Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

fs.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 185 posts

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#91

Post by wolco »

fredophile wrote: post #82
edoceo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a gig to hire process for this. It works very well. I've been meaning to write more about it but I also get income for helping with hiring around this model so im a bit conflicted. The whole answer is long and complex. Basically: give candidate a proper task on your project and evaluate them based on that work - the "interview" is less than an hour, the "work" is longer (many hours (and you pay for it)) - provi…

That will work for some people but not everyone. At my current job I can't monetize work I do outside the company without approval. That means I can't go through you application process unless I quit first. Even if I was allowed to do this I don't think I'd want to. The time commitment of an extra project on top of my normal workload is not something I want.

No that means once you start receiving money you have to disclose. The application process is fine.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#92

Post by nogabebop23 »

fredophile wrote: post #82
edoceo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a gig to hire process for this. It works very well. I've been meaning to write more about it but I also get income for helping with hiring around this model so im a bit conflicted. The whole answer is long and complex. Basically: give candidate a proper task on your project and evaluate them based on that work - the "interview" is less than an hour, the "work" is longer (many hours (and you pay for it)) - provi…

That will work for some people but not everyone. At my current job I can't monetize work I do outside the company without approval. That means I can't go through you application process unless I quit first. Even if I was allowed to do this I don't think I'd want to. The time commitment of an extra project on top of my normal workload is not something I want.

what if they "give" you a gift card after you submit? I've had that before, where the gitft card was essentially paypal credit.

Not wanting to do an extra project is the second part of this problem - the best people already have jobs and aren't looking, so they're not going to spend all their free time working on high-effort job applications.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#93

Post by nogabebop23 »

jaaron wrote: post #69
bluedino wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find them through word-of-mouth.

Double edged sword. Certainly helps to find great talent and build a cohesive team. Also tends to perpetuate our biases, create cliques and echo chambers. Makes it harder for new talent to break in. When I build my teams, I try to balance referrals with newly sourced talent far outside my network.

everyone also has a pretty shallow pool of quality talent, so it doesn't scale well.

Once you've been involved in hiring you see why a company will pass on a likely good candidate to avoid a maybe bad experience. In the longer term it's way less work.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#94

Post by poof131 »

stove wrote: post #11

There's a growing rift in software between employers saying "there's a talent shortage" and a rapidly growing population of devs who feel like they're locked out due to the technical interview process. Many of the engineers not being hired are recent bootcamp grads but there are also tons of CS majors that can't seem to "crack" the interview process. Part of my job is helping companies "fix" their hiring and one of t…

I think it’s a fantastic idea and applaud you for your work. The major hurdle is leading companies only want to hire senior devs. Why spend money and implement a training program when you can outsource it. There seems to be 3 paths in. One, go to a top 10 CS college. As a hiring manager, our internship choices were broken down by school with less than a dozen choices: Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, CMU, etc. and a few diversity conferences. The candidates resumes where literally partitioned in folders for each school or “diversity”, so to peruse through hundreds of candidates you had to go by school or conference, with no way to see who had interests or experience in distributed systems, front-end, AI, etc. without choosing a school or conference to look through. I couldn’t believe how biased it was. Two, go work at a startup or small company for below market wages to get experience and try to work your way up to better and better companies. Three, work overseas for a couple years, pay full price for a masters in the US, and then work the H1B masters recruiting pipelines.

While there are exceptions the bootcamps seem to be geared toward path two. I wish bigger companies had training programs. I was working with a veteran who recently graduated from a local college and helping him with interview prep. He couldn’t pass the phone screen for the role I had available and ended up working for a small local consultant which seemed to be more IT focused than dev. I couldn’t in good faith just hire him without support from the team. I wish companies had training programs to hire local people into these jobs, but there really isn’t a shortage of talent that requires them to set these programs up. The shortage is in quality senior devs who could get into a top company but are willing to work for less elsewhere. Anyone who sets up one of these training programs and doesn’t pay FAANG salaries, is just training up candidates to move to FAANG. I guess in a way path two and three really are the training programs you are talking about.

And the stuff you are talking about regarding documentation, testing, etc. also sounds like other tangential roles like TPM or quality, which unfortunately are just being put on developers themselves at many places. I think most companies should have more people in these roles with the aspiration of moving into dev. Maybe a “training” role focused on this could help, but you may also run into resistance from people who are in these roles in organizations.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#95

Post by dahart »

grugagag wrote: post #15

It is true, and not that I am trying to be dishonest myself but I am not the same person while taking an interview. It's a sad that we can't be honest or humble but in this system we have to sell ourselves, fake enthusiasm for the hiring company is a must, do whatever it takes to pass the interview then think later if we take the position or not. If not, somebody else with the same capability or or less will snatch t…

> It's a sad that we can't be honest or humble but in this system we have to sell ourselves, fake enthusiasm for the hiring company is a must, do whatever it takes to pass the interview then think later if we take the position or not. If not, somebody else with the same capability or or less will snatch that job.

As someone who’s given hundreds, maybe thousands of interviews, personally I would advise against this. Being fake about your interests is not more likely to help you get the job you want and one that fits you well, if it even works at all. Being honest about your interests with yourself and your potential employers is the best way to end up being where you want to go.

You can show excitement for specific topics that a company works on, and it’s okay to like the company’s products, or their work environment, but people who are enthusiastic fans of a company without specific reasons to want to work there are, in my experience, not more likely to get hired.

> Plus that interviews like tests are gameable.

This is true, and it’s good to understand so that your expectations don’t go crazy. You are competing against other people, and you have no idea how good they are. All you can do is your best.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#96

Post by jokoon »

antisthenes wrote: post #16
jokoon wrote: post #10

The first time I ever heard the expression "social filter" was from Barrack Obama. There are many things that a democracy can give to its citizens. But apparently, it seems civilization doesn't want to give up social filters. I can understand social filters when it comes to friendships, sex and intimate relationship, but for jobs, I will never understand why they exist.

> I can understand social filters when it comes to friendships, sex and intimate relationship, but for jobs, I will never understand why they exist. Because jobs are just as social as intimate relationships, if not more so. Up to about the 2010s, the majority of marriages came from getting to know someone at work. Even if nothing intimate does come from work, it's still people you have to see 8 hours a day for years…

> Because jobs are just as social as intimate relationships, if not more so.

For very small or family companies, maybe. In small communities, maybe, but small communities could also include people from any horizon.

But in other cases, I disagree. Work and production is the blood of human civilization. Generally, the free market ideology says that if you're competent, it's the only relevant parameter. Social filters are arbitrary, unnecessary and backwards.

> If someone is repulsive/annoying/toxic

The nazis sent people who were not desired to death camps. Today, those same people are being excluded from society through social filters. You cannot have a healthy society if you keep segregating people like this, even if it's not race, but other traits like education, politics or behavior. You're advocating social darwinism through a detour.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#97

Post by addled »

stove wrote: post #11

There's a growing rift in software between employers saying "there's a talent shortage" and a rapidly growing population of devs who feel like they're locked out due to the technical interview process. Many of the engineers not being hired are recent bootcamp grads but there are also tons of CS majors that can't seem to "crack" the interview process. Part of my job is helping companies "fix" their hiring and one of t…

My previous employer did this pretty well. They had a paid internship program, but they also had started as an AS/400 shop writing RPG code, which none of the local colleges taught anymore.

So, they basically developed their own course, and kept it fairly consistent over several years. The first 20 or so hours was some computer based learning modules they had purchased to teach fundamentals and syntax. After that was a series of well documented training assignments.

For the first assignment, they'd be handed an existing report program with several bugs that they'd have to figure out. After that, they would start on a simple CRUD program that they would expand on. At the end was a capstone assignment that simulated a real project from interviewing a "stakeholder" to gathering requirements, writing documentation, and implementing the solution before finally promoting it through the change control process.

Altogether it was 150-200 hours of training, which corresponded to about 2-3 months for a student working part time.

The company recorded everyone's performance, so after the first dozen went through the program, they had a solid baseline for comparison to tell if someone was falling behind or blasting ahead. If a trainee proved they were solid, they might get to skip the last assignment. If they were horrible, it would quickly become apparent and after a few chances to turn things around, they'd be let go.

I ended up on the team responsible for running the training program. Even as the development started shifting to Java, they still used the RPG training for a long time, since it was at least a gauge of a person's ability to pickup unfamiliar tech. Part of my job was to help develop a Java version of the course to eventually become the new default.

Reviewing the assignments was kind of fun and taught me to appreciate people in QA roles. Submissions didn't have to be perfect, but they had to meet a certain level of quality before the trainee could proceed.

Sometimes someone would bomb one of the early assignments, and that was okay, even if fixing the issues and resubmitting took longer than normal to finish. The real red flag was repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

Even though the training program was created for interns, a few of the dev managers would have all their new hires, including senior engineers, go through the same program. Normally the full time hires would "graduate" early, but I know of at least one mid-level dev who didn't make the cut at all. The hiring manager was thankful to have dodged a bullet, and have the historical performance data to back up his decision when he went to talk to HR.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#98

Post by fredophile »

nogabebop23 wrote: post #92
fredophile wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That will work for some people but not everyone. At my current job I can't monetize work I do outside the company without approval. That means I can't go through you application process unless I quit first. Even if I was allowed to do this I don't think I'd want to. The time commitment of an extra project on top of my normal workload is not something I want.

what if they "give" you a gift card after you submit? I've had that before, where the gitft card was essentially paypal credit. Not wanting to do an extra project is the second part of this problem - the best people already have jobs and aren't looking, so they're not going to spend all their free time working on high-effort job applications.

I can't speak for my employer but the IRS certainly views gift cards and similar cash equivalent payments to be taxable income.

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#99

Post by [deleted] »

fredophile wrote: post #98
nogabebop23 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what if they "give" you a gift card after you submit? I've had that before, where the gitft card was essentially paypal credit. Not wanting to do an extra project is the second part of this problem - the best people already have jobs and aren't looking, so they're not going to spend all their free time working on high-effort job applications.

I can't speak for my employer but the IRS certainly views gift cards and similar cash equivalent payments to be taxable income.

[deleted]

Re: Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview

#100

Post by claudiawerner »

simonw wrote: post #48

If you want a really big competitive advantage, figure out how to hire great people who don't interview well.

I'm incredibly nervous about job interviews. I'll start sweating in the first two or three minutes even over Zoom. I recently "fell into" a job because my university supervisor recommended me to a friend of his at a small business in which my only test was a code review I could do the day before. But I worry that for any future job because I'm terrible at algorithm questions, and I suspect (and I doubt this is just impostor syndrome) that I'm simply not great at algorithms, despite a small cachet of personal projects, which aren't that impressive either.
Post reply on HN