Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

651–660 of 794 posts

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#651

Post by CogitoCogito »

ghaff wrote: post #178
Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture applies to more senior people than juniors. Completely agree here - like a fool I recently went through an entire day's worth interviews for a role (hello Stripe recruiters!!) that required both me and my wife taking PTO, with her looking after the kids while I talked to one junior dev after another abo…

As something of a counterpoint, a literal 4-hour assignment isn't that bad--especially as an alternative to a day of interviews. If they give you the assignment and it's immediately obvious that it's actually a 20+ hour assignment, you can always just walk. When I worked for a technology analyst company, we would ask for writing samples--which most potential hires would already have. But, if someone didn't, they'd ha…

> As something of a counterpoint, a literal 4-hour assignment isn't that bad--especially as an alternative to a day of interviews.

_The_ alternative is not a day of interviews. There are in fact, an innumerable number of alternatives. One alternative is to simply drop the assignment entirely from the interview process (without replacement) and judging by what's left.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#652

Post by grldd »

pharmakom wrote: post #639

To those who are against a take home assignment (fair enough) how should employers assess your skill set?

Employers should use their brains instead of copying other peoples homework. Because that's how we got this mess. Everybody copying the same interview practices.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#653

Post by nogenhat »

//- Resume screened by in-house recruiter//

The first step - usually recruiter filter about more then 50% of candidates who are more then enough for you.

//- Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's choosing// wow, that's a lot. Change that to AMA session, and rate candidate based on the answers.

Hire faster, fire faster.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#655

Post by Namari »

From my experience: 1. In House recruiter are just bad, they have no energy and you lose all motivation after you talk to them. 2. Put the salary range, when it's not written I don't even bother applying. 3. 4 hours assignment is long, people tend to not want to spend too much time on assignment as it could be a complete waste of time, you don't get paid and most already have a job and don't want to work another few hours for something that lead nowhere and that you may not ever receive a feedback.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#656

Post by turing_complete »

corrral wrote: post #21

> Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's choosing If I can get a similarly-paying job at a place that doesn't do this, I'll skip you. Many seniors ( actual seniors, not 3-years-of-experience seniors) have a network and can say "hey I'm looking" and instantly have multiple options that won't have them do more than talk to the team and manager for an hour or two. If that.

How do you structure the interview to make sure they are any good, though?

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#657

Post by Silhouette »

adastra22 wrote: post #637
Silhouette wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snarky responses in interview processes like quoting an hourly rate might seem attractive but I urge you to avoid them. The best case is probably that it immediately ends the process but you get a moment's satisfaction. However you could easily be seen as unprofessional and that damage to your reputation could come back to bite you later when you're applying for something you really do want. If someone is asking too…

Unprofessional? You are offering very bad advice. If your work is worth that much, don’t give it out for free to people who don’t recognize it. PS: my rate for 4 hours work is $2500. Companies HAVE taken me up on this rate. In fact I am currently declining work because I haven’t the time. Know your worth!

If you have been paid $2500 for a 4-hour tech test then I'm sure a lot of people reading this would like to know who paid it. Most employers certainly won't.

And I didn't say you should work for free. I said shooting back your hourly rate in response to a request for a tech test could easily be seen as unprofessional. If you don't want to do a tech test that's fine but you can just withdraw gracefully at the start of the process when you ask what their stages are and they tell you about the test.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#658

Post by endless1234 »

suzzer99 wrote: post #441
lelanthran wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As something of a counterpoint, a literal 4-hour assignment isn't that bad--especially as an alternative to a day of interviews. As a counter counterpoint, that only makes sense if the candidate is applying to a single place. If the candidate has lined up 4 interviews, they're not going to get 16 hours in the week to complete them. The fifth place that has no 4 hour interviews will get the candidate.

What sucks though is when companies say 4 hours but then give extra credit to projects that clearly took more than 4 hours. I did a take home project for Netflix that didn't have a time box IIRC - but something like "no more than a few hours". The task was to code a few movie poster carousels w/o using a web framework. Basically to create your own mini-higher level framework paradigm from vanilla JS or a low-level fr…

This is maybe overly cynical, but maybe they want people who say (to themselves, if nothing else) they did 10 hours of work in a few hours? Easy to keep people feeling inadequate and working overtime for free.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#659

Post by zasdffaa »

Please show us your original job ad, that may get useful feedback.

Some questions,,,

What's the salary and why won't you post it?

What is the work about, and why not state it here?

Why do people say they dislike the underlying platform?

Why are you so specifically needing senior talent?

How many people applied? How many did you turn down, and why? How many dropped out before you could hire or reject them (and how long did you make them wait)?

Edit: can you give an example of the kind of technical assignment you ask for.

Telling us these may get you a long way to an answer.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#660

Post by tiborsaas »

anon291 wrote: post #139
corrral wrote: post #21

> Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's choosing If I can get a similarly-paying job at a place that doesn't do this, I'll skip you. Many seniors ( actual seniors, not 3-years-of-experience seniors) have a network and can say "hey I'm looking" and instantly have multiple options that won't have them do more than talk to the team and manager for an hour or two. If that.

The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture applies to more senior people than juniors. I used to do these assignment. Now I simply don't sorry. My schedule is 6:30 AM wake up with youngest daughter, to let wife sleep in (she takes care of her all night) 9:00 AM hand off youngest daughter to wife, who takes both girls the rest of the day. I go to m…

Can't you just quit and enjoy some time not working? Then suddenly have 8 hours a day which fits the 4 hours of coding assignment.
Post reply on HN