Interviews are Broken
erniemiller.org
Interviews are Broken
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Re: Interviews are Broken
#2Yes. I have a new rule with recruiters. If you are trying to recruit me, make me an offer. Otherwise, go away. You called me, not the other way around. I'm not going to jump through a bunch of your hoops to prove to you for free that I can do what you already know that I can do just by looking at my resume, looking at some of my public projects, and asking me questions in an informal, short interview. And I'm certainly not going to do that knowing that, even after the end of an extremely long and taxing process, you can still refuse to offer me a job.
What I've done should be proof enough. I don't want to jump through a bunch of arbitrary hoops so that I can get an incrementally higher paying job (maybe) and devote my life to working on someone else's vision. Gee, can I?
I already have a job, and it might be different if I didn't. But maybe not.
Re: Interviews are Broken
#3"If a company isn't making efforts to recognize you as an individual during the interview process, an accepted offer letter isn't going to promote you to personhood."
This is a great point. I've noticed that culture tends to be pervasive. The good experiences I've had with companies started from first contact. So have the bad experiences.
Re: Interviews are Broken
#4Yes. I have a new rule with recruiters. If you are trying to recruit me, make me an offer. Otherwise, go away. You called me, not the other way around. I'm not going to jump through a bunch of your hoops to prove to you for free that I can do what you already know that I can do just by looking at my resume, looking at some of my public projects, and asking me questions in an informal, short interview. And I'm certain…
What I've done should be proof enough.
It really isn't. It may be indicative of your technical ability however your past experience doesn't give me any indication if you'd be a good culture fit.
Re: Interviews are Broken
#5Yes. I have a new rule with recruiters. If you are trying to recruit me, make me an offer. Otherwise, go away. You called me, not the other way around. I'm not going to jump through a bunch of your hoops to prove to you for free that I can do what you already know that I can do just by looking at my resume, looking at some of my public projects, and asking me questions in an informal, short interview. And I'm certain…
What I've done should be proof enough. It really isn't. It may be indicative of your technical ability however your past experience doesn't give me any indication if you'd be a good culture fit.
Do you need another 5 hours of coding to prove that I'd be a good culture fit, or would a 30 minute - 1 hour interview and the high recommendation of my references suffice?
Re: Interviews are Broken
#6I've been in this game for a while now and the breakdown is pretty simple. If you are an employer, I implore you to trust me on these two simple points:
1. Finding decent people that are both technically competent and a good culture fit is bloody tough and can take a lot longer than you'd ever expect.
2. Interviewing/screening these people is simple. Don't make it more difficult than it needs to be.
You've done the hard part and you're confident the person/people you've found are worth at least a couple of hours of your time for an interview so why waste that time by applying a boilerplate interview process that every other company uses?
Give the candidate a realistic technical challenge to complete in a realistic timeframe, in an environment that will be indicative of the environment they would expect to work in should they succeed in getting the job.
If you're happy with the technical results, spend at least an hour with them having an actual conversation. Don't sit there throwing stock interview questions at them, don't try and nitpick on their CV. Just talk to them. Get a feel for their personality, the things that motivate them, the things that annoy them, the things that inspire them, etc.
Re: Interviews are Broken
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I've done should be proof enough. It really isn't. It may be indicative of your technical ability however your past experience doesn't give me any indication if you'd be a good culture fit.
Do you need another 5 hours of coding to prove that I'd be a good culture fit, or would a 30 minute - 1 hour interview and the high recommendation of my references suffice?
An hour in a relatively relaxed environment over a cup of coffee is more than enough for me to work out if you would get along with our team, work well with your potential new boss, actually enjoy working for us or not and whether or not you are likely to stay loyal to our company.
Re: Interviews are Broken
#8Yes. I have a new rule with recruiters. If you are trying to recruit me, make me an offer. Otherwise, go away. You called me, not the other way around. I'm not going to jump through a bunch of your hoops to prove to you for free that I can do what you already know that I can do just by looking at my resume, looking at some of my public projects, and asking me questions in an informal, short interview. And I'm certain…
What I've done should be proof enough. It really isn't. It may be indicative of your technical ability however your past experience doesn't give me any indication if you'd be a good culture fit.
>"...good culture fit."
What does that mean, how is it determined via an interview and how is it weighted against all the other factors that make up a good hire?
Re: Interviews are Broken
#9Peroni writes in his top-level comment, "Give the candidate a realistic technical challenge to complete in a realistic timeframe, in an environment that will be indicative of the environment they would expect to work in should they succeed in getting the job." And of course that is saying "Give the candidate a work-sample test." That's a very well validated hiring procedure,[1] one that every company ought to use for essentially every job. In most parts of the world, you can add incremental validity to the hiring process by also testing the job candidate's general cognitive ability (a.k.a. IQ). In the United States, you have to take careful legal steps to be able to add a general cognitive ability test to your hiring process, but you would have to take the SAME legal steps to make a diploma or degree a requirement for hiring (a little known fact about the key Supreme Court case on the issue). Anything else you do in hiring has less impact on gaining successful workers than work-sample tests and general cognitive ability tests.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5227923 (this earlier Hacker News comment gives full references for the statements in this comment)
Re: Interviews are Broken
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I've done should be proof enough. It really isn't. It may be indicative of your technical ability however your past experience doesn't give me any indication if you'd be a good culture fit.
>"...good culture fit." What does that mean, how is it determined via an interview and how is it weighted against all the other factors that make up a good hire?
Granted it's a bit vague. See my response here for a more detailed explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6417834