Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 108 posts

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#21

Post by viraptor »

ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #12

I'm starting to feel the same about the take home tests. Too time consuming.

I think it can work both ways. Tasks like that can be time-consuming, but would you rather take a day off for an on-site interview, or spend ~1h doing it at home? There's some line that shouldn't be crossed of course - I think companies shouldn't give the test to everyone - just those who are actually considered after some screening. But I've been on both sides: taking and preparing the test, and I think it's a good idea as a 2nd stage filter.

My test was completely open-ended. Trivial task (script to copy data from .csv to a sqlite, optionally notify on the queue at the end), but make it as production-ready as you can/want. I don't think I could learn as much about people's abilities during an interview, as I could from that task. I mean, the 1 person who made a proper package, a short .rst install & use documentation, and included crazy unicode test cases was immediately on the top of the list.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#22

Post by cmancini »

Lots of great stuff here. It is a numbers game in many ways since I've been in interview processes where we turned down lots of people who go on to succeed in amazing ways at other companies.

I would be wary about recommending most people write cover letter templates. I can tell a templated letter most of the time. I'd recommend just writing a few sentences from the heart. Why you're great for them. Copy+Paste doesn't work, since each company is different and your background will connect in different ways. Keep it short and just ask to learn more.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#23

Post by dpark »

viraptor wrote: post #21
ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #12

I'm starting to feel the same about the take home tests. Too time consuming.

I think it can work both ways. Tasks like that can be time-consuming, but would you rather take a day off for an on-site interview, or spend ~1h doing it at home? There's some line that shouldn't be crossed of course - I think companies shouldn't give the test to everyone - just those who are actually considered after some screening. But I've been on both sides: taking and preparing the test, and I think it's a good…

So you prioritized for people willing to sink many hours into your assignment. The need to sink many hours into a homework assignment is the criticism.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#24

Post by viraptor »

dpark wrote: post #23
viraptor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it can work both ways. Tasks like that can be time-consuming, but would you rather take a day off for an on-site interview, or spend ~1h doing it at home? There's some line that shouldn't be crossed of course - I think companies shouldn't give the test to everyone - just those who are actually considered after some screening. But I've been on both sides: taking and preparing the test, and I think it's a good…

So you prioritized for people willing to sink many hours into your assignment. The need to sink many hours into a homework assignment is the criticism.

Phone interview - 1h during work hours. On-site interview - ~3h total, but probably a whole day off work. Test - ~1h at any time you choose.

I'm not sure I follow your logic. They would spend just as many hours, at a more inconvenient time of day without the test. I did the task myself to a level I'd expect at the time to make sure it does not take "many hours". If that simple task would take people many hours, then I hope they didn't apply... (or they would probably fail very soon if hired at all)

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#25

Post by teen »

ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #12

I'm starting to feel the same about the take home tests. Too time consuming.

they're the worst. about 6 years ago i applied for a job at expensify, and they gave me a take home test. when i sent it back, they couldnt read the code. they asked me to condense it all into one file called main.php. (i separated into controllers / views for a web app)

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#26

Post by swang »

this is all good info. especially the take homes.

when i interviewed this time around for a new job, the most frustrating part were the take homes. lots of companies expect you to do a sample project that only grants you an audience to a technical phone screen. like, what? didn't i just pass your technical test? if i still have to show my technical prowess doesn't that mean you don't trust my resume, or trust that i honestly completed your assignment?

i also agree these take homes are not 4 hour affairs. they give you no direction so you can't sacrifice ui/ux for functionality because you have no clue how they judge it. i failed a large company's take home even though it was feature complete, but i sacrificed really slick/nice ui for a workable ui that i felt was passable given no direction.

i got a thanks but no thanks reply back.

as with regards to luck; another company i interviewed at, i aced their take home. then i interviewed with ~6 people who all said they liked me (or at least that was the feedback i got). but when i interviewed with the vpe, i failed a question about semaphores, (i knew what they are, but just didn't have the answer to a specific question the vpe asked) and failed the job app.

the job position was to be a front-end developer.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#27

Post by tdeck »

pmoriarty wrote: post #18
tdeck wrote: post #17

Side question - how do these people interviewing at "a dozen or so places" manage it? Assuming most companies' interviews will force you to take a full day off work, and they will have different schedules and offer deadlines. Is there a trick to managing this that is eluding me? Even with taking a couple of weeks off it seems like it would be very difficult.

Without a job, one usually has lots of free time.

That still doesn't help much with lining up the offers, but I guess that's less of a concern when you're unemployed (I.E. you'll take the first decent offer you get). However, I feel like I have often read accounts of people with a job interviewing at 6-10 companies and I always wondered how.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#28

Post by bpchaps »

tdeck wrote: post #27
pmoriarty wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without a job, one usually has lots of free time.

That still doesn't help much with lining up the offers, but I guess that's less of a concern when you're unemployed (I.E. you'll take the first decent offer you get). However, I feel like I have often read accounts of people with a job interviewing at 6-10 companies and I always wondered how.

Well, look for companies that are willing to do interviews during your lunch. Those are the companies you'd want to work for anyway, since they have enough empathy to understand that 2+ hour interviews are risky if you're already employed.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#29

Post by throw_away_777 »

viraptor wrote: post #24
dpark wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you prioritized for people willing to sink many hours into your assignment. The need to sink many hours into a homework assignment is the criticism.

Phone interview - 1h during work hours. On-site interview - ~3h total, but probably a whole day off work. Test - ~1h at any time you choose. I'm not sure I follow your logic. They would spend just as many hours, at a more inconvenient time of day without the test. I did the task myself to a level I'd expect at the time to make sure it does not take "many hours". If that simple task would take people many hours, then…

The candidate gets no benefit from doing your take home test. In an interview the candidate learns something about the company. Also the ~1h requirement just isn't realistic if you give an open-ended test - you penalize the people who actually spend 1h and reward those who spend more time.

Re: Don’t Get Attached, It’s Just Luck. My Interviewing Advice and Tips

#30

Post by strictnein »

swang wrote: post #26

this is all good info. especially the take homes. when i interviewed this time around for a new job, the most frustrating part were the take homes. lots of companies expect you to do a sample project that only grants you an audience to a technical phone screen. like, what? didn't i just pass your technical test? if i still have to show my technical prowess doesn't that mean you don't trust my resume, or trust that i…

> "i also agree these take homes are not 4 hour affairs. they give you no direction so you can't sacrifice ui/ux for functionality because you have no clue how they judge it."

I had a take home for a UI position that I spent ~10-12 hours on. It was some pretty standard UI stuff and they had 5 points of functionality they wanted you to code. Make it responsive, have these sections in a different order on mobile, make X do Y when you click Z, etc etc.

At the interview, two technical peers walked through what I had submitted. Their questions made it really clear they had no idea what problems I was supposed to solve.

- Why didn't you write a complete RESTful backend to serve this data? (the instructions literally said not to)

- Why didn't you use a CSS pre-processor? (the code required ~30 lines of CSS)

- Why doesn't this button work? (it wasn't supposed to)

- Why doesn't this code work on a mobile device? (it worked just fine on mobile devices)

Really just a strange, strange experience.

Post reply on HN