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Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

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Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#141

Post by TurkishPoptart »

edoceo wrote: post #71
simonw wrote: post #48

If you want a really big competitive advantage, figure out how to hire great people who don't interview well.

I use a gig to hire process for this. It works very well. I've been meaning to write more about it but I also get income for helping with hiring around this model so im a bit conflicted. The whole answer is long and complex. Basically: give candidate a proper task on your project and evaluate them based on that work - the "interview" is less than an hour, the "work" is longer (many hours (and you pay for it)) - provi…

I'd love to interview at your company :D

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#142

Post by scarface74 »

edoceo wrote: post #140
scarface74 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So unless you are paying an above local market rate, why would I as an in demand developer go through that when I could do one phone screen and one in person interview and get a job that pays just as much? My entire interview process for BigTech was only six hours and because of Covid, it was fully remote.

There is a very wide range of openings and talent out there. And of course you're aware that one uses different tools for different needs right? There's plenty of room for those who aren't so ace like you to land that AWS gig in six hours.

Before the AWS gig, I was a bog standard “Enterprise Developer” or Architect depending on the month of the year doing yet another software as a service CRUD app bumping around in mostly small local companies that no one had ever heard of.

When I was looking for a job in 2016 locally, I emailed a bunch of local external recruiters and was juggling eight or nine openings. I did six phone screens in one day from different companies.

I was no special snowflake. Anyone who could call themselves a “full stack developer” with 5 years of experience could do the same thing. Heck, I didn’t know any of the $coolkids front end frameworks.

The process was the same - one phone screen, a half day in person where you spoke about your past projects, maybe did a coding test that was barely above FizzBuzz level of complexity and show that you know SQL.

A local full stack developer who had any kind of experience could get the “right now” job within a month if they weren’t being picky.

Of course post-Covid, things are different.

So either way. If you are looking for framework developers (no insult intended - that’s what I was as a developer until recently) the process is easy if you’re any good. If you are looking for “smart people” (tm). They are able to do the leetCode monkey dance. Who is left that is willing to spend hours doing take home tests? All of the best candidates know how to play one game or the other.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#143

Post by TurkishPoptart »

dahart wrote: post #116
stove wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that _none_ of the articles about “hiring is broken” and “interviews are broken” actually help with this problem. There is near-universal consensus that technical hiring is atrocious and yet very few people putting forth possible solutions and/or companies willing to experiment with the status quo. My ideas are: * Real-world interview questions * Standardized testing for "soft" skills. It can be done. *…

> There is near-universal consensus that technical hiring is atrocious I hear this a lot on Hacker News, but not inside any companies. And when asked why people think it's atrocious, I rarely get a set of answers that agree on the specifics. I'd love to hear more about what metrics show evidence that hiring is atrocious, as well as what is making it atrocious for you. What does that mean in the pre-coronavirus contex…

It's atrocious but most companies won't reveal specifics because _those_ people were hired via the same process. So it plays into survivorship bias. And nothing will change.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#145

Post by ironman1478 »

This is a great article. An undiscussed issue I've personally seen when conducting interviews and being parts of roundups is a lack of self understanding. lots of people who conduct interviews think they are way smarter than they are (me included!). They hold up candidates to very high standards and then dismiss them at the slightest mistake, however many of these people also make many mistakes on the job. When I give interviews I always just ask the easiest and clearest questions I possibly can that still try to be relevant to the job to minimize this bias.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#146

Post by edoceo »

scarface74 wrote: post #142
edoceo wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a very wide range of openings and talent out there. And of course you're aware that one uses different tools for different needs right? There's plenty of room for those who aren't so ace like you to land that AWS gig in six hours.

Before the AWS gig, I was a bog standard “Enterprise Developer” or Architect depending on the month of the year doing yet another software as a service CRUD app bumping around in mostly small local companies that no one had ever heard of. When I was looking for a job in 2016 locally, I emailed a bunch of local external recruiters and was juggling eight or nine openings. I did six phone screens in one day from differe…

> Who is left that is willing to spend hours doing take home tests?

I've used this process to help place entry level all the way to C-Level -- maybe I've not provided enough details (it's more than just a simple test) or maybe you're over-simplifying the process?

It's not a perfect process (hiring in general is still looking for that) and clearly it's not the right process for you.

I'm happy you found a job you enjoy.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#147

Post by bluedino »

nogabebop23 wrote: post #93
jaaron wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Double edged sword. Certainly helps to find great talent and build a cohesive team. Also tends to perpetuate our biases, create cliques and echo chambers. Makes it harder for new talent to break in. When I build my teams, I try to balance referrals with newly sourced talent far outside my network.

everyone also has a pretty shallow pool of quality talent, so it doesn't scale well. Once you've been involved in hiring you see why a company will pass on a likely good candidate to avoid a maybe bad experience. In the longer term it's way less work.

Works well for the first 20-100 employees. After that you’re bound to get a solid chunk of bad ones no matter what you do.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#148

Post by scarface74 »

edoceo wrote: post #146
scarface74 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before the AWS gig, I was a bog standard “Enterprise Developer” or Architect depending on the month of the year doing yet another software as a service CRUD app bumping around in mostly small local companies that no one had ever heard of. When I was looking for a job in 2016 locally, I emailed a bunch of local external recruiters and was juggling eight or nine openings. I did six phone screens in one day from differe…

> Who is left that is willing to spend hours doing take home tests? I've used this process to help place entry level all the way to C-Level -- maybe I've not provided enough details (it's more than just a simple test) or maybe you're over-simplifying the process? It's not a perfect process (hiring in general is still looking for that) and clearly it's not the right process for you. I'm happy you found a job you enjoy…

Two non developer anecdotes from what I’ve heard or seen

Solutions Architect - answer the soft skill questions aka “tell me about a time when..” and they had to do a writing sample either a sales blog post or an SOW.

Project Manager - same soft skill questions, talk about processes, previous challenges and outcomes. Maybe do a simplified project plan.

Are those the types of take home tasks you are referring to for non developer roles? Just curious.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#149

Post by 908B64B197 »

stove wrote: post #11

There's a growing rift in software between employers saying "there's a talent shortage" and a rapidly growing population of devs who feel like they're locked out due to the technical interview process. Many of the engineers not being hired are recent bootcamp grads but there are also tons of CS majors that can't seem to "crack" the interview process. Part of my job is helping companies "fix" their hiring and one of t…

> There's a growing rift in software between employers saying "there's a talent shortage" and a rapidly growing population of devs who feel like they're locked out due to the technical interview process. Many of the engineers not being hired are recent bootcamp grads but there are also tons of CS majors that can't seem to "crack" the interview process.

I'm extremely skeptical of bootcamps, especially after learning that some of the TA's at these are hired to help with teaching as little as two months into the program as students[0].

I'm afraid that a lot of these bootcamps train the students on "practical and applied skills" that makes them one trick ponies. ie, they know how to do one thing and one thing only and if the project's stack change it's unclear if they will be able to adapt.

> This has been a great way to shift interviews away from algorithms and more towards finding people can add immense value to technical teams even without having on-the-job programming experience.

I'll play devil's advocate here and say that algorithms are a pretty good proxy for on-hire performance. I can, as an interviewer, expect most grads from serious CS programs to have had an algorithm class. Being able to demonstrate that they are capable of learning algorithms and applying them gives me confidence that they will be able to learn new stuff fast when joining the team.

It's a sink or swim situation where I believe that it's very hard to teach CS fundamentals on the job but relatively easy to teach new tools and new frameworks. So I would rather hire someone with strong fundamentals

[0] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-p...

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#150

Post by 908B64B197 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #132
Zaheer wrote: post #2

Related message for students / new-grads: Find an internship. Internship interviews tend to be much easier as the stakes are lower. If you perform well during your internship (arguably easier / more accurate indicator of success), the company will likely extend an offer. At big companies I've seen internship to offer rates exceed 30%.

Unfortunately, this has two sides. I've noticed that in banking - and I'm not talking about investment banking, or high-finance in general, but regular consumer banking - there's been a trend to basically hire woefully overqualified people for the lowest positions around - I'm talking about bank greeters, customer support, and what not, and then train them from there. This could very well be a local thing, but there…

That should be a signal that's there's an oversupply for whatever Bachelors degrees these employees were holding.

It's the same thing in law, the best advice to give to an aspiring lawyer is to go have a chat with a practicing lawyer at a non-elite firm.

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