Interviews are Broken • Hacker News Board

Re: Interviews are Broken

#31

Post by ay2zed » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 4:20 PM UTC

emiller829 wrote: post #27

balloot wrote: post #16

This person sounds completely insufferable. He basically is declaring himself too good for interviews (except for C-level execs, whom he apparently tolerates). Heaven forbid you don't just assume Ernie Miller is god's gift to your job position, because he is Ernie Miller and he is a special unique snowflake who is not to be insulted with petty questions pertaining to his ability to do the job. Anyway, good luck with…

Did you actually read the article, or just the big, bold letters? The point wasn't that I am special. It's that each person is an individual, and a company that doesn't recognize that situations differ and make reasonable accommodations is unlikely to be a company at which I (or many like me, if the comments are any indicator) would enjoy working.

"Did you actually read the article, or just the big, bold letters?"

FYI, responses like this serve only to confirm the initial impression that you're insufferable.

Re: Interviews are Broken

#32

Post by JoeAltmaier » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 4:33 PM UTC

balloot wrote: post #16

This person sounds completely insufferable. He basically is declaring himself too good for interviews (except for C-level execs, whom he apparently tolerates). Heaven forbid you don't just assume Ernie Miller is god's gift to your job position, because he is Ernie Miller and he is a special unique snowflake who is not to be insulted with petty questions pertaining to his ability to do the job. Anyway, good luck with…

I got a different impression. The interview process isn't anything but a crude filter, and its wasting everyones time. Ernie's, AND the interviewer. Its hard to tell if someone is a fit, without actually working with them.

The article was peevish, but I identify with the author's viewpoint. I suggest they interview with smaller companies, where for instance you can meet everyone and chat more informally. Like a startup.

Re: Interviews are Broken

#33

Post by Lost_BiomedE » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 4:34 PM UTC

Peroni wrote: post #6

I'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 h…

I long for an interview like that. I first left the tech industry due to having to deal with HR and the hiring process.

I became a chef, where the interview could be moved to having them watch me make a dish or show knife skills. Then out of interest, I went through a biomedical engineering degree and am back into the tech field.

Still, due to my negative experiences with the filtering process, I have stayed in the realm of freelance and contracting. I would jump back into a tech job if interviews, like the above, were more common.

Thanks.

Re: Interviews are Broken

#34

Post by 001sky » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 4:38 PM UTC

nissimk wrote: post #24

It's interesting to note how many people that actually work at a place had to jump through all of the pre job offer hoops. I think you'll usually find a lot of people who were able to avoid much of that stuff because: 1) they were hired before the company started doing it 2) they new someone going in so they got hired without as much rigmarole. 3) they started as a contractor/freelancer and were converted to employee…

This is a good point, and sort of supports the Author's thesis. Perhaps better than the submitted Article. The way to test if interviews are 'fit for purpose' is to see how effective they are in real use. If everybody is going around the formal process, by hiring friends/previous project-teamates/warm-referrals only...then that is pretty important observational data.

Re: Interviews are Broken

#35

Post by hackinthebochs » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 4:39 PM UTC

Peroni wrote: post #6

I'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 h…

>Get a feel for their personality, the things that motivate them, the things that annoy them, the things that inspire them, etc.

What exactly are you trying to determine from this? The problem with such open-ended types of questions is that all objectivity is lost. You end up picking people who mirror your own motivations, annoyances, etc. Unless you are sure your question will produce actual signal in an objective manner, you shouldn't ask it. You are just biasing the process in favor of people that will flatter your own ego.

Re: Interviews are Broken

#36

Post by dylangs1030 » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 4:42 PM UTC

Peroni wrote: post #6

I'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 h…

I highly second this. To offer my own recent experience, I just had an interview yesterday of this format. It was around 4 hours (5 including lunch with the team).

1. I was repeatedly made to feel welcome, comfortable and calm as I possibly could be by everyone I met.

2. I was given technical questions that were appropriate and highly correlated with what I would be doing on a daily basis.

3. I spoke directly with two founders who, despite having my resume, opted for talking to me about my background, my goals, and offered answers to any questions I could possibly think of.

4. I was interviewed by four people total, and only one at a time.

It was honestly the most enjoyable interview I've ever had, despite the fact that I was initially nervous and didn't know what to expect, and it took the better part of a day. It was literally fun - if nothing else, this experience has given me a model for how I would interview candidates in the future if I am ever a hiring manager.

I wish every company operated this way - on some level, I think a lot of people who interview candidates don't know what they should look for, so they fall back on the "legendary battery" style of asking a suite of questions that only a recent 4.0 MIT CS graduate could answer confidently (and who could totally fizz out when asked to do something that isn't in Intro to Algorithms).

Re: Interviews are Broken

#37

Post by ori_b » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 4:43 PM UTC

Peroni wrote: post #6

I'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 h…

> Give the candidate a realistic technical challenge to complete in a realistic timeframe

The problem is that a realistic challenge involves figuring out a realistic system. Realistic systems tend to be large, complicated, hairy. They tend to involve a lot of domain knowledge. They tend to have subtle considerations.

Working with a realistic system does not generally take a realistic amount of time. Not for an interview, at least.

Re: Interviews are Broken

#38

Post by tokenadult » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 4:45 PM UTC

davesims wrote: post #29

tokenadult wrote: post #9

Peroni 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…

The challenge here, in my experience on both sides of this, is that a developer's deep domain knowledge of a large or large-ish app is essential to a 'work-sample' environment. And that's virtually impossible to duplicate even in the longest interview time frame. Making decisions about managing technical debt, adding architecturally-significant changes, balancing good OOP with responsiveness, knowing the difference b…

I think your point is well made that what you can sample in a work-sample test is not the full set of long-term skills that benefit a for-profit company. That's why the predictive validity of work-sample tests is only about .50 across a wide range of industries. But the key point is that EVERY other hiring procedure, except for general cognitive ability tests, has lower validity, so a company is throwing away a lot of opportunity to hire good workers if it doesn't use a combination of work-sample testing and cognitive ability testing for all of its hiring. Your sound analysis can be turned around to using interviews as a hiring procedure--which is much more commonplace than using work-sample testing as a hiring procedure--to make the correct point that an applicant who looks good in an interview may not be a "team player" once hired. Any hiring procedure is a sample of applicant behavior, not fully representative of how the worker will behave on the job after being hired. But work-sample tests get much closer to what the worker will do on the job long-term than any other procedure besides general cognitive ability tests. Because work-sample tests and cognitive ability tests each have incremental validity when added to the other, it's best to use both in combination to get a hiring procedure with somewhat more than .50 validity in finding good workers.

Re: Interviews are Broken

#39

Post by frenchy » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 4:50 PM UTC

emiller829 wrote: post #27

balloot wrote: post #16

This person sounds completely insufferable. He basically is declaring himself too good for interviews (except for C-level execs, whom he apparently tolerates). Heaven forbid you don't just assume Ernie Miller is god's gift to your job position, because he is Ernie Miller and he is a special unique snowflake who is not to be insulted with petty questions pertaining to his ability to do the job. Anyway, good luck with…

Did you actually read the article, or just the big, bold letters? The point wasn't that I am special. It's that each person is an individual, and a company that doesn't recognize that situations differ and make reasonable accommodations is unlikely to be a company at which I (or many like me, if the comments are any indicator) would enjoy working.

I think he's responding more to what was implied in the article, which seem a bit in contradiction to what was explicitly stated.

No offense intended to you. I doubt you meant it like this, but I got the same impression.

Re: Interviews are Broken

#40

Post by 7Figures2Commas » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 4:58 PM UTC

balloot wrote: post #16

This person sounds completely insufferable. He basically is declaring himself too good for interviews (except for C-level execs, whom he apparently tolerates). Heaven forbid you don't just assume Ernie Miller is god's gift to your job position, because he is Ernie Miller and he is a special unique snowflake who is not to be insulted with petty questions pertaining to his ability to do the job. Anyway, good luck with…

> ...who is not to be insulted with petty questions pertaining to his ability to do the job.

So when was the last time your preferred language's sort function magically disappeared and you had to come up with your own?

The interviewing process is criticized so frequently because companies focus on petty questions that are unrelated to a candidate's ability to do the job.