This is not really the attitude a company should have when they manage benefits:<p><i>On the flip side, with so many people contributing code mistakes are bound to happen. That’s normal – after all we’re all just people, and people make mistakes. One thing that I’ve found particularly admirable about our team here is that people own up right away, and strive to fix things as fast as possible. No one wants to ship buggy code, but it happens. The nice thing about working with so many smart and friendly devs though is that you can trust that someone will be there to catch you if you fall and help you fix things.</i><p>We've caught and reported 4-5 bugs in production to Zenefits on really basic features. Three of our employees have now been asked to send a screenshot of the dashboard with the JS console open...
This is very much unlike the phone screens I've been through. Most of mine involve the recruiter trying to see if I can back up the words I said on my resume to see if I am worthy for a technical interview.<p>This article did little to tell me how to ace it other than a little snippet of "I did a cool project to stand out". Which, admittedly, is cool, but I don't feel like it gave many tips on how to "ace" the phone screen. Also the end was basically an ad for Zenefits (well done).
Speaking as a hiring manager, showing me a cool hack is nice but acing a phone screen requires:<p>* you know something about my company and why you want to work here (visit our corp. site, interrogate the recruiter, read up on our press and know something about our space)<p>* you know what we're looking for and understand that we're talking to you because there's some intersection between your experience and our search criteria.<p>* for that intersection in the venn diagram of our candidate requirements and your resume, brush up a little so that you can speak to how you used technology X. If it was 2 years ago or less know it well... if we're talking 10 years ago being more general is fine.<p>* be able to describe how you got to where you are in your career and where you want to go.<p>* know who you're talking to in the phone screen and LISTEN to what they're asking you. i can't count how many folks i ask to describe how they built a particular solution go on to just ramble on about feature descriptions and process without ever getting to how something was built.
I don't think "make a hummingbird with CSS" is really a universal way to ace a phone screen. A more appropriate article title might be "how <i>I</i> aced a phone screen at <i>zenfits.com</i>".
Just make sure not to publicly discuss your deal/doubts about the company or the ceo will tantrum and revoke it. And then, in a bold stand for integrity, edit his answer to remove the offer revokation.<p><a href="https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-start-my-career-Uber-or-Zenefits?s=1" rel="nofollow">https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-start-my-caree...</a><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-ceo-rescinds-job-offer-on-quora-2015-5" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-ceo-rescinds-job-off...</a>
I like the approach of a small, fun task as "extra credit". But how do you smoothly bring that up in the interview? I guess if you're being asked about CSS technical details, you can mention you built this last night and ask if they'd like to see it. But I'm pretty sure due to nerves, I would make that really awkward. Like I'd answer the phone and shout "LOOK AT WHAT I MADE!"
I'm not fond of the implication that you can get an interview/job from pandering to Zenefits by working on a project that <i>promotes their brand.</i>
Albert's hack is definitely impressive, and would make him stand out. I'm surprised at some nay-sayers here. Suggesting he use SVG? Nothing impressive about that.<p>I phone screen a lot, and would be impressed by Albert. However, if you are strong on resume, knowledge, and interviewing, you don't need any special tricks. I think such tricks are important if your resume does not support the position you're seeking: either a mediocre school, no degree, long unemployment, or switching industries.<p>As for acing a phone screen - no silver bullets here, but it pays to know something about the company and the screener. I know we're just company #923 to you, but don't show that.
Trying to draw by writing HTML text is like pounding a screw. It's the wrong tool for the job. If you want to draw Zenefit's hummingbird, use an SVG draw program. Inkscape is free and can do that job.<p>As a way to get past HR idiots, it may be useful.
The CSS hummingbird <i>is</i> cool. It shows off the awesome ability of the software professional to take a half dozen stupid, illogical constraints and somehow end up with something that works anyway. The problem is that companies would not need to select for this quality if they could avoid imposing stupid, illogical constraints in the first place.<p>So the obvious followup question I would ask first would have been, "Why did you choose to do this with CSS rather than with a language designed for vector graphics, like SVG?"<p>Shall we also hire all the other people who can make their cats bark and their dogs meow?
I think the answer is "appear to be the person they want to hire" with the extra degree of difficulty being you don't know the person they want to hire. On the other hand, who wants to be hired under false pretenses? Not I.
Trying to flatter an employer by doing a lot of pointless work is dumb and says something negative about the employers who respond. The "typical" way to ace a phone screen is: 1. be young and just out of college 2. pay more money to the person who wrote cracking the code interview and memorize the problems 3. Scan glassdoor and other sites for interview questions that the interviewers will, as predicted, lazily reuse. The real way to ace a phone screen is not to be involved in one.
I had the opportunity to speak with Albert on a developer panel and he told this story (we were speaking to software developers that had just begun their job search). He's a very nice guy and I think this is great, general advice for people just beginning to step into the world of software development and don't quite yet have a resume that can "wow" people. I'm glad to see Zenefits recognized that.
Anyone else getting spammed by these guys? I got like 3-4 emails the other day from them, really annoying too, saying the'd looked into what we were doing for our HR etc and thought they could help, except for they were sending emails to an employee who hadn't been with us for a year (email forwarded to me), so not really looking at what we do and how we do it, just disingenuous marketing drivel.
Funnily enough I used to work with Albert Treat at the "biotech startup" in South San Francisco. He's an incredibly talented individual, very driven, and contributed massively to the work done at that company.<p>Great advice, Albert! I'm glad you like your new job, too :)
Interesting, I didn't know Zenefits did phone screens, they sent me a ~3 hour coding challenge to do over... I can't recall the services name atm.