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Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

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Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#141

Post by ivalm »

brailsafe wrote: post #140
ivalm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grandop said > research suggests that interviewers know after 20 seconds whether they'll hire someone. That’s not first impression, that’s a meaningful ability to see if I hire someone. I can tell you that without seeing code/discussing some previous experience there is zero chance I can form hiring decision for most reasonable candidate (the only 30 second hiring impression I can form is perhaps a negative one).

I meant to be less specific than "hire someone", but I'd wager that once a subconscious impression is formed, you'd be more likely to bias your interpretation of whatever else they say.

Right, I am sure I have a first impression, which could be good or bad, and that impression does inform my later views. However, just objectively I know for a fact that I declined some candidates I initially liked and I hired a few people who initially was super shy/not communicative.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#142

Post by GreenWatermelon »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #111
twic wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Amazon interviewed me, it was something like 10:00 - 17:00 with no breaks. They didn't tell me that in advance, so i hadn't had a big breakfast. I actually don't think they did this on purpose. When i mentioned to someone at the end of the day that there was no lunch break, they were surprised. I think it's just that they're such a constitutionally incompetent organisation that things like this will just happen…

Amazon just showed you it doesn't care about its people in the least. That is accurate based on the 10 people I've known that have worked there.

it's also accurate based on all the news I see online...

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#143

Post by bleah1000 »

denzil_correa wrote: post #9

> We will do our best to provide a 15 minute break and/or lunch/coffee break during your interviews, especially if you'll be interviewing for more than 3 hours. That said, we are happy to accommodate additional breaks or fewer breaks, depending on your preferences, just let your recruiter or recruiting coordinator know! I have seen this w/o breaks 5-7 interviews a day, too often. Some candidates suffer from low energ…

I think the problem is that even with breaks, you can still be mentally exhausted by the last interview or two. For a normal work day, I wouldn't expect people to switch between writing completely different algorithms and problems so often. In a day of interviews, switching to a new problem five or six times can be exhausting.

Make sure your interview process isn't stacking too many in a row, or the signal from the last few is going to be pretty bad.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#144

Post by NumberCruncher »

axegon_ wrote: post #10

Perhaps a bit of an unpopular opinion but as far as interviews go, I think that seeing how someone reacts unprepared is a lot more valuable then seeing their work with them knowing what to expect. You see their ability to adapt and improvise, which is far more valuable then being picky about a particular library or technology. Yes, the quality of their tests will be lower, but that's fine and you can take that into a…

> I think that seeing how someone reacts unprepared is a lot more valuable

I share your unpopular opinion, because the truth is generally told between the lines. At my last job I was the only one excluded from interviewing new candidates, because I am silly enough to throw ad-hoc technical questions into the discussion. My colleges managed to hire really nice people lacking basic technical skills, e.g. data analyst with 17 years of experience not knowing how to make a left join or a sub-select or PHDs not knowing what python or even a "programming language" is. We had some "fun", I can tell.

And this goes both ways. I remember as an "unprepared" candidate facing the ad-hoc question "how would you deal with time series data". Through well placed questions I figured out that they have - after removing the obvious seasonal effects - only 5 data point. After my answer "I wouldn't even fit a regression line on it" the interviewer said "no one here does time series analysis, not even I" and left the room with some made up excuse. Or when the interviewer was bragging about "valuing work-life balance and having a lower churn rate than the industry average" and I figured out he is with the company since 9 months. He was just smiling and left the room with some made up excuse.

Basic rule for hiring: don't let fool yourself AND don't try to fool others.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#145

Post by raghava »

kyawzazaw wrote: post #98
lnsru wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not expected to be 3 hours project. Target easily 3 days for it. Requirement to get more points for this assignment from that page: “Detailed documentation with setup, screenshots, configuration instructions, etc.” This alone might take couple hours.

Basecamp pays $1500 or so for take-home assignments. Do you offer similar compensation?

These shops mostly just want to appear hip-n-cool. They aren't really, hence, no pay.

It would most probably have a twisted answer as "you can post that solution of yours in your git repo and showcase it as a part of your portfolio"

Many shops out here are so adept at this stuff, it's no more funny!

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#146

Post by raghava »

Dayshine wrote: post #26
lnsru wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not expected to be 3 hours project. Target easily 3 days for it. Requirement to get more points for this assignment from that page: “Detailed documentation with setup, screenshots, configuration instructions, etc.” This alone might take couple hours.

You expect candidates to spend 20-30 hours on a task, and you don't even guarantee an interview? Talk about exploitative. Hell, that's incredibly biased. Can you imagine a young parent being able to do that?

As I have said in a comment below, it sorta became a way to signal being hip-n-cool, while actually being totally otherwise.

Most cheapo shops which won't pay FAANG salaries but still want near-FAANG-quality-engineers end up using this as a bait.

Other ways are "your work has great purpose!" "You will advance humanity!" "You will bring great experiences to users" ... yeah yeah yeah, just an alias for "we are a glorified bodyshop. BigCos hire us for some piecemeal job. We get it done and get paid relatively well." But this isn't too appealing, is it!

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#147

Post by raghava »

IMO, if a company is very serious about hiring for the role, they must offer a 1 week trial period (PAID!). The candidates get a fair idea about the kinda muck they might be getting themselves into. The team(s) get an idea as to what kinda schmuck they get to deal with over next months.

It's too easy to fake "expertise" and "culture fit" over a 2/3/4/5 round interview each lasting an hour or so.

Most companies who deem this mode as not an option, simply aren't looking for great experts or engineers, but rather a cog in the grand system of wheels to keep the show running - or what HRs end up calling - a resource!

Solution: What can engineers do for this problem?

1. Propose this option (1 week PAID work trial) to HRs 2. Keep a backlog of technically engaging, but smaller work-items which could be taken up with least amount of background-knowledge , or something that has an easy-ramp-up-path for a newbie in the realm 3. Iterate and improve

This is just an extremely condensed internship of sorts. And many firms understand the value of intern-to-hire path.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#148

Post by [deleted] »

renewiltord wrote: post #6
hardwaregeek wrote: post #4

Also get feedback from candidates, especially rejected ones. The people who get offers will assume that the process works, since it validates their self-worth. Even if the process is very stupid. I've had processes that were so so bad from top companies. Like "here's a repo, clone it, write a program that will be judged by automated tests that you can't see". I had to basically guess what the tests were going to do,…

It would feel a little awkward for me to ask for someone to do work for me after I've determined that they're not a good fit for the company. And if it's post-interview pre-result then the problem is that they'll feel pressured to be positive. Perhaps if it were a third party.

[deleted]

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#149

Post by alimw »

renewiltord wrote: post #6
hardwaregeek wrote: post #4

Also get feedback from candidates, especially rejected ones. The people who get offers will assume that the process works, since it validates their self-worth. Even if the process is very stupid. I've had processes that were so so bad from top companies. Like "here's a repo, clone it, write a program that will be judged by automated tests that you can't see". I had to basically guess what the tests were going to do,…

It would feel a little awkward for me to ask for someone to do work for me after I've determined that they're not a good fit for the company. And if it's post-interview pre-result then the problem is that they'll feel pressured to be positive. Perhaps if it were a third party.

I am hardly a fan of excessive language policing, but this phrase "a good fit" bugs me. Is it common currency? To keep asking among yourselves "is this person a good fit?" seems unlikely to encourage the sort of objective assessment of a person's usefulness and talent that you'd want for your company's sake and also to stay within the law.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#150

Post by Nasrudith »

claudeganon wrote: post #86
pdimitar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is strongly misaligned with many companies' incentives so it will never happen, I am afraid. A lot of interviewing processes are kind of like fishing. They hope that if they wasted you 6-10 hours of your time before an actual offer then you'd make a decision based on the sunk cost fallacy ("not sure how much time the other companies will waste me, let's take this one on their offer, it's not so bad"). I am glad…

The solution is to make companies pay people for their time during interviews, at an hourly rate equivalent to compensation for the position. Everyone else in the interview is getting paid by the company, after all. Suddenly, managers, hiring committees, and recruiters will stop wasting people’s time and everyone will know what to expect to get paid!

That brings to mind a funny hypothetical niche of "interview tricksters" who lack qualifications but can land an interview sustainably. Probably not sustainable and they would be incentivized to bullshit their way into a full time job (like normal status quo really) but still pretty funny.

It is essentially a counterpart of the joke abuse of the current system of building software by giving out pieces as "code interview questions" and never hiring anybody. Actually being able to devise and intergrate such a thing would probably be cheaper and less effort to do the work yourself.

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