It's almost time for the monthly "Who is Hiring" thread!<p>Considering how much time we spend discussing tech interviews here, wouldn't it be nice if each hiring post is accompanied by a line about the nature of the interview process?<p>Examples:<p>i) Interview process: two phone screens, 3 onsite whiteboard<p>ii) Interview process: two rounds on HackerRank, 5 onsite whiteboard<p>iii) Interview process: one take home assignment, 2 on site whiteboard, 1 pair programming session<p>That will help candidates prioritize which companies they want to contact first. Companies also benefit by the fact that the applicant has self-selected for their interview process.
It's a good idea but I'm a bit worried about making those threads even more top-heavy than they already are by asking people to include even more info in their posts.<p>It might also be hard to explain what we're asking submitters to do in a way that makes sense to everyone, especially the ones who don't post on HN except in those threads.<p>We'll think about it. There's a couple days before the next thread.<p>Edit: ok, I added such a sentence. Let's see if it improves the quality of the posts.
I wish companies didn't think their interviews were some weird "secret sauce" -- I've had companies flat out refuse to tell me what the interview process would be like, or even how long I should expect for the interview beyond "1-4 hours". Well, you know 1 hour is a lot different than 4 hours!<p>Personally I think all companies should be using pair-programming or contract to hire, as I think trivia questions and whiteboarding are worse than useless. I'm happy to do take home work for a company I'm really interested in, but it does feel a little unfair and like a bit of a waste of time overall.
This is a great idea. I've been in many interviews where I thought I did pretty well only to be told, "oh, this is just the first of many interviews". I wouldn't have applied if I had known since every onsite interview requires me to at least take half a day off from work. That is time that can be used for something else.<p>But I do have to mention that with the Big4, they will let you know in detail about the whole process during the phone interview so that's cool by me.
Since this is appropriate to the (coming) subject, I'll post this here.<p>Tokenadult isn't around to chime in here, so I'll take his place today. Hunter and Schmit did a meta-study of 70 years of research on hiring criteria. [1]
There are three attributes you need to select for to identify performing employees in intellectual fields.<p><pre><code> - General mental ability (Are they generally smart)
Use WAIS or if there are artifacts of GMA(Complex work they've done themselves) available use them as proxies.
- Work sample test. NOT HAZING! As close as possible to the actual work they'd be doing. Try to make it apples-to-apples comparison.
- Integrity (The first two won't matter if the candidate is a sociopath).
</code></pre>
This alone will get you > 65% hit rate. [1]
<a href="http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%20Validity%20and%20Utility%20Psychological%20Bulletin.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%...</a><p>One of these companies should hire me to do data driven recruiting.
The posts that are transparent about the interview seem to have positive responses, too -- I distinctly remember seeing Compose's listings with comments like this one:<p>> <i>great hiring process and response from the team, even though I didn't get the job I enjoyed my application process</i><p>What better feedback (or recommendation) could you ask for?<p>That said, I need a little more convincing that always including this information will increase the quality of the listings. For Compose this set them apart, for most places I'd guess there's a pretty common pattern, and for the terrible places they just may not say.<p>Much as I think the ONSITE/REMOTE thing was a success, I think this might be better left to happen culturally rather than by fiat. Happy to be convinced otherwise, though.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11014670" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11014670</a>
I'd prefer if this material were posted as part of the job descriptions on the website. (it's useful beyond just to the whoishiring crowd). Making it a <i>mandatory</i> part of the job postings would be a pain for the people who write them, and I wouldn't want to deter postings.<p>(Sometimes the interview process gets modified per candidate, too.)
Never applied to a job through HN, but about to post a req for my company. I'm definitely going to add a little blurb about the interview process in my post here. What else do people find useful in posts like this?
If I could blacklist companies that do whiteboard interviews, for example, I'd do it. I'm not expecting most companies to show their hand, though, precisely because of how unpopular these practices have become.
I would love if someone can mention these things too:
1. For remote jobs, the timezones that they are comfortable with.
2. If they can sponsor overseas candidates.<p>This would make it easier for the candidates
I wrote a bit about YesGraph's engineering interview process <a href="http://blog.yesgraph.com/ditching-traditional-interviews/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.yesgraph.com/ditching-traditional-interviews/</a>
This is a good idea. I'd also suggest adding "do you respect the 8 hour workday"? I'd like to know up front which companies to discard.
It'd be cool if companies started adding a /hiring.txt or /interview.txt to their sites with this info. Then they could just link it and avoid cluttering the threads even more.
Yes! It needn't be a lot of detail either. Example: I interviewed with a leading UX consulting firm, and they were very up front about the process. It was essentially 1 short take home assignment (30 mins), 1 phone screen (30 mins), 1 longer take home assignment (4-8 hours), and 1 full day of on site interviews where you have to give an hour long presentation. I didn't get the job, but it was by far the best and most transparent interview process I've been through.<p>Edit: on a side note, I really wish more companies would provide honest feedback to the candidate during the interview process. Especially when you've invested significant time into an interview process and are ultimately rejected, it is beyond frustrating to ask for feedback and just hear crickets, or a generic "other candidates are a better fit", etc...
In addition to details on the interview process, postings would definitely be more useful if they also included:<p>- Expected duration of interview(s). 1-2 hours differs drastically from all day.<p>- Salary within 10k. If hiring for multiple positions or skill ranges (e.g. mid-to-snr engr), then state salary for each case. Companies complain about noise in hiring process, yet won't do one key thing that would improve quality by getting applications from only those interested in X job at Y wage.<p>- An <i>honest</i> estimate of hiring timeline. Don't waste people's time by saying "yesterday" only to drag it out by months. Applicants can also address this by asking companies who they hired last and how long it took to do so.
Note that not all companies have a "fixed" interview process, after the first interview it can change based on the applicant background (proof of experience).
I find it extremely depressng that all the offered examples include whiteboarding ... a.k.a. "the Stone Tablet Anti-Pattern"<p>See <a href="https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/ALM-Summit/ALM-Summit-3/Technical-Interviewing-You-re-Doing-it-Wrong" rel="nofollow">https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/ALM-Summit/ALM-Summit-3/Tec...</a>
What is your guys' go-to strategy in getting an interview?<p>Especially, if you are a recent grad in Canada (AB) how do you get more job interviews? Especially for top tech companies?<p>Like how do you arrange your resume so it passes the key word scan.<p>Who do you pass your resume to?<p>Which websites should you go to?
wages, interview process, financial structure, link to SEC report or anything relevant according to national law, legal structure, owners, involvement in legal action either as a defender or as an offender ...<p>It could be nice to have the information that are hard to gather otherwhise.<p>It is as true for workers as for companies that a new position is a risk, but, while companies can ask for references, workers have no ways to ask for "references" themselves. This asymmetry benefits companies much more than workers, it would make workers more "trustful" if companies were showing good will in evening the gap.
I've interviewed at Intercom in Dublin and they gave their whole process upfront. Including the questions they made in two steps.<p>It's all in their website.<p>I didn't get the role, failed the last step but really enjoyed the interview process.
A more helpful (accurate) description, for many startups, would probably go like this:<p><i>Interview process: one 4-hour take-home assignment (which may or may not be properly articulated, and which, in any case, there's a fairly good chance we may never respond to); 3 on-site whiteboarding sessions (the first conducted by someone whose first words to you are "man, I'm hungover!"; the second, by a pair of disinterested devs from another team, apparently shanghaied into covering for someone else, who take turns boredly rushing you through algorithm questions, while the other plays with his phone; and the third by the resident math genius who walks into the room well past the time they said you'd be done, says "Hey, got time for another?" and proceeds to grill you on a mis-stated graph search problem that ends up having a null solution class); and finally, a pair-programming session on some made up problem which you're required to use certain clearly unsuitable data structures to solve (resulting in clearly unusable performance in any real system) "because it's easier, and because I wanna see how you think. Look, just tell me what to type, OK?"</i><p>Only to be told 2 weeks later, when you timidly beg the HR contact for an "update", that you aren't a "culture fit."