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An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

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Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#241

Post by bitL »

dahart wrote: post #238
bitL wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are completely missing the point I am trying to make. Imagine you have strong interest from Google, FB, Uber, Amazon etc. Google wants to waive their interview process as you are an open source contributor (they actually read your CV and clicked on the links). FB wants you to lead some ML team they have doing cool things etc. Other companies beg you to work for them even if you don't consider them interes…

Please propose a better process! > Google wants to waive their interview process as you are an open source contributor. Other companies beg you to work for them even if you don't consider them interesting, willing to overpay you and pamper you. That's not a realistic scenario, your point seems contrived. Google doesn't waive their interview process, as the @mxcl example demonstrates. Companies only beg to throw money…

> Google doesn't waive their interview process

They actually do. What they told me is that if you are an open source contributor for important open source, or you have 3 people within company that want you, you can skip the whole process. There are surely more ways to skip it. Not sure why they didn't do it for that Homebrew guy.

> when you express interest in the company.

I was mentioning that these days often HackerRank is step 0 of interviewing process, like what used to be technical phone screen. And that holds even for recruiting agencies if you want to have your CV featured there, even for underwhelming jobs. TopTal IIRC also does that.

> they saved time and money by not doing lengthy and involved interviews

I wouldn't be so sure here. You can be easily played, i.e. you are in Seattle, somebody wants to visit friends there, schedules an interview with you, you pay flights + hotels because you are happy to talk to them, they use you and extract whatever information they wanted to acquire from you and then tell you they decided for another alternative, but went there mostly to visit friends/relatives/handle some administrative business. It happens.

> Please propose a better process!

It's tricky. The deficiency in your approach I see is that you expect candidate to spend time in convincing you without you spending time on researching them, pushing all externalities to the candidate. With this you IMO cut the people you want/need the most as they usually value their time. Maybe if you offered compensated initial interviews to people you spent some time researching, that could help? That would be a signal you did your research already as you wouldn't want to waste money on random people, and that you appreciate them dedicating time talking to you?

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#242

Post by crdoconnor »

dahart wrote: post #236
crdoconnor wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past I've given programming tasks that mimic real life work as closely as possible and fit them into a reasonable time frame - for example, 1 hour of pairing/programming during an arranged face to face interview. If the test is well designed, touches on a number of areas and self contained, I think this was sufficient for me to assess their skills. "Mimic real life" means no puzzles (unless I've literally expe…

> 1 hour of pairing/programming during an arranged face to face interview. If the test is well designed, touches on a number of areas and self contained, I think this was sufficient for me to assess their skills. Sounds great. I've done this too, but I've never done it before screening candidates. I don't have enough time to screen candidates by programming with them. > "Mimic real life" means no puzzles (unless I've…

>I've never done it before screening candidates

No me neither. I screened with a 5 minute fizz buzz like task and CV fits. Bad programmers slipped through the net (and were caught by the test) but I never got anybody who literally couldnt code. I was happy with that balance.

I was afraid if I made it longer than 5 mins we'd filter out good candidates who couldn't be bothered with our bullshit.

>One high profile false negative anecdote, while unfortunate, doesn't imply there's a widespread or unexpected problem.

It does imply that it just doesn't prove it.

A wanton disregard for realism in interviewing is, in my experience, very clearly systemic and industry-wide.

>tweet you shared does make it sound like he expected to get the job without an interview

Seriously wtf? I think you're starstruck by Google and that is affecting your judgement.

Asking him about binary trees was dumb. Unless Google place him somewhere patently unsuitable for his skill set (kernel hacking/low level database code), he won't be using binary trees.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#243

Post by crdoconnor »

bitL wrote: post #230
crdoconnor wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past I've given programming tasks that mimic real life work as closely as possible and fit them into a reasonable time frame - for example, 1 hour of pairing/programming during an arranged face to face interview. If the test is well designed, touches on a number of areas and self contained, I think this was sufficient for me to assess their skills. "Mimic real life" means no puzzles (unless I've literally expe…

Getting to Google is more difficult than getting to Harvard. They built their process that way risking rejecting great candidates in order to minimize false positives, bad hires, according to their definition of bad hire. So the Homebrew author could have expected it, it happens all the time. I object to using the same criteria throughout the industry on most jobs these days though, instead of only on top-end ones. I…

Explain to me the justification behind using an interview process that deliberately placed no emphasis on realism.

This guy wouldn't be using binary trees at Google. He hasn't used them before. They are of minimal relevance in his area of expertise.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#244

Post by WDCDev »

dahart wrote: post #238
bitL wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are completely missing the point I am trying to make. Imagine you have strong interest from Google, FB, Uber, Amazon etc. Google wants to waive their interview process as you are an open source contributor (they actually read your CV and clicked on the links). FB wants you to lead some ML team they have doing cool things etc. Other companies beg you to work for them even if you don't consider them interes…

Please propose a better process! > Google wants to waive their interview process as you are an open source contributor. Other companies beg you to work for them even if you don't consider them interesting, willing to overpay you and pamper you. That's not a realistic scenario, your point seems contrived. Google doesn't waive their interview process, as the @mxcl example demonstrates. Companies only beg to throw money…

I'll bite on your suggestion of a different process.

Bring the candidate on site for a 4 hour coding session. Provide a standard list of questions the scale in difficulty. Think:

1) Fizzbuzz

2) Reverse a string

3) Write a calculator class/script

...

100) Write an algorithm that can search compressed text without decompressing it

So you see how far and correct they can get with an IDE ... and maybe no internet connection.

Noon - Hiring Manager lunch Afternoon - 1 or 2 design interviews on the white board.

So you have done a few things here that I want to outline.

A) You got rid of the stupid whiteboard

B) You have one process that scales for experience levels!

C) You can tailor the problem set at a certain of difficulty to specific languages

This interview style ensures the developer/engineer knows how to code, and can be weighted appropriately to certain skill levels.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#246

Post by bitL »

crdoconnor wrote: post #243
bitL wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting to Google is more difficult than getting to Harvard. They built their process that way risking rejecting great candidates in order to minimize false positives, bad hires, according to their definition of bad hire. So the Homebrew author could have expected it, it happens all the time. I object to using the same criteria throughout the industry on most jobs these days though, instead of only on top-end ones. I…

Explain to me the justification behind using an interview process that deliberately placed no emphasis on realism. This guy wouldn't be using binary trees at Google. He hasn't used them before. They are of minimal relevance in his area of expertise.

I guess you need to talk to Norvig or whoever designed their data-driven process and the definition of good hire they wanted to achieve. It used to be that when you joined Google you had no clue what your project will be before your first day, so I guess they wanted to maximize success rate on blind assignments to teams/ideas. For that certain abstract skills are more important than your past accomplishments you might not be able to reproduce in different environment with different rules. It's their money after all, they are desirable, they can select for whatever they wish.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#247

Post by zaphar »

UncleMeat wrote: post #200
zaphar wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Letting the applicant dictate the terms of the evaluation That sounds vaguely biased toward the employer. An interview is a a two way process. The candidate in this case will likely have no problem finding a job. In a way, it sounds like he's doing his own pre-screening and the hacker rank request is a non-positive signal for him. Our profession is somewhat bifurcated. There are the developers who only ever do glue c…

How can I, as an employer, provide a fair interview process if every interviewee gets to pick terms? A uniform process isn't because we think it is the optimal process, but because it is the best process that ensures fairness.

Picking the terms is a negotiation. I think sometimes we forget that the interviewee is also interviewing us as a prospective employer. This isn't a school exam. Hiring is a business negotiation. Pretending that it's not is counterproductive.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#248

Post by dahart »

bitL wrote: post #241
dahart wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please propose a better process! > Google wants to waive their interview process as you are an open source contributor. Other companies beg you to work for them even if you don't consider them interesting, willing to overpay you and pamper you. That's not a realistic scenario, your point seems contrived. Google doesn't waive their interview process, as the @mxcl example demonstrates. Companies only beg to throw money…

> Google doesn't waive their interview process They actually do. What they told me is that if you are an open source contributor for important open source, or you have 3 people within company that want you, you can skip the whole process. There are surely more ways to skip it. Not sure why they didn't do it for that Homebrew guy. > when you express interest in the company. I was mentioning that these days often Hacke…

> The deficiency in your approach I see is that you expect candidate to spend time in convincing you without you spending time on researching them, pushing all externalities to the candidate.

You expect people to do research, but you clearly haven't listened to anything I've said about my process, which I've commented on multiple times in this thread. Your summary is a straw man unrelated to anything I do when I hire people.

And you still haven't yet proposed anything better!

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#249

Post by dahart »

WDCDev wrote: post #244
dahart wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please propose a better process! > Google wants to waive their interview process as you are an open source contributor. Other companies beg you to work for them even if you don't consider them interesting, willing to overpay you and pamper you. That's not a realistic scenario, your point seems contrived. Google doesn't waive their interview process, as the @mxcl example demonstrates. Companies only beg to throw money…

I'll bite on your suggestion of a different process. Bring the candidate on site for a 4 hour coding session. Provide a standard list of questions the scale in difficulty. Think: 1) Fizzbuzz 2) Reverse a string 3) Write a calculator class/script ... 100) Write an algorithm that can search compressed text without decompressing it So you see how far and correct they can get with an IDE ... and maybe no internet connect…

I love this suggestion, and thank you for elaborating! FWIW, the interviews that I've talked about taking as a candidate actually used this approach. And, when I give interviews, I use this approach too.

The only thing I'm really defending here is using a 2nd stage screening process that only takes 30 minutes, before I go to the 3rd stage that takes a half day or full day. @BitL seems to be fighting the screening process, which is a necessary practicality and isn't going away.

The first stage is reading resume and glancing briefly at any side projects, which is ~5 minutes. The first stage is invisible, and filters out more people than any other stage. If anything unfair is happening, it's happening here, and there's little a candidate can do about it.

My thoughts on your outline:

A - getting rid of the whiteboard is of course optional. In my case, having graded exercises doesn't mean I stop using the whiteboard. I only provide a whiteboard for people who want one, and I don't ask people to whiteboard things better done in an IDE.

B - Yes! I do like having exercises that range from super easy to not solvable. It helps to know where people get stuck.

C - Yes! That's very helpful for language specific jobs. Personally, I also like exercises that are language agnostic, to let the candidate pick the language they're most comfortable with. I've loved doing coding quizzes in Python during interviews, and would prefer that over, say, C++.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#250

Post by bitL »

WDCDev wrote: post #244
dahart wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please propose a better process! > Google wants to waive their interview process as you are an open source contributor. Other companies beg you to work for them even if you don't consider them interesting, willing to overpay you and pamper you. That's not a realistic scenario, your point seems contrived. Google doesn't waive their interview process, as the @mxcl example demonstrates. Companies only beg to throw money…

I'll bite on your suggestion of a different process. Bring the candidate on site for a 4 hour coding session. Provide a standard list of questions the scale in difficulty. Think: 1) Fizzbuzz 2) Reverse a string 3) Write a calculator class/script ... 100) Write an algorithm that can search compressed text without decompressing it So you see how far and correct they can get with an IDE ... and maybe no internet connect…

What I liked was using shared Jupyter Notebook during a video call. You avoid whiteboard coding, you can see what the algorithm does immediately and fix any issues and both interviewer and candidate can have more interesting conversation, telling you if you are a good personality fit.
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