Why hunting for unicorns is bullshit
blog.landing.jobs
Why hunting for unicorns is bullshit
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Re: Why hunting for unicorns is bullshit
#2"After selecting a winner in the challenge phase, try to work with the candidate in a small project before hiring him. Pay for the hours spent on the project, of course!"
It would be difficult to find a winning candidate who is unemployed, or who is employed and has the bandwidth to come in during office hours and work on a project with your team. That being said, performance on a paid "evening hours" consulting project would be a very good hiring metric that I think more companies should use.
Re: Why hunting for unicorns is bullshit
#3Great, glad we can agree. Now let's stop talking about them completely.
Re: Why hunting for unicorns is bullshit
#4"After selecting a winner in the challenge phase, try to work with the candidate in a small project before hiring him. Pay for the hours spent on the project, of course!" It would be difficult to find a winning candidate who is unemployed, or who is employed and has the bandwidth to come in during office hours and work on a project with your team. That being said, performance on a paid "evening hours" consulting proj…
> It would be difficult to find a winning candidate who is unemployed, or who is employed and has the bandwidth to come in during office hours and work on a project with your team.
Yes - please stop asking candidates to do this. I mean it's great that this particular company will offer to pay you for your time - but I've seen some companies require a candidate to come in and work for free for a day.
The last job application I was asked to take a 3 hour phone interview back-to-back (remote job). It just seems disrespectful that you would ask someone to be on the phone for half the day just for the possibility that they might get the job. I don't know about you guys - but if I disappeared for 3 hours from my job someone might be a little annoyed. I'm not saying to interview people - but break it out into smaller chunks throughout the week. Could I have asked this company to do that? Probably - but there were other red flags that suggested I stay away.
Re: Why hunting for unicorns is bullshit
#5I thought the whole point of the term "unicorn" was to indicate that you are referring to a class of employees/companies who just plain do not exist, but are nonetheless the objects of immense amounts of fantasizing.
Re: Why hunting for unicorns is bullshit
#6"After selecting a winner in the challenge phase, try to work with the candidate in a small project before hiring him. Pay for the hours spent on the project, of course!" It would be difficult to find a winning candidate who is unemployed, or who is employed and has the bandwidth to come in during office hours and work on a project with your team. That being said, performance on a paid "evening hours" consulting proj…
> It would be difficult to find a winning candidate who is unemployed, or who is employed and has the bandwidth to come in during office hours and work on a project with your team. Yes - please stop asking candidates to do this. I mean it's great that this particular company will offer to pay you for your time - but I've seen some companies require a candidate to come in and work for free for a day. The last job appl…
> It just seems disrespectful that you would ask someone to be on the phone for half the day just for the possibility that they might get the job.
The vast majority of jobs require coming in for a half-day or day of interviews for the possibility of getting a job. I agree with your point about doing projects for free but a block of interviews is pretty normal. If they're by phone anyway, sure they could be spread out but most companies will have at least some interviews in-person.
Re: Why hunting for unicorns is bullshit
#7"Design a challenge to evaluate the selected candidates’ skills. Good professionals love challenges. If the candidate refuses to do a challenge, consider this a red flag about their future commitment."
To me a bigger red flag is if someone has the time and desperation to put up with this kind of bullshit. Good professionals love money and respect.
Edit: IMHO the "unicorn" is someone who is both competent and spineless, which to me sounds like the candidate this article is asking you to find.
Re: Why hunting for unicorns is bullshit
#8"Design a challenge to evaluate the selected candidates’ skills. Good professionals love challenges. If the candidate refuses to do a challenge, consider this a red flag about their future commitment." To me a bigger red flag is if someone has the time and desperation to put up with this kind of bullshit. Good professionals love money and respect. Edit: IMHO the "unicorn" is someone who is both competent and spineles…
> both competent and spineless
In 90% of the positions I have ever been in, an employer has needed/wanted just that.
Re: Why hunting for unicorns is bullshit
#9These processes are inconsistent. The company can be picky but so can the candidate if they are good. More often than not, companies are approaching the good software engineers to work for them and not the other way around.
You end up with this bizarre recruiting process, which I have seen many times, where some company approaches me about working for them because I am one of the best and most experienced in my field, and once I agree to talk to them they treat me like some idiot developer who rolled in off the street. The idea that they would waste a bunch of my time "challenging" me, paid or not, is just bizarre.
I can see it for developers with little experience. But no sane person wants to build a team with nothing but inexperienced developers which means you need to learn how to recruit highly skilled software engineers. The outlined process is a recipe for annoying them.
Re: Why hunting for unicorns is bullshit
#10"Design a challenge to evaluate the selected candidates’ skills. Good professionals love challenges. If the candidate refuses to do a challenge, consider this a red flag about their future commitment." To me a bigger red flag is if someone has the time and desperation to put up with this kind of bullshit. Good professionals love money and respect. Edit: IMHO the "unicorn" is someone who is both competent and spineles…
> To me a bigger red flag is if someone has the time and desperation to put up with this kind of bullshit. Good professionals love money and respect.
Ouch, the cynicism here is astounding. Speaking for myself, I would love to delve into a challenge, like, cracking a small program [1], even if it gets me nothing because this, in itself, is so exciting.