience) developer and someone who is so experienced to justify a $300k comp package?

Without some clear distinction in the ad I'm having a hard time figuring out how it could appeal to people on both ends of the spectrum.

Re: Ask HN: Can the “Who is Hiring?” post include a bit about the interview process?

#82

Post by p4wnc6 » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 5:10 PM UTC

mooreds wrote: post #69

dexterdog wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they say 1-4 hours then 1 hour usually means you aren't getting the job. 3-4 hours means you are still in the running, but still probably won't get the job. I am with you on contract-to-hire. I get that companies are cautious because a bad hire can be tough to recover from, but the processes 99% of companies do are not conducive to good hires.

This. I hired a few times and rapidly learned not to promise the candidate a fixed amount of time. Why waste everyone's time doing more interviewing if the first interviewer finds out something that reveals the candidate is not a fit?

Because if they took the time to prepare for the interview and budget for an upper bound on the time range, then it is only professional and courteous of you to give them a full review.

If you reject them based on their performance during hour 1, and you don't even give them the chance to show you more about themselves during hours 2, 3, and 4, it sounds like (a) your hiring process is kind of dumb and you're way too focused on what you seem to think is hyper efficient time usage than on actually learning about a candidate, and (b) you come off as unprofessional.

It's a two-way street. Inviting someone in for a "1-4" hour block, then dismissing them after hour 1 makes it seem like you view it as if you're entitled to paw around the candidate like they are a cut of meat, assess them however you want, and not give them a fair chance to assess you.

Re: Ask HN: Can the “Who is Hiring?” post include a bit about the interview process?

#83

Post by nfriedly » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 5:31 PM UTC

spitfire wrote: post #74

Since this is appropriate to the (coming) subject, I'll post this here. 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…

Also worth mentioning: an IQ test as part of the interview process is basically illegal in the US.

Re: Ask HN: Can the “Who is Hiring?” post include a bit about the interview process?

#84

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

nfriedly wrote: post #83

spitfire wrote: post #74

Since this is appropriate to the (coming) subject, I'll post this here. 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…

Also worth mentioning: an IQ test as part of the interview process is basically illegal in the US.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Can the “Who is Hiring?” post include a bit about the interview process?

#85

Post by dominotw » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 5:43 PM UTC

smm2000 wrote: post #79

noarchy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 actually like whiteboarding interviews and treat them as intellectual challenge. The best ones are when I am thinking faster than interviewer or can come up with optimal solution that he does not know. A lot of fun. 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 also had a couple where 3 guys sat behind me and watched as I typed up an implementation of some card game puzzle solver.

Comically sad.

Re: Ask HN: Can the “Who is Hiring?” post include a bit about the interview process?

#86

Post by dang » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 5:44 PM UTC

delecti wrote: post #15

dang wrote: post #7

It's a good idea but I'm a bit worried about making those threads even more top-heavy than they already are by asking people to include even more info in their posts. It might also be hard to explain what we're asking submitters to do in a way that makes sense to everyone, especially the ones who don't post on HN except in those threads. We'll think about it. There's a couple days before the next thread. Edit: ok, I…

I think it's a pretty low bar to write an extra sentence or two about the interview process when they already a paragraph about how they're changing the world with their revolutionary JS framework.

I think that's an uncharitable way to describe the overwhelming majority of those posts. Let's get out of the habit of heaping snark on others in discussion threads. It feels amusing for a little while, but corrodes the qualities we most want here. Not a good trade.

Re: Ask HN: Can the “Who is Hiring?” post include a bit about the interview process?

#87

Post by afs35mm » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 5:49 PM UTC

llamataboot wrote: post #6

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…

Agreed. As someone in the interview process once again, and being a bit more introspective this time, it's just really amazing how BS the entire whiteboard/share-scree "code this out for me" is. It seems to be a better indicator of how many of type X problems you've seen before, and employers seem to care more about if you know how to do something cold vs work through a problem to an adequate solution.

Re: Ask HN: Can the “Who is Hiring?” post include a bit about the interview process?

#88

Post by alvaroma94 » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 5:53 PM UTC

hola

Re: Ask HN: Can the “Who is Hiring?” post include a bit about the interview process?

#89

Post by kafkaesq » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 7:28 PM UTC

A more helpful (accurate) description, for many startups, would probably go like this:

Interview process: one 4-hour take-home assignment (which may or may not be properly articulated, and which, in any case, there's a fairly good chance we may never respond to); 3 on-site whiteboarding sessions (the first conducted by someone whose first words to you are "man, I'm hungover!"; the second, by a pair of disinterested devs from another team, apparently shanghaied into covering for someone else, who take turns boredly rushing you through algorithm questions, while the other plays with his phone; and the third by the resident math genius who walks into the room well past the time they said you'd be done, says "Hey, got time for another?" and proceeds to grill you on a mis-stated graph search problem that ends up having a null solution class); and finally, a pair-programming session on some made up problem which you're required to use certain clearly unsuitable data structures to solve (resulting in clearly unusable performance in any real system) "because it's easier, and because I wanna see how you think. Look, just tell me what to type, OK?"

Only to be told 2 weeks later, when you timidly beg the HR contact for an "update", that you aren't a "culture fit."

Re: Ask HN: Can the “Who is Hiring?” post include a bit about the interview process?

#90

Post by x0x0 » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 7:37 PM UTC

marmaduke wrote: post #42

crdb wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Have "actual machine learning" experience, no idea what "high leverage" means.

Everyone learns different vocab depending on what discipline you learned about stats/ml. Leverage is a very standard stats term, but I've never seen it used in an ml context.