81–90 of 337 posts
Wow, other than the grief I'm going to get from my ISP I'm so glad to see all this and when I get a chance over the next few days I'd like to add more.
Some quickies: I've generalized this approach and talk about it in a Quartz article: http://qz.com/88168/how-to-hire-good-people-instead-of-nice-...
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I can see how you would do this for a technical shortcoming, but sometimes the choice of one candidate over another comes based on a personality judgement and who would fit better with the current team. How do you explain those types of decisions without sounding arbitrary?
Second round interviews, after having passed a code test as well, I do exclusively with the team in question all present. It's less of an interview and more of a meet and greet, and we spend 30 minutes talking about anything under the sun. The team makes the decision from this point. I very rarely veto. Candidates know this is the process, because I tell them about it before hand. Does that make sense?
The first time I got a front page link to my site on HN, it did this exact same thing, which prompted me to move away from Wordpress. Static HTML ever since. But to comment on the article, I think this is a fantastic idea. I do wonder though how he found so many enthusiastic people. Maybe it's just a new era, but I have a hard time finding people who even want to do a 1 hour coding challenge. He got these folks who w…
My Wordpress blog used to go down because of HN. I fixed that as follows. 1. Use the Wordpress supercache plugin. 2. Put Apache behind Nginx, and limit the number of Apache processes to ~6. This way you're effectively using Apache as a "PHP app server", simulating an architecture similar to Passenger/Unicorn. Nginx acts only as a buffering reverse proxy, shielding Apache from slow clients. Why this instead of running…
Not to say that your setup isn't better (it obviously is), but I want to make sure no one's intimidated by the task of hardening their WP install because they think they'll need to do both 1 and 2 for it to be worthwhile.
While we figure out how to get my site working again, I wrote this in quartz: http://qz.com/88168/how-to-hire-good-people-instead-of-nice-...
and this for Science Magazine: http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previou...
And there is this Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/BrookeAllen1/brooke-allen-has-a-be...
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Then there is the perspective from having heard "no": 1. Never believe anyone's rationale regarding their "no". They acted on instinct, and made up a clever story to afterward to convince themselves it was a rational decision. Or worse: it was some prejudice that they are consciously covering up. Or perhaps some internal reasons that they don't want to discuss with outsiders like sudden news that affects all hiring a…
I don't think kazinator is wrong about this. And yes I take the commenters point below that they take hiring very seriously. Study after study shows that people are much less objective than they think. And that they have an impression that they rationalize. I have seen people be very strongly influenced negatively or positively by a word or phrase on the resume that in the scheme of things wasn't that important. I am…
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I've always thought so, and I figure it is a case of our sue-happy culture and a cover your ass tactic "anything you say can and will be used against you" kind of fear. I'd love to have reached out to some applicants in the past to offer help, but what if they don't want any?
It would be nice if, at the start of the application process, companies could ask you if you would like to agree not to sue them in exchange for open, honest feedback, e.g. notes from your interviewers. Sometimes its pretty clear if you are not a good match, but sometimes its really not, and it seems like it would be best for both parties if certain kind of feedback could be provided, e.g. you were close, please cons…
It's also worth keeping in mind that the process for many companies is very random. At my old company, I have recommended a few very qualified candidates, only for their application to get stuck in HR limbo due to budgets or politics. And on the other side of that, every now and then we would open the floodgates, and any one with a pulse would get in. It was really frustrating, but that's just how it works.
Hi, this is Brooke, author of the original story. Wow, other than the grief I'm going to get from my ISP I'm so glad to see all this and when I get a chance over the next few days I'd like to add more. Some quickies: I've generalized this approach and talk about it in a Quartz article: http://qz.com/88168/how-to-hire-good-people-instead-of-nice-...
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> Always explain rationale around the No, to help them improve This is my inclination: "We liked your attitude, you seem intelligent, and well-spoken, but we have concerns about your knowledge of , maybe start contributing to or experiment in and reapply in a year or two." ...my concern is opening up my company for legal liabilities. Am I just being paranoid?
This happened at my last company. It does in fact open you up to legal liabilities. The company had to settle 18 cases where applicants "disagreed" with the reason of their rejection.
This story reminds me of how broken software engineer interviewing is. Imagine if a company decided to hire software engineers by giving them five 6-sided dice. Then they have to come to the company building and roll each dice once every hour. And during that hour they have to dance and sing in front of someone while being recorded. If they roll all 6 on all 5 dice, their dancing and singing will be judged by the com…
I sometimes consult to clients on improving their hiring process. Candidate experience is now a topic that at least some companies consider. This isn't your typical candidate experience - applying for a vague job ad, being asked to answer 6 puzzle questions, invite to an open house, two days of free training and then left alone for three weeks, followed by a vote by the tribe to see who will get the job. It's definit…