Probably because interviewing companies have stopped giving performance feedback.
People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance
101–110 of 152 posts
Re: People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
[Wouldn't] companies would do better throwing darts at resumes? Or perhaps by actually reading resumes instead of keyword-filtering them. Really, it's not that hard. "Throwing darts at resumes", OTOH, is exactly what many companies seem to be doing right now. Specifically, the practice of setting up a "chat" with an internal recruiter (who inevitably tells you that they think you'll be a "wonderful fit") before passi…
>Or perhaps by actually reading resumes instead of keyword-filtering them This one is a two-way street. I launched a resume writing side-business a couple years ago (resumeraiders.com) because I saw how poor many developer resumes were and how they were getting ripped off by resume writers who had no experience in hiring or in tech. Most were just failed writers. If you expect a recruiter to read a poorly-written 5 p…
This is fascinating to me. I recently did a resume swap with an American lady I know (I'm Australian). We're both around mid thirties. She's in SF.
Her resume was 1 page. It's the first time I've ever seen a 1 page resume in my life except for someone out of highschool with no history or experience.
Mine is 4 pages. I've worked really hard to cut it down to that while including relevant things and nice formatting/readability/white space. Compared to some of the 10 to 15 page resumes we get here for people who have done so little, it's positively succinct.
We had a chat, and we just had to agree that it was a cultural difference.
But still, I admit, if anyone asked me here, I'd say "you can't have a one page resume, unless you are literally applying for McDonald's and have done nothing with your life, this isn't twitter"
Re: People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was at Code for America I redid their hiring process to optimize for interviewee experience rather than hiring manager experience. One of the things that really struck me at the time was that traditional interview processes are built around a notion of worker surplus and job scarcity. They make very little sense when the opposite condition applies. Even little things like contacting all applicants within 24 ho…
Oh gosh, this is totally true. I honestly find it almost disrespectful when you feel some company is putting you through a pipeline. They set up an interview day, line everyone up, grind through them one by one. The other thing is the technical interview which is unreflective of the job itself. In one recently, I was told before going in I had to code on a whiteboard. I ask, "Can I have I use a text editor, not an ID…
Lucky you, I was once asked to write code on a napkin and on another occasion to say lines of code over the phone :)
Re: People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very true. Some well known companies, like Google, still have more applicants than jobs, and so they need to filter people out. Most companies have the opposite problem - they need to attract people. This shift means that the interview process has to be re-thought.
> "still have more applicants than jobs" This is true for a lot of companies - but there's only a surplus of labor if the applicants are qualified . For a company to be able to be frivolous with their process, they'd need to have more qualified applicants than jobs, and I think even for many name-brand BigCorps, this isn't the case.
I suspect most name-brand BigCos (including Google and friends) are pretty bad at first-pass decisions about what applicants are qualified. Has anybody stopped to consider that the root cause of their stream of Terri le interview candidates is a terrible filtering process for deciding who gets interviewed?
Re: People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
A company's bad interview process might have nothing at all to do with the rest of the company. At this point, isn't it generally accepted that all tech interviewing sucks, and companies would do better throwing darts at resumes? If all interviewing is bad, and all companies are not bad, there's no benefit to judging a company based on that process.
[Wouldn't] companies would do better throwing darts at resumes? Or perhaps by actually reading resumes instead of keyword-filtering them. Really, it's not that hard. "Throwing darts at resumes", OTOH, is exactly what many companies seem to be doing right now. Specifically, the practice of setting up a "chat" with an internal recruiter (who inevitably tells you that they think you'll be a "wonderful fit") before passi…
> "Throwing darts at resumes"
That reminds me of another technique - that is you select roughly half of the resumes from the stack and bin it. Nobody wants to work with unlucky people ;)
Re: People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was at Code for America I redid their hiring process to optimize for interviewee experience rather than hiring manager experience. One of the things that really struck me at the time was that traditional interview processes are built around a notion of worker surplus and job scarcity. They make very little sense when the opposite condition applies. Even little things like contacting all applicants within 24 ho…
Oh gosh, this is totally true. I honestly find it almost disrespectful when you feel some company is putting you through a pipeline. They set up an interview day, line everyone up, grind through them one by one. The other thing is the technical interview which is unreflective of the job itself. In one recently, I was told before going in I had to code on a whiteboard. I ask, "Can I have I use a text editor, not an ID…
On the flip side, as an interviewer I give all candidates the opportunity to use a text editor, and less than 15% of candidates take it. The rest opt for whiteboard.
Re: People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Or perhaps by actually reading resumes instead of keyword-filtering them This one is a two-way street. I launched a resume writing side-business a couple years ago (resumeraiders.com) because I saw how poor many developer resumes were and how they were getting ripped off by resume writers who had no experience in hiring or in tech. Most were just failed writers. If you expect a recruiter to read a poorly-written 5 p…
This is fascinating to me. I recently did a resume swap with an American lady I know (I'm Australian). We're both around mid thirties. She's in SF. Her resume was 1 page. It's the first time I've ever seen a 1 page resume in my life except for someone out of highschool with no history or experience. Mine is 4 pages. I've worked really hard to cut it down to that while including relevant things and nice formatting/rea…
wtf... do ppl write essays on resumes? even 4 pages is too long nowadays. need to tl;dr.
Re: People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
[Wouldn't] companies would do better throwing darts at resumes? Or perhaps by actually reading resumes instead of keyword-filtering them. Really, it's not that hard. "Throwing darts at resumes", OTOH, is exactly what many companies seem to be doing right now. Specifically, the practice of setting up a "chat" with an internal recruiter (who inevitably tells you that they think you'll be a "wonderful fit") before passi…
> "Throwing darts at resumes" That reminds me of another technique - that is you select roughly half of the resumes from the stack and bin it. Nobody wants to work with unlucky people ;)
That's kind of what a lot of companies seem to do these days, by default:
"Eh, I don't have time for this. Let's get the junior people to filter resumes and do phone screens. Especially when trying to hire senior people... Too many resumes? Just make them do a 3-hour HackerRank session first. It's what all the other places are doing..."
Re: People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance
#109Once you have an engineering job, a typical project tasking involves: some team design discussion, some engineering research, some work, some review, more work. The requirements are either known upfront, or determined as a team. I do not understand why interviews are not conducted in this manner. Pick some arbitrary idea and have the candidate work with the interviewer to design something, then let the candidate do a…
"I do not understand why interviews are not conducted in this manner. "
It truly is crazy.
Re: People are still bad at gauging their own interview performance
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh gosh, this is totally true. I honestly find it almost disrespectful when you feel some company is putting you through a pipeline. They set up an interview day, line everyone up, grind through them one by one. The other thing is the technical interview which is unreflective of the job itself. In one recently, I was told before going in I had to code on a whiteboard. I ask, "Can I have I use a text editor, not an ID…
On the flip side, as an interviewer I give all candidates the opportunity to use a text editor, and less than 15% of candidates take it. The rest opt for whiteboard.
That really truly surprises me. I'm so much quicker and more in my element with a text editor.