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Show HN: Anonymous interview evals of strong software/ML engineering candidates

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Show HN: Anonymous interview evals of strong software/ML engineering candidates

#1

Post by ngptprad »

We are a recruiting startup with a small twist. We represent engineering candidates who receive a recommendation through our personalized vetting process, which includes a technical interview with an unbiased third-party senior engineer. We match the candidates with interviewers based on their background and the roles they are looking for. We pay for the senior engineer's time to interview so that the feedback is completely unbiased.

These interviews are unique in that they are not set up to test if a candidate is a fit for a pre-set role, but instead they are personalized to extract each candidate's strengths and the roles in which they'd excel.

The senior engineers who interview for us have collectively interviewed 1000s of candidates and have built and led engineering teams at top tier startups and bigger companies (e.g., Google, Facebook, Uber, etc.).

Here are the two evals Candidate1: https://goo.gl/U4jPR7 Candidate2: https://goo.gl/VXMXRF

We'd love feedback on the two candidates and our interviewers' evaluations of them. - Does the feedback give you a good sense of the candidate's strengths and the environments they'll do well in? - Would this save time in your evaluation process because the candidate has already been recommended after a technical interview? - Do you want to interview this candidate for your own team? Why or why not?

If interested in these candidates or other vetted candidates with full evaluations and interviewer identity, please feel free to reach out to ngptprad@gmail.com

Re: Show HN: Anonymous interview evals of strong software/ML engineering candidates

#3

Post by ngptprad »

sna1l wrote: post #2

I think providing more information on the questions for Candidate 2 would be pretty helpful. The description is really vague as "easy" and "hard" could mean different things to different people.

That makes sense. Will reach out to the interviewer to get a more detailed feedback. We also share the full code + questions as part of the full evaluation. Would you be interested in interviewing the candidate as a function of this evaluation? Is the interviewer identity important?

Re: Show HN: Anonymous interview evals of strong software/ML engineering candidates

#5

Post by sna1l »

ngptprad wrote: post #3
sna1l wrote: post #2

I think providing more information on the questions for Candidate 2 would be pretty helpful. The description is really vague as "easy" and "hard" could mean different things to different people.

That makes sense. Will reach out to the interviewer to get a more detailed feedback. We also share the full code + questions as part of the full evaluation. Would you be interested in interviewing the candidate as a function of this evaluation? Is the interviewer identity important?

If a recording of the interview could be provided I think that would be best.

I think gathering enough trust where people start accepting these dossiers as fact will take a long time unfortunately. But if you have a recording of the interview, I would be able to say a lot more definitively whether I liked the candidate or not. And as my opinions aligned with your dossiers, I'd trust your opinions more.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous interview evals of strong software/ML engineering candidates

#7

Post by sokoloff »

I would move the interviewer profile to the end (sort of an "appendix" to the document). Yes, it's important context for some, but it's not about the candidate and putting that near the top interrupted my flow of understanding. (I confess that I was a little bit skimming, but I couldn't figure out how a VP/C-level person was being recommended for a junior IC role at first.)

Re: Show HN: Anonymous interview evals of strong software/ML engineering candidates

#8

Post by knrz »

sna1l wrote: post #5
ngptprad wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes sense. Will reach out to the interviewer to get a more detailed feedback. We also share the full code + questions as part of the full evaluation. Would you be interested in interviewing the candidate as a function of this evaluation? Is the interviewer identity important?

If a recording of the interview could be provided I think that would be best. I think gathering enough trust where people start accepting these dossiers as fact will take a long time unfortunately. But if you have a recording of the interview, I would be able to say a lot more definitively whether I liked the candidate or not. And as my opinions aligned with your dossiers, I'd trust your opinions more.

I second this! But also because an audio recording is more personal information to go off of.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous interview evals of strong software/ML engineering candidates

#10

Post by drfuchs »

The interviewer for candidate 1 isn't very technically proficient. In the "if the array was too big to fit in memory" case (where "disk" is explicitly mentioned), the proposed solution starts by moving the disk head from track 1 to track N, then back to track 2, then track N-1, 3, N-2, etc., oscillating until it stops at track N/2. That takes a grand total of O(N^2) seek time. The correct solution is to do one sequential pass over the file to count the a's and b's, and then a second pass to write the proper number of a's followed by b's, which takes O(N) total head-movement time (which dominates everything else).
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