This “list of resources” email seems intimidating. As a candidate, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. Should I read all the blog posts and watch all 7 talks, each of which about 30 minutes long? The manager says they will ask what the candidate read or watched, which is unreasonable to me. I have a full-time job, and yours is not the only company I’m applying to, there is no time for me to read and watch everyone’s propaganda.
As a candidate i consider having the EM taking the first call a positive sign for the company i am interviewing to.<p>As a hiring manager, i would even take the opportunity to quickly assess whether their experience and cv is close to reality. Hence i suggest the author also asking candidates to quickly go through their recent experience and describe in some adequate technical depth something they are proud of. From my experience this one question can be a very good filter for candidates that can be a good company and role fit.
I made a similar change in my last role and it was a great experience. The big difference is that I took about 30 minutes and also asked a bit about work on their resume to check basic things like whether their work had actually been deployed and used, awareness of user impact, double checking technical experience, etc.<p>The biggest benefit of taking more ownership of your own hiring pipelines is that you can use the results of each stage to improve the others. If many fail the formal tech assessment, you can dive into more tech in the screen or adjust the minimum qualifications. If candidates are rude in the full loop, you can check for that earlier. Or if most candidates pass the full loop, you can loosen up on earlier stages or reduce the loop
<i>And the first call doesn’t have to be very long. 20 to 30 minutes is enough time. The main goal is setting the stage for candidates:</i><p>That seems very long. I cannot recall ever being on the phone that long at once.
I used to do that when I did hiring, with a very positive impression. Both sides can instantly get a feeling and can cut it off early if the expectations are wrong. HR can't really do that.
Do this same thing for my hiring pipeline. Pretty much same percentages for how I weed down resumes, etc. I usually go a bit over an hour as I like to discuss the company, our tech, and get specific about what the job will entail. At the end I ask if they are still interested, and if yes we dig into their specific history, questions, etc. I also make crystal clear the salary range and benefits and get a verbal confirmation this band is acceptable to the candidate. We don't have to decide right then, but we need to be in the same ballpark and they need to understand the upper end isn't likely to move. No point in getting through a long interview process and then having to pass cause they want to much money. Then I make a decision if the candidate is a waste of time for my engineers to proceed on a technical evaluation. Three rounds, with three separate people on the team, usually only two of those rounds are true coding, one is more technical discussion/team fit. Anyone in the hiring committee can veto for essentially any reason. Works as well as any process I've seen in my decade+ career.<p>Three rounds is also coincidentally my max to give a company I am interviewing. If you can't make up your mind on a candidate after 3 rounds then you don't know what your doing. This 5+ round crap FAANG convinced us all was good is such a waste of time and honestly costs more in time suck then just giving the candidate a shot.
What's your spam filter success rate with that email containing that many links? Whole email seems unnecessary, also initial phone call lasting 20-30 minutes is not short by any means.<p>But respect for doing interview instead HR, I despise clueless HR you can't talk to and where you need to switch to chatbot mode answering phrases they wanna hear based on few keywords they say instead of having actual conversation.
This is great. All hiring should work like this. The issue with many companies is that they alienate good candidates and routinely waste a lot of time on bad candidates. Basically, you waste several rounds of interviews before the candidate even gets to talk to somebody that has decision power (or even a clue). It's very expensive to reject people late into the process. And it's stupid to have good candidates walk away from you because your process is prioritizing your convenience at the cost of their time.<p>The trick is dealing with the signal to noise ratio. If you have recruiters feeding you an endless stream of mediocre, vaguely buzzword compatible resumes, it's not feasible to stay on top of that. IMHO, that kind of process is in any case unlikely to produce good candidates other than by accident. I've interviewed plenty of people this way and you can end up wasting a lot of time like this. The way out is to fix the lead pipeline to be less desperate than that.<p>I work on the principle that the best people usually come in via your network and are highly employable. So, that puts the pressure on to act quickly and decisively when you come across a good reference. The next best thing is people applying to a job and reaching out. If they look remotely legit, talk to them. Ten minutes is enough to figure people out. This doesn't actually happen a lot. If you must use recruiters, make them work for a living and push back when they waste your time with a lot of poorly fitting candidates. Buzzword compatibility is not good enough. Make sure they can tell the difference between a good and a bad candidate.<p>There's no better way than selling good people on the notion of working for you than just escalating really quickly and having them talk to a decision maker. Have a quick call to verify key assumptions, fit, and expectation management (salary, skills, seniority, eagerness, etc.). First impressions matter. If that's all fine, immediately set up interviews with key stake holders and make an offer if everyone still agrees. Coding interviews don't really factor into this process. I don't use them and I decline to take them. If you've had multiple conversations and then still are wondering if the person can actually code, you messed up. Badly.<p>If you do have a coding interview as part of your process and you get people reluctant to take those, escalate and talk to them immediately. IMHO nothing qualifies a person more than being mature enough to walk away from a bad deal. Chances are that those are the best leads coming through your filters. And you can find out at the cost of a ten minute screening call.
You know good on you for doing the screen instead of an hr standin. Someone who will also happily ask what questions there are, but then fail to be able to answer anything but trivial non questions which are the same for all screens<p>But honestly, what’s actually the point of this call?<p>“What do we do here?
How do we work?
What will the rest of the interview process look like?”<p>Is any of that really worth it’s own call? The interview process <i>should</i> already have been established in the damn job posting. Why 99% of job postings in an industry that prides itself on intelligence is beyond me… It’s not complicated. X rounds, y and z hoops, done.<p>As for what we do and how we work, I imagine you can either express it in the posting or you’ll need a real call<p>I just don’t see the point of this step that everyone wants to do. It seems like a giant waste of time, inefficiency, and I can’t help but feel it’s interviewers flexing some weird ego thing
I would advocate screening with the very technical questions up front.<p>There is no need to drag a large set of people through a funnel that only eliminates them at the very end on the hard requirements.<p>I built Trovinto.com to generate technical questions and evaluate candidates answers on a quick questionnaire.<p>Save everyone's time, and when you know there is a fit on skills then I think you should spend even longer on the soft questions.<p>Getting a new job is a huge decision, not something that should be concluded in 3 hours over 2 interviews and a call.