Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#91

Post by kamaal » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

barbegal wrote: post #15

denzil_correa wrote: post #9

> We will do our best to provide a 15 minute break and/or lunch/coffee break during your interviews, especially if you'll be interviewing for more than 3 hours. That said, we are happy to accommodate additional breaks or fewer breaks, depending on your preferences, just let your recruiter or recruiting coordinator know! I have seen this w/o breaks 5-7 interviews a day, too often. Some candidates suffer from low energ…

Is there any evidence to suggest that more than 3 hours of interviews is actually beneficial? 7 hours of interview seems like overkill. I've never had more than a couple of hours of interview: an hour with the department head and another hour with my future line manager and/or another senior employee.

>>7 hours of interview seems like overkill.

7?

There are companies that do this plus a bar raiser round. Some times two bar raiser rounds.

9 rounds is quite common in FAANGs.

There is also this condition that even single negative feed back after 9 hours of interviews. Like a 10 minute bad session in a 9 hour game disqualifies you. Like 8:50 of blazingly awesome performance is considered a waste even if the feed back was slightly negative in a 10 minute section.

This is basically a circus performance.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#92

Post by LaLaLand122 » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

incognito_limey wrote: post #58

twic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not total package, but actual base salary ranges Why base salary rather than total comp?

Because I've experienced a lot of number fiddling to describe total comp. For example we offer you X equity at Y valuation, when the valuation is something they have made up internally etc. I want to know how much cash in hand I can expect. Also, offering private health insurance, when you live in a country with a decent public health care system is not much of benefit and generally not worth what the company says it…

I never got offered private health insurance in Spain by an employer. I have it in the UK. When I was a kid I had access to private health insurance in Spain, so I know it a bit.

I find the NHS I have today is slighty worse than the Spanish equivalent I left a decade ago. Maybe because of the austerity policy of the Conservative government during the last decade, I don't know. In any case is not too bad.

Funny enough the private health insurances in Spain, which have to compete with a better public system, are WAAAAAAAAAAAAY better than ANY available in the UK.

At first I used the UK private insurance from my employer thinking "if they are being paid let's at least use them, saving resources to the NHS for people without an alternative". But not anymore...

- It's more complicated

- I have an uncomfortable relationship with my doctor when there are financial incentives involved (specially after one specific case)

I actually need to pay a 40% of the price of the insurance in income tax. The only reason I have not asked my employer to stop it is because the NHS cancer treatment times are getting longer than they should. That's the only benefit I see in them: a potentially shorter time to treatment in cases where time may make the difference between life and death.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#93

Post by freedomben » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

claudeganon wrote: post #86

pdimitar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is strongly misaligned with many companies' incentives so it will never happen, I am afraid. A lot of interviewing processes are kind of like fishing. They hope that if they wasted you 6-10 hours of your time before an actual offer then you'd make a decision based on the sunk cost fallacy ("not sure how much time the other companies will waste me, let's take this one on their offer, it's not so bad"). I am glad…

The solution is to make companies pay people for their time during interviews, at an hourly rate equivalent to compensation for the position. Everyone else in the interview is getting paid by the company, after all. Suddenly, managers, hiring committees, and recruiters will stop wasting people’s time and everyone will know what to expect to get paid!

That's an interesting idea, tho I expect it would have the unintended consequence of making it really hard to get an interview.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#94

Post by tschwimmer » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 5:07 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #24

My general thought is that your compensation scale should be proportional to the complexity of the interview process. If you're going to be copying the FAANG interview process, then the candidate should expect an offer similar to what they'd get from FAANG. In general, I haven't been disappointed on this front, but I fear that many people are. If you want to be super transparent about the interview process, you shoul…

I’ve actually found that there’s an inverse correlation: companies with worse comp seem to have more rounds, more take home and harder questions. The confounding variable is that the lower comp companies tend to be startups.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#95

Post by azhenley » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

A recent research paper looked at traditional coding interviews versus "private" interviews. One of the authors summarized the paper in a blog post [1].

[1] The case for the private technical interview. https://medium.com/@gameweld/the-case-for-the-private-techni...

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#96

Post by vkou » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

brailsafe wrote: post #27

barbegal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence to suggest that more than 3 hours of interviews is actually beneficial? 7 hours of interview seems like overkill. I've never had more than a couple of hours of interview: an hour with the department head and another hour with my future line manager and/or another senior employee.

Afaik, research suggests that interviewers know after 20 seconds whether they'll hire someone. I don't have references and don't know if this would translate well to tech interviewing, but I'd wager that the vast majority of a 7h interview day is totally pointless.

20 seconds? Nonsense.

Thirty minutes is usually enough to form an opinion, but the purpose of the other thirty is to gather supporting evidence, so that I can justify my hire/no hire decision.

If you are letting your interview candidates bomb their interview in less than 15 minutes, your expectations for them are highly unrealistic.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#97

Post by vkou » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #91

barbegal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence to suggest that more than 3 hours of interviews is actually beneficial? 7 hours of interview seems like overkill. I've never had more than a couple of hours of interview: an hour with the department head and another hour with my future line manager and/or another senior employee.

>>7 hours of interview seems like overkill. 7? There are companies that do this plus a bar raiser round. Some times two bar raiser rounds. 9 rounds is quite common in FAANGs. There is also this condition that even single negative feed back after 9 hours of interviews. Like a 10 minute bad session in a 9 hour game disqualifies you. Like 8:50 of blazingly awesome performance is considered a waste even if the feed back…

FAANG will usually happily hire you if you had one bad on-site interview, but the rest were good.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#98

Post by kyawzazaw » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 5:39 PM UTC

lnsru wrote: post #25

gozzoo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We expect you to use git, commit code as you go along, and build the app iteratively -- just as you would during a normal workday. This seems a little bit odd to me. How long do you expect people to work on their home assigments in order for them to commit often? Is it days, or weeks? I don't imagine multiple commits for a 3 hour poject. For a new project there aren't any well defined states of the code that make s…

It is not expected to be 3 hours project. Target easily 3 days for it. Requirement to get more points for this assignment from that page: “Detailed documentation with setup, screenshots, configuration instructions, etc.” This alone might take couple hours.

Basecamp pays $1500 or so for take-home assignments. Do you offer similar compensation?

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#99

Post by pm24601 » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 5:46 PM UTC

How about telling candidates why they were rejected?

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#100

Post by greggyb » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 5:47 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #91

barbegal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence to suggest that more than 3 hours of interviews is actually beneficial? 7 hours of interview seems like overkill. I've never had more than a couple of hours of interview: an hour with the department head and another hour with my future line manager and/or another senior employee.

>>7 hours of interview seems like overkill. 7? There are companies that do this plus a bar raiser round. Some times two bar raiser rounds. 9 rounds is quite common in FAANGs. There is also this condition that even single negative feed back after 9 hours of interviews. Like a 10 minute bad session in a 9 hour game disqualifies you. Like 8:50 of blazingly awesome performance is considered a waste even if the feed back…

Recently had a couple of interviews with members of FAANG.

First was a quick call with a recruiter to make sure the role was a good fit. Then a prep call where I was told exactly what my interviews would be, then a 3 hour session with 10 minute breaks between each of three interviews.

The second was a similar quick call with a recruiter, then a 1 hour phone call technical screen. Then a prep call and ample prep material shared by the recruiter. Then a 5 hour session of 45 minute interviews with 15 minute breaks each hour.

These were both for technical roles, but not 100% engineering roles. Both processes were fully remote. I was struck by how well prepared I was, and how few surprises there were.

I had a chance to discuss the interview process with both companies, and they talked about changes in the process to support remote interviewing. The first indicated that there was no difference other than being remote. The second indicated that their typical interviews were full hours, rather than 45 minutes, but otherwise the number of interviews was the same.