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Ask HN: Do you skip phone interviews for Google/FB/Tier-1 company engineers?

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Ask HN: Do you skip phone interviews for Google/FB/Tier-1 company engineers?

#1

Post by pradeep_m »

I am assuming that phone screens/interviews are primarily to weed out obviously bad/not a good fit engineers. Also, I have heard that most startups/companies would skip phone interviews for an engineer from a Tier-1 company because they are likely to do well at an onsite interview (They are essentially pre-vetted by their previous company is the reason I have heard from hiring managers).

Are there caveats to this? Only skip phone interviews for engineers above a certain level? Phone interviews are primarily used for selling the candidate on the company/opportunity/role and not as much of a technical "interview"?

Re: Ask HN: Do you skip phone interviews for Google/FB/Tier-1 company engineers?

#4

Post by mooreds »

I think it is good to have the same hiring process for every candidate, no matter where they are from. This will help you avoid unconscious bias.

Also, don't forget that even if an engineer is from a tier 1 company, they may not be a fit for your startup (based on technology, domain or something else) and a phone screen is the lowest cost way to determine that.

Re: Ask HN: Do you skip phone interviews for Google/FB/Tier-1 company engineers?

#5

Post by ng12 »

No. The only people who get a free pass are those who come with a glowing referral. No other metric is reliable -- I've seen people fail the phone screen from every "Big N" company. Google/FB/etc are just too big and hire too many people to draw a meaningful correlation.

Re: Ask HN: Do you skip phone interviews for Google/FB/Tier-1 company engineers?

#6

Post by freestockoption »

I like to think that I am interviewing the person and not the company. And the person defines the engineer and not the company they work for.

I try to treat everyone the same, if nothing else, but to have a baseline. Of course, I'm biased, but more towards referrals.

This makes me wonder, do some people treat those coming from a tier-100000000 company differently? Are there companies that someone might work for that would have a negative effect on them?

Re: Ask HN: Do you skip phone interviews for Google/FB/Tier-1 company engineers?

#8

Post by rl3 »

Tier 1 companies are huge. Slacking and incompetence alike can exist in their engineering departments, even if rare.

As such, deviating from normal hiring practices on account of a candidate's company is a bad idea.

Remember that Big Head was employed by Hooli.

Re: Ask HN: Do you skip phone interviews for Google/FB/Tier-1 company engineers?

#9

Post by nailer »

Phone screen logarithmically.

- Ask a level 1 question

- Follow with a level 10 question of they get it right

- Follow with a level 1000 question you don't know the answer to if they get that right too.

If you learn something from them in their level 1000 answer that's a strong hire!

Also: there are bad programmers at Google, there probably are at FB too. There are some brilliant ones but don't take it for granted.

Re: Ask HN: Do you skip phone interviews for Google/FB/Tier-1 company engineers?

#10

Post by muzani »

Phone interviews are best for filtering for culture and personality fit. I certainly wouldn't ask a coding question on the phone, because there's a lot of muscle memory involved in coding.

I would only do phone interviews on someone completely faceless, perhaps from a job site. About 80% of people have just fine personalities.

It's usually easier to tell a person's personality by stalking them on social media. You probably just want to avoid the overwhelmingly negative or egoistic people.

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