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Train before you hire

blog.codelesson.com

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Re: Train before you hire

#21

Post by listrophy »

listrophy wrote: post #18
ktsmith wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we don't hire you, we pay you as a contractor for your time. If we do hire you, we pay you either as an employee or contractor for your time (depending on what our accountant says). If you are in the U.S. I hope you've had this hiring process reviewed by your legal counsel. Given the brief description above you are quite possibly violating several federal employment laws in addition to IRS rules on what constitu…

Unless you're a lawyer providing counsel, I'm quite certain we're solid. That's not to say I'm right... I'm just fairly confident. We send out the necessary W-9s and everything. Effectively, our candidates are freelancers until we hire them... and we pay our freelancers according to IRS rules.

@ktsmith: I wasn't trying to imply that you were providing legal counsel. In addition, we don't change our policy on the whim of our accountant/lawyer... I just don't recall the proper protocol.

With a moment of clarity, I do recall our employees having to go through the W-9 process. In addition, not all work was "under the company umbrella." For example, if a candidate paired with an employee during a users group hack night, that was taken into consideration. Like I said, rules are made to be bent.

Re: Train before you hire

#22

Post by ktsmith »

listrophy wrote: post #21
listrophy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're a lawyer providing counsel, I'm quite certain we're solid. That's not to say I'm right... I'm just fairly confident. We send out the necessary W-9s and everything. Effectively, our candidates are freelancers until we hire them... and we pay our freelancers according to IRS rules.

@ktsmith: I wasn't trying to imply that you were providing legal counsel. In addition, we don't change our policy on the whim of our accountant/lawyer... I just don't recall the proper protocol. With a moment of clarity, I do recall our employees having to go through the W-9 process. In addition, not all work was "under the company umbrella." For example, if a candidate paired with an employee during a users group ha…

The W-9 process is only a portion of what you have to make sure is right when hiring contractors. For example here's a short bit of what the IRS says about it: http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=173423,00.html They include links to the more formal rules for that aspect of things on the page. I've been burned by this personally and hence mentioned the rules for employees vs contractors. Though I certainly should have provided the link in my first comment.

As to other hiring practices your comment on pay specifically raised a red flag with me if for no other reason than if you paid someone for work as an employee you'd be back dating their date of hire (as far as the government is concerned). My day job is with a company specializing in a very tiny portion of the hiring process and we see large and small companies screw it up every day. The M-247 Handbook for Employers is nearly 70 pages about how to fill out nothing more than the Federal I-9 Form. Screwing up that process can generate civil and criminal liability at the federal level. Then if you are in a state that has additional restrictions (Colorado and more coming soon) you could be incurring even more liability. Have federal contracts and get this process wrong? Potentially kiss them goodbye thanks to the FAR clause.

M-274 Handbook for Employers: http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/m-274.pdf

There are a lot of potential pitfalls employers face and it's unfortunate that the government does a pretty poor job of making it clear what the employers responsibilities are as well as consistently enforcing the rules that are on the books.

I want to be clear, I'm not trying to be argumentative or anything like that. Based solely on your initial comment I would be concerned about your hiring practice and make sure your counsel doesn't see anything wrong with it. If you are bringing in 100% of the people for a trial basis as contractors and meet the IRS rules you may have nothing to worry about. If you bring one person on under that methodology described (as a backdated employee) you could have some liability sitting in your employee records that you can't fix.

Re: Train before you hire

#23

Post by jim_h »

Before I was hired for my current company, I given a quick tutorial on the programming language (used in company) and had a quiz afterward. It's a great way to see how fast someone can learn and see them apply that knowledge. It was a great opportunity for me was well since it allowed me to show I had potential.

Re: Train before you hire

#24

Post by ktsmith »

Mc_Big_G wrote: post #19
bartonfink wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, and I'm not saying this doesn't work, but doesn't that basically imply you only hire those who are already unemployed?

Employed people would probably take a week of vacation unless they have FU money.

It'd have to be a dream job for me to take a week of vacation time to do a trial run with another company but then I'm married and have a kid so time off is very important to me.

The other issue for the employed in that scenario is that their employment contracts may prohibit moonlighting/contracting or have a non compete that would interfere with the trail/interview process.

Re: Train before you hire

#25

Post by Kaizyn »

me2i81 wrote: post #17
ebiester wrote: post #10

IIRC, this is how AOL used to work. Everyone started in the call center. After 6 months, you could start working your way up, and many people went into QA and programming from there.

Nothing attracts top-notch engineering talent like the lure of working in the call center.

I don't know. Google puts some of the most brilliant programming minds to work selling ads and I haven't heard much in the way of complaints.

Re: Train before you hire

#26

Post by tomjen3 »

listrophy wrote: post #14
imack wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't that limit you to potential employees who aren't currently employed? And what percentage of people do you "drop"? I imagine once you spend a week with someone you might get attached to them enough that it would be hard to let them go for something subjective unless they were a pretty big asshole.

We're pretty young, so we haven't had too many candidates get to the interview phase... we've "dropped" one out of 5 candidates. You have to impress us to get to the point of spending a week with us. As far as the "unemployed" part goes, things aren't usually as cut-and-dried as that. Of those five, one was on the verge of being laid off, and one was a student. The other three were gainfully employed. Being open to w…

The problem with your approach is that it only works if you can communicate that you are a company worth doing a lot extra work to get hired at.

The approach may work for you, but most companies seem to have the idea that they are special, when they really aren't - and frankly most people wouldn't accept your requirements unless they where truly desperate so you will likely have to change your approach as you grow.

Re: Train before you hire

#27

Post by khafra »

tomjen3 wrote: post #26
listrophy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're pretty young, so we haven't had too many candidates get to the interview phase... we've "dropped" one out of 5 candidates. You have to impress us to get to the point of spending a week with us. As far as the "unemployed" part goes, things aren't usually as cut-and-dried as that. Of those five, one was on the verge of being laid off, and one was a student. The other three were gainfully employed. Being open to w…

The problem with your approach is that it only works if you can communicate that you are a company worth doing a lot extra work to get hired at. The approach may work for you, but most companies seem to have the idea that they are special, when they really aren't - and frankly most people wouldn't accept your requirements unless they where truly desperate so you will likely have to change your approach as you grow.

Speaking as an employee of $bigcorp, I like the idea of a short period of fairly-compensated work before committing for the long-term. Like going on a vacation with a romantic interest before moving in together, or something. If you go to work for the USG, your probationary period is the first year, which seems unnecessarily long; a week seems just right.

Re: Train before you hire

#28

Post by ebiester »

me2i81 wrote: post #17
ebiester wrote: post #10

IIRC, this is how AOL used to work. Everyone started in the call center. After 6 months, you could start working your way up, and many people went into QA and programming from there.

Nothing attracts top-notch engineering talent like the lure of working in the call center.

Think of it as pre-engineering raw talent. Often, people worked these jobs while going to college, or were recognized as talent while they were there and bumped first into QA.

Of course, many of us instead realized we hated call centers and found part time sysadmin jobs. :)

Re: Train before you hire

#29

Post by jeffreymcmanus »

khafra wrote: post #27
tomjen3 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with your approach is that it only works if you can communicate that you are a company worth doing a lot extra work to get hired at. The approach may work for you, but most companies seem to have the idea that they are special, when they really aren't - and frankly most people wouldn't accept your requirements unless they where truly desperate so you will likely have to change your approach as you grow.

Speaking as an employee of $bigcorp, I like the idea of a short period of fairly-compensated work before committing for the long-term. Like going on a vacation with a romantic interest before moving in together, or something. If you go to work for the USG, your probationary period is the first year, which seems unnecessarily long; a week seems just right.

The notion of a probationary period is largely mythological for places where employment is at-will (which is most jobs in technology in the U.S.). Since at-will employment means you can mostly be terminated for any reason at any time, every day you go to work is really part of your probationary period. There's no concept of a "long-term commitment" and your status as an employee doesn't materially change after whatever "probationary period" the employer might extend to you.
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