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Hiring Processes Are Also Engineering Processes

ramblinjan.com

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Re: Hiring Processes Are Also Engineering Processes

#51

Post by user5994461 »

ramblinjan wrote: post #49
user5994461 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bad hires are ridiculously costly Here's a serious question. Please make an effort to think about it and come with an answer for your company: What is a "bad hire"?

Isn't my original blog post at least a little bit of evidence that I've put a good bit of time into thinking about that? I mean, a "bad hire" with the consulting/open source shop where I did a lot of interviewing & hiring was something pretty specific. A bad hire where I am right now is something pretty specific.

Hum. Didn't read the usernames.

Too much theory and not enough actionable advice.

You know what. I'm just gonna talk candidates 30 minutes about them, us, me, the company (just talk, not any sort of test). Then I'll ask it to write a program to print number from 1 to 10 (that will be the test). And finally flip a coin before I take a decision (that's the randomness).

I'm pretty sure it follows none of the good practises or advise out there. Yet I'm confident that this is a process that has a low risk of accepting bad hires and a low risk of filtering good hires. =)

Re: Hiring Processes Are Also Engineering Processes

#52

Post by Spooky23 »

ploxiln wrote: post #39
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #27

Where does this assumption come from that rejecting the majority of candidates leads to better results? At some point you're just cutting into the bone and rejecting candidates that are perfectly acceptable. The more candidates you reject, the more time you waste and the more people come out of your interview with a negative experience of the company. These costs can easily outweigh the cost of a bad hire. Nobody wri…

Other professions hire based on pedigree and looking+sounding the part. I personally prefer a hard skills test. But of course I would, the latter scenario favored me much more than the former when I was not-yet done with college, and also when I was looking for my second job in a new city. There's always some complaint in these kinds of threads about whiteboard coding. I love whiteboard coding! I did it a fair bit ou…

I don't understand why everyone is ridiculously tough on interviews but wimps with firing.

Just do a 1 year probation, and payout a couple of months severance with an NDA/non-disparagement clause. If the guy sucks, send him off.

When I read these threads I'm always blown away by the time wasted on the hunger games hiring process. One guy on another thread was talking about 5 interviews with homework. What a waste of time.

Re: Hiring Processes Are Also Engineering Processes

#53

Post by misterbowfinger »

I want to say this again: a technical recruiter should not define hiring policy or hiring process. Their value is in their relatively low cost per candidate.

I look at this a little differently. OP seems to treat Engineering as a totally independent organization within a company. In bigger companies, I understand. But I don't think it makes as much sense in a smaller company, where, often, the tight-knit culture is what's keeping the ship afloat.

Engineering is one piece of the pie. The success of the company is everyone's success. Consequently, the team's hiring process can and should be influenced by people outside of Engineering, to some extent. One has to take the comapany's culture in account.

Re: Hiring Processes Are Also Engineering Processes

#55

Post by ramblinjan »

misterbowfinger wrote: post #53

I want to say this again: a technical recruiter should not define hiring policy or hiring process. Their value is in their relatively low cost per candidate. I look at this a little differently. OP seems to treat Engineering as a totally independent organization within a company. In bigger companies, I understand. But I don't think it makes as much sense in a smaller company, where, often, the tight-knit culture is w…

You've got me looking back at what I've written, because I actually agree with you on company culture (if the company's culture is a positive force). My point about technical recruiters is because they're very often totally separated from the engineering culture. Oddly enough, I'm speaking about smaller companies more so than bigger ones because a large company is less likely to give their engineering teams enough autonomy to really do anything with what I've written.

The main thing I wanted to get at here is that a hiring process can not be thought of as separate from your engineering process. I'm not trying to argue that hiring should be insulated from reality. I'm arguing that there are a lot of companies who are ignoring the fact that it isn't.

Re: Hiring Processes Are Also Engineering Processes

#56

Post by ramblinjan »

user5994461 wrote: post #51
ramblinjan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't my original blog post at least a little bit of evidence that I've put a good bit of time into thinking about that? I mean, a "bad hire" with the consulting/open source shop where I did a lot of interviewing & hiring was something pretty specific. A bad hire where I am right now is something pretty specific.

Hum. Didn't read the usernames. Too much theory and not enough actionable advice. You know what. I'm just gonna talk candidates 30 minutes about them, us, me, the company (just talk, not any sort of test). Then I'll ask it to write a program to print number from 1 to 10 (that will be the test). And finally flip a coin before I take a decision (that's the randomness). I'm pretty sure it follows none of the good practi…

It's really really hard to come up with explicit actionable advice when a core part of your argument is that you need to do what is right for your team/company. To extend my TDD analogy, it would be like trying to write tests for someone else's codebase without any context.

If you want some specific feedback for your team, please reach out to me on Twitter. I'm always thrilled to talk to people about process and organizational development. I'd love to chat with you about actionable ideas for your specific need.

Re: Hiring Processes Are Also Engineering Processes

#57

Post by TheCowboy »

ramblinjan wrote: post #20
bcbrown wrote: post #2

I especially liked this part: > If you need someone who can hit the ground running right away, test them with the exact tools they’ll be using on the job. If you need someone flexible who can learn anything, test them on something new and unique. If you need someone with a level head, try to frustrate your candidates and ditch the ones with short tempers. Edit: Except for deliberately frustrating candidates.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll have to give it some thought because it seems like I failed to explain this well enough (though I may just straight up be wrong about it altogether). The candidates who ended up frustrated weren't feeling that way because we were jerks to them (I don't think). Maybe what I'm getting at is don't be afraid to push people to the limit a little bit in a task, because their reactions to it sa…

Most jobs don't require people who can endure getting "pushed to the limit" every week, hour, day, etc. Especially while under close observation and scrutiny. That would strain most any person. If it is that demanding, then be upfront about that instead of surprising candidates during a stressful interview.

People should be aware of what they accidentally select for in candidates. I feel like I am skilled at remaining calm in crisis work situations where people (customers, co-workers, owners) are dependent upon me, but I can bomb interviews just as easily as the next person. Some approaches might consistently filter people who get stressed during interviews, rather than select people who maintain poise.

Re: Hiring Processes Are Also Engineering Processes

#58

Post by twblalock »

Spooky23 wrote: post #52
ploxiln wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other professions hire based on pedigree and looking+sounding the part. I personally prefer a hard skills test. But of course I would, the latter scenario favored me much more than the former when I was not-yet done with college, and also when I was looking for my second job in a new city. There's always some complaint in these kinds of threads about whiteboard coding. I love whiteboard coding! I did it a fair bit ou…

I don't understand why everyone is ridiculously tough on interviews but wimps with firing. Just do a 1 year probation, and payout a couple of months severance with an NDA/non-disparagement clause. If the guy sucks, send him off. When I read these threads I'm always blown away by the time wasted on the hunger games hiring process. One guy on another thread was talking about 5 interviews with homework. What a waste of…

It costs a company a lot more to hire someone and then fire them, than it does to never hire them at all. Especially if you give them a few months' severance. That's the most generous probation program I've ever heard of.

Re: Hiring Processes Are Also Engineering Processes

#59

Post by IndianAstronaut »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #27

Where does this assumption come from that rejecting the majority of candidates leads to better results? At some point you're just cutting into the bone and rejecting candidates that are perfectly acceptable. The more candidates you reject, the more time you waste and the more people come out of your interview with a negative experience of the company. These costs can easily outweigh the cost of a bad hire. Nobody wri…

>No other profession hires with a full day oral examination

When I was looking into pharmaceutical jobs, before I got into the tech industry, many of my inteeviews were all day affairs. Sometimes 5 or so interviewers would all come into one room and start bombarding you with questions, putting your answers down, play good cop bad cop, etc.

Re: Hiring Processes Are Also Engineering Processes

#60

Post by flukus »

user5994461 wrote: post #47
ramblinjan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on your definition of "perfectly acceptable." Almost every job in every industry with a hiring cycle rejects "a majority of candidates," especially when there's limited space. > These costs can easily outweigh the cost of a bad hire. How so? You're right that I've relied a good bit on the anecdotal, but aren't you doing so a bit here? Bad hires are ridiculously costly--especially on a small team--because t…

> Bad hires are ridiculously costly Here's a serious question. Please make an effort to think about it and come with an answer for your company: What is a "bad hire"?

Someone who writes code bad enough that the maintenance costs of the code outweigh the cost of employing them to write it.

Of course this is often an organizational issue more than a hiring one, but we seem to have given up on fixing those.

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