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One Hour Hire - Hacking Engineer Interviews

rocketship.instacart.com

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Re: One Hour Hire - Hacking Engineer Interviews

#31

Post by sjtgraham »

crazygringo wrote: post #6

Sorry, but they're crazy if they think halfway decent engineers are going to spend 7.5 hours of their time doing a coding quiz before they even have a personal interview with them. They seem to be forgetting that potential engineers are interviewing them just as much as they're interviewing the engineers -- and such a crazy up-front time commitment is a sure way to weed out the engineers who have better things to do…

Here is an idea. Why not pay candidates for their time? e.g.

"We are serious about who we hire, so we're careful about who we do hire. However, we realise you're interviewing us as much as we are you, so we're equally as serious about showing respect for your time. We really appreciate it, so we'll pay you $m/hour while you complete this tests. We think these three tests should take a competent engineer around n hours to complete, so we'll pay you a max of $m*n for completing the process.

Good luck!"

As the OP highlighted hiring is an expensive process (expensive engineers interviewing candidates, double whammy of them not working on product while interviewing), it could be a lot cheaper to just automate some of the process, but make it more humane by compensating the interviewee.

There is a definite balance to strike between the humanity and scalability aspects, but I think it's an interesting idea.

Re: One Hour Hire - Hacking Engineer Interviews

#32

Post by drob »

We (Heap) would use Manchuria if you were to open source it. We currently have a multi-tab spreadsheet. My previous employer had an awful Salesforce system which was about as fun as eating sand.

You might even get a PR or two. :)

Re: One Hour Hire - Hacking Engineer Interviews

#33

Post by loteck »

shiftb wrote: post #19
crazygringo wrote: post #6

Sorry, but they're crazy if they think halfway decent engineers are going to spend 7.5 hours of their time doing a coding quiz before they even have a personal interview with them. They seem to be forgetting that potential engineers are interviewing them just as much as they're interviewing the engineers -- and such a crazy up-front time commitment is a sure way to weed out the engineers who have better things to do…

I understand why you got that impression. We've automated the technical skills part of it. Hiring at Instacart isn't a completely automated, no personal interaction, process. In between the candidate applying and the technical challenges is usually a phone call where we talk to the candidate to make sure we're on the same page. We find out what their goals are and if we can help. We explain how we work, and see if th…

What do you learn in an 8 hour process that you couldn't learn in a 4 hour process?

Re: One Hour Hire - Hacking Engineer Interviews

#34

Post by imsofuture »

rnovak wrote: post #5

"...We've had to pass on some amazing engineers just because they did not have the rails web, front or back end experience. " Why would anyone want to work with amazing engineers?

That does stick out like a sore thumb.

You shouldn't be hiring people because they have experience that matches your tech stack solely because they'll kick ass on the first week.

You should be hiring people that will kick ass 3 weeks in, and a year from now, and 5 years from now -- regardless of whether or not they currently have competence in the nitty gritty details of whatever libwidget you use at this exact moment.

Re: One Hour Hire - Hacking Engineer Interviews

#35

Post by geebee »

Unfortunately, I've done a 5-7 hour "project", only to not hear back from the company for a month - and then it was from a recruiter, not a developer, who just told me that they had decided "not to pursue further".

I decided at the time that I would never do this again, and that's still more or less the case. I might be willing to make a deal - if someone from the company is willing to put a workday into one of my open source projects, even just trying it out and writing up the experience, I might be willing to spend a workday on their programming assignment.

Or, of course, if my family was starving and I was unemployed, I'd do it.

One huge difference here - they do say they'll give detailed feedback. If I had gotten detailed feedback on my programming assignment instead of crickets chirping for a month and then a recruiter call with a one-sentence brush off, that would have taken quite a bit of the edge off. I do give them credit for this.

But still, they are mainly looking for a way to use a candidate's time to their own at an 8:1 ratio. For me, this is a "no apply" condition.

Re: One Hour Hire - Hacking Engineer Interviews

#36

Post by dfan »

crazygringo wrote: post #6

Sorry, but they're crazy if they think halfway decent engineers are going to spend 7.5 hours of their time doing a coding quiz before they even have a personal interview with them. They seem to be forgetting that potential engineers are interviewing them just as much as they're interviewing the engineers -- and such a crazy up-front time commitment is a sure way to weed out the engineers who have better things to do…

We have an off-line coding test that probably takes about a day on average. This is after a three-question quiz that takes a couple of hours. I'm pretty surprised that so many people are willing to go through all of that.

Re: One Hour Hire - Hacking Engineer Interviews

#37

Post by loteck »

apoorvamehta wrote: post #16
ryanSrich wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they expect me to put in 7.5 hours of my time but they only want to spend an hour of their time. Got it. Sounds like a great company to work for...

One day for a several year investment seems pretty logical to us.

Why not 2 days, then? Maybe he should complete an entire project for free - why not, for a "several year investment?"

Personally, I think it's great when companies not only advertise these kind of practices with pride, but then send staff out onto the net to defend them against a veritable tide of criticism. It will certainly help you narrow your pool of applicants, and that is clearly what you are after - it says so in your "how to hire a human" flowchart! Haha.

Re: One Hour Hire - Hacking Engineer Interviews

#38

Post by atom-morgan »

Apocryphon wrote: post #21

"A rejected candidate should know unambiguously why they didn’t get the job." I'd have to say that's my favorite thing about this process. All too often applicants go away with no idea about what exactly why they weren't a good fit. If someone gets rejected, the least you can do for them is to tell them how, so they can improve themselves.

Exactly. If the team just couldn't see me fitting in to their group. Fine. No problem at all. But please tell me so I don't lose sleep thinking I may have bombed the technical interview.

Re: One Hour Hire - Hacking Engineer Interviews

#39

Post by EvanKelly »

Apocryphon wrote: post #21

"A rejected candidate should know unambiguously why they didn’t get the job." I'd have to say that's my favorite thing about this process. All too often applicants go away with no idea about what exactly why they weren't a good fit. If someone gets rejected, the least you can do for them is to tell them how, so they can improve themselves.

I know companies and HR have been trained to not answer these types of things based on potential legal ramifications.

I've had luck emailing after an unsuccessful interview and saying "Thank you for the opportunity. Informally, is there anything I can work on so that I could be a successful candidate in the future?"

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