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If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

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Re: If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

#321

Post by Morgawr »

patrickserrano wrote: post #228
xtracto wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found it funny that a week ago I got an email from a Google recruiter, offering me to enter their interviewing machinery. I bluntly told him that I rejected the offer because of the horror stories regarding 5-7 interviews in Google. The recruiter's reply was that it was ok of this was not an appropriate time for me , and that we would stay in touch. How can they be so dense? Of course it may be that they are also j…

Google interviews sound awful if I'm being honest. The last recruiter I spoke with said it involved a technical test and phone interview, after which they'd see what teams had openings and that it would be 3-4 2+ hour interviews per team before an offer was made if I was a fit. Who has the time for this?

> after which they'd see what teams had openings and that it would be 3-4 2+ hour interviews per team before an offer was made if I was a fit. Who has the time for this?

This is really not how the Google interview process works. At least not as far as I know.

1) Each interview is only 1 hour

2) Usually it's 5 technical interviews (after you pass phone screening and the 2 initial remote interviews)

3) The team matching (unless you're applying for a specific position or under special circumstances) happens after you've passed all interviews and the hiring committee has approved you for hire

Re: If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

#322

Post by tmcz26 »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #309
bazmattaz wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what they are. The HR person just needs to rule out the weirdos and North Korean hackers! You would be foolish to not have that (very easy) chat with the Hr person just to progress

you have to ask, why are they getting weirdos and north korean hackers. that's the reason i dont want to engage with these kind of companies. if you're talking to hr at stage 1, it just means the automated system validated your application has all the right keywords. its a red flag for me.

At my old startup I probably interviewed 80-100 people for all roles, from sales to SE. We’d have 3 rounds, the 1st being a quick 20min chat over the phone/call as a sniff test.

HR would do those to filter bullshitters, but also set expectations on culture, salary, work etc. If the person came from a huge bank and is joining a 50-people team, they need to understand the difference in work environments.

So I’d second other comments saying that I wouldn’t rule out a company just because HR is doing triage.

Edit: typo

Re: If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

#323

Post by tmcz26 »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #302
rendall wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If my first interview is with an HR person, no thanks I always think of these as a sniff-test. They just want to see if you are a real person, who can speak and recite whatever is on your CV/resume. If in-person, that you shower and dress. That's it. If you can pass that stage, you're on to the more expensive interviews.

I must stink, because I get most of my rejections at the HR stage. But I also have no idea what to ask during them either. They always give their 10 minute spiel about what the company is, ask me to give my own 5-10 minute spiel about my work history, then ask if I have any questions. I give my 5-10 minutes of regurgitating my resume in sentence form, and then generally don't have any questions. what kind of question…

Ask about the company culture and work environment, the team you’ll be working on. Compensation if they haven’t said anything yet.

This HR sniff test also serves to check for interest. When I interview, if the person has zero questions for me it means they don’t really care that much or weren’t paying attention. Questions mean you’re curious. A 10-minute speech about what the company is and the team does is not enough for you to understand the job and work, so follow-up questions are important. Also it lets the person know where your mind goes, what questions come up first, etc.

Just don’t brown-nose them and ask fake questions just to ask any :)

Re: If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

#324

Post by Shugarl »

yrgulation wrote: post #66
inferiorhuman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been doing the look for work grind off and on for a few months. I've had one okay, one great (Render), a couple comically bad, and then a bunch of leetcode type places… for an SRE role. The best of the leetcode fans actually had the self-awareness to ask why I declined the interview request. One recruiter begged me to go through with it because they were working hard on getting an exemption for SRE hires so it w…

> I've been doing the look for work grind off and on for a few months. ok i may be living in a bubble or something. where in the world is looking for work in tech a grind?

The first time I looked for a job, it took about 11 months. 11 months of learning about companies that I'm not interested in just so that I can pretend to be excited to join them, pretending to be interested in the field they're in, of practicing leet code questions, of being asked to redo my resume in a specific way, of being asked to build web apps and do code challenges before being able to have a discussion with someone in their IT team, of showing up at interviews where a recruiter oversold my profile, and so on...

Re: If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

#325

Post by lelanthran »

philliphaydon wrote: post #298
lelanthran wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why propbation periods exist. It’s a chance for the employee or employer to back out. It's not an equal risk though - the employer can easily weather (or not even notice) the ending of that employment, while the employee undergoes a life-changing event.

I disagree. > the employer can easily weather In a large business maybe, but more often than not in a large business you're a number and you're gonna pass probation regardless. In a smaller business, the cost of recruitment process can be huge, it's not just 1 hour interview and you're done as an employer. It's hours of reviewing CVs, contacting people, arranging times, conducting interviews, weening people out, disr…

> In a smaller business, the cost of recruitment process can be huge, it's not just 1 hour interview and you're done as an employer. It's hours of reviewing CVs, contacting people, arranging times, conducting interviews, weening people out, disruption to your primary job role, etc etc. That's a huge cost and drain on the business.

Not as life-changing to the business as it is to the employee.

> At the same time I've only seen 1 person quit during probation after 1 week. He was hired to do Design and HTML/CSS, but decided after 1 week he didn't like doing HTML/CSS and decided to leave. Which made my boss absolutely furious because of the wasted time that the typical 1 week notice was thrown out the window and he was asked to leave the building right away.

And yet, that did not cause the business to pay the current employees less, or downstaff, did it?

After all, if the financial implication did not involve cutting costs down just to survive, then it is not comparable to an individual, who literally has to spend less money and cut out existing costs just to survive.

Re: If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

#326

Post by sofixa »

bruce511 wrote: post #37

Interviewing is hard, requires skills precisely zero people are trained to do, and has huge long-term upsides and downsides to a business. I'm a programmer. I trained for years to do that. Then I'm asked to hire someone. A task I have zero experience or training at. Spoiler alert - any actual competence is a fluke. At my peak I was hiring maybe 2 or 3 people in a year. Mostly I hired people I'd heard about who came w…

Isn't it standard practice to have staff participating in interviews be trained for that? I would have thought it is given the gravity of the task.

At my current job interviewer training is one of the mandatory (pretty sure it's the last one, but still) trainings as part of the onboarding process. It's a function of how distributed the interviewing process is, but even in a classical HR+hiring manager+team member process why wouldn't there be any training on what to do?

Re: If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

#327

Post by aix1 »

Morgawr wrote: post #321
patrickserrano wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google interviews sound awful if I'm being honest. The last recruiter I spoke with said it involved a technical test and phone interview, after which they'd see what teams had openings and that it would be 3-4 2+ hour interviews per team before an offer was made if I was a fit. Who has the time for this?

> after which they'd see what teams had openings and that it would be 3-4 2+ hour interviews per team before an offer was made if I was a fit. Who has the time for this? This is really not how the Google interview process works. At least not as far as I know. 1) Each interview is only 1 hour 2) Usually it's 5 technical interviews (after you pass phone screening and the 2 initial remote interviews) 3) The team matchin…

That's right, for SWE positions there's only one set of interviews and each interview lasts 45 minutes. The composition of an interview slate varies by level and role applied for (e.g. some roles require domain knowledge and it's not uncommon for one interview to focus on that). There are no per-team interviews.

Source: hiring manager & hiring committee member.

Re: If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

#328

Post by sshine »

treyfitty wrote: post #94

I’ve been interviewing for 8 months. Getting to many final rounds, 1 lowballed offer, 1 rescinded offer, and it’s playing a mental toll. Today, I got a rejection that went along the lines of “everyone loved you and there was absolutely 0 negative feedback, but we just found a better fit.” I almost broke down, but hid behind a facade of positivity because the long weekend was starting and my kids can’t afford a bummed…

Dodged a bullet!

8 months is seriously too long if it’s the company dragging it out.

I went through something similar where I pulled the plug after 3 months.

Re: If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

#330

Post by akudha »

raffraffraff wrote: post #244
yibg wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve found keeping expenses well below my means provide a great sense of freedom and autonomy. I don’t need to stay at a job I don’t enjoy and not having work means it’s not a big stressor. It also means I can be selective in the job I do end up taking instead of worry about not being able to pay the bills if I’m out of work too long.

This. But it really depends where you live and when (or if) you bought a house. I live in a city that has very expensive housing but bought in 2011 just before the prices corrected after the 2007/2008 crash. That single choice was the biggest we made. But aside from that, for ethical and lifestyle reasons, we are frugal. We use old phones and laptops, a 10 year old TV, don't fly, don't own a car and don't have kids.…

keep your expenses low is easier said than done. Things are different when you have kids, elder people in the family you have to support, than when you’re young and single. In my case, I wanna buy a modest two bedroom apartment that I can afford to pay the mortgage. My family wants to buy a house with a garden.

One of my family members’ 12 year old son suddenly developed a health issue. His dad is worth at least 3M, and was looking to retire in his 40s. But the medical bills are insane, he can’t retire anytime soon, as most of the bills (tens of thousands a month) are being paid by the good insurance his employer gives him.

I have always spent much less than what I make (I don’t even have a bed, I happily sleep on the floor on a sleeping bag). But I also haven’t gotten any raise the last few years, while my rent (for the same apartment) has gone up 20% in the last 4 years. So has my other basic expense like phone bill (same phone, same carrier, same plan), internet etc.

There is a reason people spend long hours working because the alternative is worse.

The most sensible thing to do while one is young is to live frugally, but also earn as much as you can and save.

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