What’s this thing about the thank you emails? Thank who? When?
Do people send thank you emails after going to an interview but before they are offered/not offered the job? Or when is it? And why?
The Secret Rules For Getting Hired
81–90 of 122 posts
Re: The Secret Rules For Getting Hired
#82From what I've seen and experienced most people doing the hiring are clueless. What's worse is most of them are insane. That is, they keep doing the same but expect different results. Personally, I still shocked - and am mindful of the red flag - when they don't realize I'm interviewing them as much as they are interviewing me.
I'm a software engineer that's been involved in hiring decisions in the past. When we make a bad hire we do a post-mortem just like we would for a critical production bug. We adjust the interview process or evaluation criteria every time a bad hire is made. We also give the same interview for every role. We spend 80% of the time asking the same questions, and leave 20% of the time for the free flow conversation and i…
Do you include the 'bad hire' in the post mortem as well?
Re: The Secret Rules For Getting Hired
#83>"If someone doesn't send a thank you email, don't hire them". I recently went through a short job search for programming work in Austin. I made it all the way to the final, on-site interview at three places before landing an offer. Every time I did not get an offer, I would get an email saying "thank you so much for your time, please reply with your concerns or questions!" And so, each time, I sent and email asking…
each time, I sent and email asking "what did I do wrong, and what could I improve?" There's no upside for the company in giving any substantial answer to questions like this, and significant potential downside. Among other things it's generally not going to be that you were rejected for the position, it's that someone else was chosen over you. "Rejected" would be "we'd rather leave the position vacant than hire you"…
I think that's exactly right in the typical case.
However, if the company is dealing with a recruitment agency it might be useful for the company to let the agency know why a candidate was not suitable, so that they get better candidates in future, and the recruitment agent (who is a "double agent" really) might pass the information on to the candidate (probably not in writing). I've heard of that happening.
Also, in cases where there isn't a position to be filled, but the interviewee is trying to persuade the company to create the position, in those cases the company can be a bit more open in saying why they have decided not to proceed. I've heard of that happening, too.
Re: The Secret Rules For Getting Hired
#84There are very few rules in getting hired. A few are: 1. First class people hire first class people. 2. Second class people hire third class people. 3. People like to hire people similar to themselves. 4. Not getting a job does not really say anything about you, but the guy they hired says a lot about the company. PS: 5. Most companies, when offered unexperienced talent and an experienced idiot, will hire the experie…
On 5 - nowadays I’d probably look to get rid of someone who suggested IBM in most companies... that’s a decision made on a golf course that engineers quit over.
Re: The Secret Rules For Getting Hired
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but I don't think "making a good impression in an interview" has a very strong correlation with whether someone is a "right asshole or otherwise seriously toxic." Plenty of decent people don't interview well, and plenty of assholes can put on 'interview face' to get a job.
Most assholes are thinly veiled in an interview. Decent people are nervous, and that’s okay - it’s usually pretty clear. Assholes are trying /hard/ not to come off as such, so when the interviewer inevitably challenges them on a piece of code or their background, they usually end up showing their true colors, at least in my experience.
That’s funny because the last bit of feedback I received on an interview that was supposed to be a “preemptive yes” is that I was “a bit nervous” and they wanted to interview more candidates before making a decision. Sometimes you just can’t win.
Re: The Secret Rules For Getting Hired
#86It's almost not worth complaining about because of the ubiquitous of it, but I absolutely hate and make a point of never doing this if I'm interviewing someone: 1) Puzzle questions not related to the work they'd be doing. It's ok to have a somewhat puzzling geometry puzzle if they're doing, say, 3d work, but for a web dev? Etc. etc. 2) Coding on a white board. Can't you just setup a laptop in a conference room? Or ha…
I write code on a whiteboard, when discussing how to solve a problem with colleagues. Almost exactly like in an interview. Do people really not do this?
I have frequently done whiteboarding, which is different from coding on a whiteboard.
Working through approaches to solving a problem at a high level, or workshopping a schedule for a feature. That sort of thing.
It’s also a decent skill to test someone on if your team uses it and the role requires it. But coding on a whiteboard is pointless, don’t do this to people please.
Re: The Secret Rules For Getting Hired
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a software engineer that's been involved in hiring decisions in the past. When we make a bad hire we do a post-mortem just like we would for a critical production bug. We adjust the interview process or evaluation criteria every time a bad hire is made. We also give the same interview for every role. We spend 80% of the time asking the same questions, and leave 20% of the time for the free flow conversation and i…
Do you include the 'bad hire' in the post mortem as well?
We do exit interviews, which is reviewed in the post mortem. Failure is defined as a hire that lasts less than one year.
Re: The Secret Rules For Getting Hired
#88These "rules" miss the big picture. People react in certain ways for entirely different reasons. Example: Recruiter mispronounces my name. I don't say anything. This can be because: 1) I'm a coward. 2) I don't care. 3) I care and am not a coward, but think it would be petty to interrupt the conversation to point this out. 4) I'm overly practical and don't care about this kind of details. 5) I think the other person m…
Why would you even care how they pronounce your name, unless it's an English name? If they mispronounce Jones then sure that would be a red flag for many reasons, but if it's Nguyen? Can anyone outside Vietnam actually pronounce Nguyen? It's virtually impossible to do without practice if your native language is English. Or take Chinese "Qi" or "Xi", or basically any Polish sound. If your language doesn't have nasal v…
Names are important. It’s certainly understandable if someone makes a mistake the first time, though.
Re: The Secret Rules For Getting Hired
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you even care how they pronounce your name, unless it's an English name? If they mispronounce Jones then sure that would be a red flag for many reasons, but if it's Nguyen? Can anyone outside Vietnam actually pronounce Nguyen? It's virtually impossible to do without practice if your native language is English. Or take Chinese "Qi" or "Xi", or basically any Polish sound. If your language doesn't have nasal v…
Names are important. It’s certainly understandable if someone makes a mistake the first time, though.
But some names are indeed impossible to pronounce for none-native speakers. In Flemish we have the name Geert, and I never heard any none-native speaker been able to properly say it. That 'G' sound that we make is not used anywhere else that I know of.
Re: The Secret Rules For Getting Hired
#90From what I've seen and experienced most people doing the hiring are clueless. What's worse is most of them are insane. That is, they keep doing the same but expect different results. Personally, I still shocked - and am mindful of the red flag - when they don't realize I'm interviewing them as much as they are interviewing me.
I'm a software engineer that's been involved in hiring decisions in the past. When we make a bad hire we do a post-mortem just like we would for a critical production bug. We adjust the interview process or evaluation criteria every time a bad hire is made. We also give the same interview for every role. We spend 80% of the time asking the same questions, and leave 20% of the time for the free flow conversation and i…
Aren't you afraid that you focus too much on avoiding the bad ones, and not on trying to hire the top ones?
You cannot do a postmortem for failing to hire top talent, because you will never know.
What I want to say is that a bad hire is probably less important than missing out on a top candidate. Because you can always fire as soon as you find out. The other error cannot be corrected.