[HN Gopher] Interview Frustrations
___________________________________________________________________
Interview Frustrations
Author : LifeIsBio
Score : 99 points
Date : 2021-02-10 18:30 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jessimekirk.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jessimekirk.com)
| w0mbat wrote:
| Tesla made me give a presentation, that's the only time I've
| encountered this request. That was fine with me. The presentation
| bit went well and they were an easy crowd. Someone else got the
| job though.
| redshirtrob wrote:
| A few years back an SF startup asked me to prepare a presentation
| as part of the final round of interviews. It was supposed to be
| something I like to do. I chose making pizza on my charcoal grill
| using my KettlePizza [0]. At the time, our family tradition was
| to make homemade pizza on Friday nights so it wasn't much of an
| imposition to snap a few photos during the process and slap it
| together into a Powerpoint.
|
| Overall the presentation portion was a decent experience. I
| presented for 10-15 minutes and the folks in the room asked
| questions for about that long.
|
| I didn't get an offer because of "concerns around culture & team
| fit." I'm pretty sure that wasn't a result of my presentation,
| but, rather, that I indicated I didn't care much for death
| marches (and they were clearly on one at the time).
|
| Had I put 10 hours into the presentation like Op I would have
| been annoyed. But an hour wasn't bad. Altogether, I think it's
| not a bad way to facilitate conversation and allow a broader
| group of folks to participate.
|
| [0] https://www.kettlepizza.com/
| ghaff wrote:
| While I'm not generally a fan of test projects, etc., I have to
| admit that a writing and/or presentation sample is pretty much
| necessary for some jobs. That said, I probably wouldn't assign
| one so if a person already had examples, that would probably be
| fine. (And for a job that requires such things, they typically
| would.)
| redshirtrob wrote:
| This was a developer job. I doubt making presentations was a
| key part of the job. As such, they emphasized that I
| shouldn't spend a lot of time on the presentation. It
| functioned as a conversation starter. For that it worked
| well.
| ghaff wrote:
| Makes sense. Senior developers do often give a fair number
| of presentations to external audiences but I wouldn't
| consider it a core competency of most developer jobs.
| (Though general ability to communicate can be important.)
| derivagral wrote:
| Sounds exciting. Some time ago during a ~5h interview I got to
| present my coded solution to a UI problem to the entire (~10
| person) company at the end, panel-style. This was told to me
| after they described the problem they wanted solved in a couple
| hours. In hindsight it was kind of fun; in retrospect perhaps I
| could've done without the adrenaline.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| I was laid off at the end of October from my position of 6 years,
| due to then employer's client base being 95% NYC/NYS government
| agencies. Those agencies got hit with budget cuts due to stalls
| in tax revenue, and as a result contracts dried up as well. Those
| 6 years were the most toxic and mentally/emotionally draining
| years of my life, and left me a different person than when I went
| in (long story short, text book definition of workplace sociopath
| for a boss).
|
| After the first four years of holding up a smidge of hope that
| things would get better there, I decided to start applying
| elsewhere. I got quite a few responses from some well known
| organizations that I had wanted to work for. Passed their
| screener interviews, passed their technical assessments/take home
| projects, went through final interviews with a good number of
| them, only to get the email response of, "Thank you for
| interviewing with xyz. Unfortunately...". When following up for
| feedback, rarely were the responses substantial or in a couple
| cases, even believable.
|
| Now, I totally understand that one will never pitch a perfect
| game, but man, when you go through 12 interviews at some solid
| places, where 7 of them seemed to go really well, and you left
| them thinking, "Man, I feel great after that. Pretty sure I aced
| it!", and even had the managers saying things like, "We think
| you're gonna be a great fit! Look forward to hearing from us in
| the next couple days", one would reasonably think they'd be
| receiving an offer soon after. Unfortunately, that was not the
| case for me, and after getting the last rejection response I
| called it quits. The emotional/mental toll of putting in so much
| time and effort into processes which in most cases looked to have
| favorable outcomes yet amounted to nothing, was just piling onto
| and worsening my existing state of feeling beaten down, and it
| wasn't worth furthering that.
|
| Then came the layoff in October and I immediately began applying
| away. This time around I've been getting more responses than ever
| before during a job hunt, and once again with reputable
| organizations, again with many times making it through each step
| of their interview/testing process, again with having some great
| experiences and feeling confident about the outcomes, again with
| the overly positive/leading statements from managers, and again
| being let down each and every time.
|
| The best was with a mid-large ad agency, where I passed the first
| interview, then was given a timed online technical where 60
| minutes was allotted to write vanilla JS and build one toggle
| button whose text/styling would toggle, and a second button that
| replaced an href in an anchor... 60 minutes for that. I finished
| it in 5, then spent another 3-5ish minutes writing comments just
| to show attention to detail and care for potential others having
| to work with whatever I wrote. You know what the response was?
| "Sorry, but we're looking for someone who has a bit more
| technical experience". I shit you not. It was laughable.
|
| To top it off, I've been ghosted a few times, which has been a
| new experience. One guy even had the balls to reach out to me a
| month later, after saying he was going to setup an interview with
| his team two days after we had what seemed like an awesome call,
| but then he ghosted lol.
|
| At this point, after feeling left burned, I'm saying fuck it and
| taking a break from interviewing to work on my own projects for
| the time being, with the hope of becoming at least somewhat
| financially independent/less reliant on an employer. The
| application/interview process is such an incredibly disheartening
| process and I feel for anyone who has also been ran through the
| wringer.
| wyck wrote:
| They just have a organizing issues, its normal to give a
| presentation for a high level competitive job, but they should
| have gone through with it regardless if they found a better
| candidate. They don't know how to make a situation a win/win.
|
| At the end of the day you never know what you're getting from an
| interview, some great candidates turn into duds and vice versa.
| It's amazing how many people in hiring positions are just really
| shit at judging character, instead they rely on some bullshit
| metrics and process to fill in their lack of intuition.
| diob wrote:
| Feels like we constantly talk about how interviews suck, but we
| kind of all know why.
|
| 1. It's tough to fire people (in that, if you ask someone to move
| and it turns out they aren't a good fit, it's kind of a jerk move
| to then drop them like a hot potato).
|
| 2. Performance indicators are tough. How do you know someone is
| doing bad vs good?
|
| 3. Keeping on a bad hire (especially one you can't identify), is
| damaging as heck. Best case scenario they don't get much work
| done, worst case scenario they suck away the time of all your
| good hires through bad decisions.
|
| So while I agree that interviewing sucks, I've come to terms with
| why it is so bad.
| keithnz wrote:
| But is the "process" making it better at finding good hires? I
| know for myself I did big interviews at one stage, and realized
| most of it was redundant, I wasn't really learning more that
| would change my decision, I quickly learnt most of what I
| needed with a conversation and writing a small amount of code (
| not tricky code either ). Students are a bit harder, but we
| participate in a summer intern program, and give most anyone a
| chance . We have taken on a few people from that, and that's
| worked well.
| jennyyang wrote:
| If these ridiculous interviews don't produce top notch
| performance reviews after a year on the job, then the
| interviews are worthless.
|
| If I were to ever try a startup (I won't), my philosophy would
| be to hire easily and fire easily. Do my level best to
| interview fairly, and give people a chance. But if they don't
| work out, fire them quickly and give them a 2-3 month severance
| bonus.
|
| Then I would remove most titles and pay in the top tier. I
| think at the beginning of hiring, it would probably have a high
| turnover, but as the company matures, if it survives it will be
| filled with a lot of happy engineers that won't want to leave.
| ghaff wrote:
| Those aren't directly reasons why interviews suck. IMO it's
| more that interviews, no matter how done/how well done, are a
| very imperfect tool. So we try to make up for quality with
| quantity--for the reasons you say. What you probably really
| want is internships and referrals from employees who have
| actually worked with the person, i.e. they're not just a
| college buddy. But you can't come close to filling every
| position that way.
| deckard1 wrote:
| Steve Yegge has a thing he calls the "Interview Anti-Loop" or
| "anti-panel".
|
| Basically, for every person that works at some company (say,
| Google), there is a least one set of employees (the anti-
| panel) that would reject that person in an interview.
|
| http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-
| goog...
|
| Filtering out obviously bad employees is really not an issue.
| It's the fact that you're asking a committee to do exactly
| what a committee does worst at: making a decision.
|
| So every interview panel collectively decides that it's best
| to not make the decision (i.e. reject the candidate). It's
| the path of least consequence for the members of the panel.
| If it turns out the hire was bad, they don't look like a
| bunch of fools.
|
| > it's highly likely that someone on the loop will be
| unimpressed with you, even if you are Alan Turing.
|
| I fully believe this. The only reason you will ever get hired
| is because the company is desperate to fill a seat at that
| particular moment in time. It has zero to do with technical
| skills, social skills, or anything. It's 100% pure luck.
|
| Almost every tech company is "hiring." These companies _don
| 't stop hiring_. Hiring being the advertising of positions
| and the interviewing of candidates. But that does not mean
| those companies are hiring _right now_. Or even have
| positions available for those they are advertising. It 's
| often a big bureaucratic ship that doesn't have the
| capability of even knowing what their needs are at any given
| time.
| ghaff wrote:
| Maybe. I'm not involved in a lot of hiring but my general
| experience is that the interview panel usually ends up at
| one of two positions. Everyone is sort of meh (and maybe
| one or two people are actively negative). Or everyone is
| hire this person now--maybe with some minor caveats here
| and there. I'm not sure I can remember a situation where
| there was a strong split in opinion.
| dudul wrote:
| > That's fair, I suppose. They were looking for someone with a
| few years of experience working with a specific technology I had
| never used. But... they knew that from my resume
|
| We all know very well that the company had a few other candidates
| in the pipeline that were more qualified, and they were simply
| covering their butt with a "less qualified but still maybe good
| candidate" while they were extending an offer to the candidate
| they really wanted in case they turned it down.
|
| I would do the same thing as a job seeker. Interview with a
| company even though I'm waiting for an offer from a more
| desirable organization.
| [deleted]
| yashp wrote:
| Sure, the presentation requirement is worth discussion, but what
| about the appalling tone of the email itself? It's a laundry list
| of ways they hold you in contempt.
|
| Prepare for interruptions. Manage your time wisely. Prepare
| perfectly and be perfect.
|
| I'll never be able to reconcile this industry's complaints about
| engineer shortages with the way so many companies talk to us like
| we're shit on their shoes.
| tidepod12 wrote:
| Where you see condescension I see a recruiter being genuinely
| helpful by clearly laying out expectations for what will happen
| during the presentation and how it will go. Some of that stuff
| might seem obvious for some people, but my experience is that
| if you don't provide info like that, then you'll get people
| that show up completely unprepared, presenting the wrong info,
| unable to handle questions from the audience, etc. And I think
| letting that happen to someone is doing a bigger disservice to
| the candidate than possibly offending their ego by giving them
| too many directions.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| The task is bigger than I would personally consider doing
| unpaid, and I think that is the problem being identified here.
| It's an assessment of Public Speaking skills that don't
| immediately seem to be related to the job - I'd judge the
| company harshly for this.
|
| But, if I had agreed to do this (if it was a paid, professional
| task), I would find the setting out of expectations extremely
| useful and appreciate it.
|
| I want to know what to expect, so I can prepare for it.
| anon946 wrote:
| That email was normal to me for small audience talks. Also, as
| a professor, I encourage students to ask questions during
| lecture (my class sizes are small enough so that it works
| fine).
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| You get paid to lecture and educate. This was somebody who
| was asked to do a free presentation (for a job where
| presentations are likely a secondary responsibility) after
| making it through two rounds of interviews
| itronitron wrote:
| Yeah, that is annoying. I am surprised they didn't tell Jessime
| that they were looking for someone with a PhD.
| user5994461 wrote:
| My take on his presentation. I can't read any of the text on the
| first slide because it is way too small.
|
| And I shall say that I am on a 1920x1200 screen. If the
| interviewer was watching on a corporate laptop this might be 2
| pixels per letter.
| soneca wrote:
| I think that text was never supposed to be read. It is a print
| of the landing page of the platform the author built. I presume
| they would say just that and no would bother much trying to
| read it either.
| specialist wrote:
| Adjacent Idea Suggestion:
|
| We should record job interviews.
|
| Then both sides can review at their leisure.
|
| Maybe then we can start improving.
|
| --
|
| Origin of Idea:
|
| I ran for office. Lots of endorsement interviews. It's just as
| bad as you'd expect. Comparable to our industry's hazing rituals.
|
| The better interviews were recorded. The best were shown on TV,
| available online.
|
| Somehow everyone's better behaved when there's witnesses. (I
| quickly learned to make and release my own recordings of
| endorsement interviews.)
|
| --
|
| We should practice interviewing. Just like public speaking, stump
| speeches, etc.
|
| Ages ago, I worked at a place that took recruiting and
| interviewing seriously. We had agendas, checklists, scripts,
| surveys. We practiced on each other, switching roles. We did all
| hand's debrief after each candidate.
|
| We treated our interviews as seriously as our usability labs.
|
| Though we mocked the term at the time, I miss "learning
| organizations". When some of us at least tried to get better.
|
| Okay, rant over.
| gumby wrote:
| The company might not have considered their request a burden
| (though it was -- company's mistake and author is right to be
| upset). Here's an example where that could be true:
|
| My gf has a PhD in $FIELD. She always has to give a 'job talk'
| for every job (since I've known her that's been all of FAANG plus
| some non-early-stage startups -- so most of the gamut). The talk
| isn't that different from the post doc job talk or faculty job
| talk, except the content is a bit more industry focused. Of
| course this is a function of the kinds of jobs she looks for.
| Every time she's decided to change jobs she worked on her job
| talk first (as Jessime had done for her talks as well). And to
| have the audience be more than just the engineering side is
| consistent with that. So the hiring team may have just assumed
| this was a "job talk" position, and assumed that the candidate
| would already have it ready to go.
|
| Clearly the company was quite wrong, and that lead to an
| unreasonable burden on the candidate. It's a good reason to avoid
| the company: if they can't get the first impression right, well,
| perhaps the first impression is actually accurate as to how
| everything else in the company is run.
|
| Again, I'm not trying to defend this unknown company in the
| slightest, just trying to imagine how this kind of thing could
| happen. Sounds like Jessime dodged a bullet, job-wise.
| anon946 wrote:
| Giving a talk is normal for many academic and "scientist" level
| positions. Being interrupted with questions is also normal, and
| I'm personally completely fine with it. The only annoying thing
| is that the company canceled at the last minute, but that's
| probably because they had multiple candidates "in-flight" at
| the same time.
| tidepod12 wrote:
| It's really hard to tell if the company was "wrong" here based
| on the available information. I'm tempted to say the company
| is, because I certainly have personal experience with companies
| that do shitty things during interviews, but I'm not so sure
| the presentation is an automatic indicator of that.
|
| It's possible that the presentation was not meant to be a
| burden at all. I've done similar interview presentations in the
| past, and it only took me 2-3 hours to prepare for it because
| my job experience is in a field where giving hour-long
| presentations with only a day's notice is commonplace. 2-3
| hours preparation is annoying, but it's about what I expect to
| spend preparing for any interview. If OP was interviewing for a
| Solutions Engineer or Consultant role, for example, then asking
| for a 1 hour presentation isn't that unreasonable and it's
| likely that the company would expect OP to be able to prepare
| for that without it being a burden.
|
| OTOH, if it was for a software engineer role and they were
| requiring a presentation even though it has nothing to do with
| the job function, then yea that's absurd. But which is it? I
| can't tell from the OP.
| gumby wrote:
| I said "wrong" because it appeared that the author was not
| expecting a job talk. The recruiter should have prepped her
| for the process right up the front.
|
| Given the kind of talk she described it sounds like a big
| miscommunication. It's possible the miscommunication was
| about the role itself. In any case IMHO the responsibility
| lies with the company.
| uberdru wrote:
| Has there been a study on the percentage of borderline
| personalities or maybe just run-of-the-mill sociopaths in "Human
| Resources" occupations? The name kinda says it all.
| FlownScepter wrote:
| 12 hours of unpaid labor to just get your foot in the door? I'll
| take the hardest conceivable pass, please.
|
| If a company sees no issue with asking for a TED talk just to
| consider you for a position, imagine what kind of work/life
| balance you can expect once hired. What kind of last minute
| assignments, what kind of weekend calls to wipe some higher up's
| rear end after they foot-mouthed with a client, and promised the
| moon, and now you've gotta go to Kroger and find 40 tons of
| cheese and carve it up so they don't need to look stupid.
|
| I've said it before and I'll say it again: we as software
| devs/code monkeys/devops/admins have fucking worth. You should
| not EVER be willing to put yourself through this kind of meat
| grinder, not just to avoid demeaning yourself, but for demeaning
| everyone else who practices your craft alongside you. They're not
| worth so little as to need to do that, and neither are you.
|
| You want me to write code for your company? Awesome, I'd love to
| do that. Pay me.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Personally, I'd prefer to give a 1 hour presentation of my work
| over a full day of technical interviews one after the other. I
| like this presentation idea - I've only ever seen it done when
| hiring people with PhDs just out of academia, but I'd like to
| see it as an option for non-PhD positions as well. This way you
| get all of the interested parties in the room at one time, they
| hear your presentation and there's some Q&A afterward and you'd
| be done in like 90 minutes to 2 hours.
|
| If this became standard practice interviewees would create a
| presentation once and then adapt it for each company. So sure,
| you'd put in a dozen hours or so the first time but then for
| future presentations it would take much less time to tweak it
| for the intended audience.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Job talks would be a great idea, even for, or especially for,
| senior hires who have a lot of interesting things to talk
| about.
| FlownScepter wrote:
| > Personally, I'd prefer to give a 1 hour presentation of my
| work over a full day of technical interviews one after the
| other. I like this presentation idea - I've only ever seen it
| done when hiring people with PhDs just out of academia, but
| I'd like to see it as an option for non-PhD positions as
| well. This way you get all of the interested parties in the
| room at one time, they hear your presentation and there's
| some Q&A afterward and you'd be done in like 90 minutes to 2
| hours.
|
| Personally, I wouldn't do either one. I'm fine with multi-
| stage interviews, even multiple drives to a given location,
| but there are limits. If a company wants me there for an all-
| day affair, I better have some compensation on the way,
| either the job itself or just for the time investment. I'm
| too damn busy to just flush a day down the toilet on a "maybe
| we'll hire you," not even going into the travel expenses,
| arranging time off from my current job, etc.
|
| All my career I have watched as stories from fellow tech
| workers get more and more ridiculous, the lengths they're
| expected to go to for a freaking interview. It's gotten
| disgusting. If a company thinks you're a good fit for their
| position, they should be ready to court you as well. The only
| context these death march assembly line interviews make sense
| in, is if you are utterly meaningless to them, just another
| cog to be placed, and eventually, replaced. And I don't want
| to work for anyone like that anyway.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Very much agree with the sentiment. Interviewing in tech is
| so broken that I consider myself fortunate to not have to
| do it anymore. It's not like I've completely retired, but
| I've retired from interviewing. If someone wants to hire me
| for contract work based on past performance or working
| knowledge or on my github code and if the gig is
| interesting I'll take it. I had a short gig last Fall like
| that - former coworker emailed and asked if I was
| interested in working on a contract project that was in my
| area of expertise. I did the project - they knew my past
| work and I knew I liked working with them, no interview
| dance required.
|
| But if a company wants to play the interview game (phone
| screen -> coding test -> full day interviews -> followup
| interview, etc.) then I'm not at all interested. If more of
| us would refuse to play the game maybe companies would try
| harder.
| FlownScepter wrote:
| Exactly! They have to. If they can't fill positions that
| must be filled, changes will be made. But we all have to
| demand that, all the time. And that also means preaching
| this to everyone here who is just starting out in their
| careers. Lack of previous work to show is not permission
| to an interviewer to treat an aspiring developer like
| garbage. Everyone has to start somewhere.
| master_yoda_1 wrote:
| We should start charging fee for our time during interview. Thats
| the only way to fix this.
| mikestew wrote:
| Great, now my company has to issue a 1099 U. S. tax form for
| every candidate. What labor laws apply during the interview
| process? Man, better get legal and HR in on this.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Hey, if that's what it takes to make the company respect
| peoples time.
| master_yoda_1 wrote:
| I know for sure couple of company does give money for the
| interview time. If your competitive advantage is getting
| unpaid work from people then sorry to say your company suck.
| PhillyG wrote:
| Aren't hr involved anyway??
| vsareto wrote:
| >A company that will remain nameless (unless someone convinces me
| otherwise)
|
| I'll give it a shot. They're going to keep doing it because they
| keep getting away with it. You've tied this to (I'm assuming)
| your real identity, so that makes it a little more difficult to
| call them out because they can respond. But if you don't let us
| know, we can't know to avoid them. Even avoiding spending time
| getting to a final round, only to be asked to do this, would be
| helpful.
|
| They got you to work for free. They probably didn't benefit
| directly unless you gave them new ideas they didn't know about
| before, but you still put the time in. It was work to you. And
| they obviously didn't respect it at all, much less take the time
| to read your resume. Maybe they weren't even interested in hiring
| you?
|
| The only saving grace for that could be an exceptional position
| with great responsibility and great pay. But even if that's true,
| they flippantly sent you through interviews for that position, so
| they're likely a bad company from the inside. They only way they
| would face consequences is if they're named.
| cryptocrypter wrote:
| You don't know the name of the company, just refuse when a
| company asks you to do unpaid work for the interview.
| tidepod12 wrote:
| Companies don't just interview people for shits and giggles. It
| costs a lot of money and people-hours to interview someone. The
| notion that "they didn't even read the resume and had no
| intention of ever hiring this person" is silly - no company is
| going to waste the time and money to go through 3 interviews
| with a person unless they were at least willing to hear them
| out. They don't want to waste their own time any more than you
| want to waste yours.
|
| The most likely thing that happened is that the company was
| willing to hire this person even without the requisite
| experience if the interviews had gone well, but then someone
| else also applied and they were a better fit. That's a shitty
| result for the OP, but I'm not sure the alternative is any
| better. Should the company just not have given OP a shot at
| all, reducing their chance to get that job to 0%? That's not
| beneficial for OP, either.
| uberdru wrote:
| Sure they do. HR metrics are all based around pipelines, just
| like sales people. They get measured on number of candidates
| interviewed, and the more candidates interviewed for a
| specific position the better, as it makes them appear to be
| doing more 'due diligence'.
| tidepod12 wrote:
| I've worked at, hired at, and consulted at many companies.
| I've never once seen an HR department be incentivized to
| interview people just for the sake of interviewing. At my
| last two companies, recruiters are measured on the number
| of candidates that end up being extended an offer, and are
| _negatively_ measured against the number of candidates that
| are rejected. If a recruiter is pulling in a large number
| of people that all get rejected, that 's not due diligence,
| it's wasting everyone's time and is a signal that the
| recruiter is not very good at identifying suitable
| candidates.
| thenightcrawler wrote:
| Even if they make it to the onsite?
| vsareto wrote:
| Why did the author experience this then? This should have
| been 1 phone call max to establish the author didn't have
| this experience. But instead, they sent him through multiple
| rounds and made them give a lengthy presentation.
|
| >They were looking for someone with a few years of experience
| working with a specific technology I had never used. But...
| they knew that from my resume.
|
| Can you explain why they might have gone with the above
| excuse rather than "we found someone better" or "we won't be
| moving forward"?
| ng12 wrote:
| Unfortunately rejecting candidates and/or providing
| feedback can be a legal minefield. The most generic excuse
| is the best one and using objective facts is one of the
| safest ways to reject someone.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I see liability cited as a reason all the time, but I
| never hear about specific cases or settlements, or even a
| justification from an actual legal team (HR doesn't
| count, they are trained to never allow anything as far as
| I can tell). It comes across from the inside and the
| outside as pure laziness.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| It's a legal minefield in the sense that there is legal
| trouble if a hiring manager says "I hired the other
| candidate because they were white", but there is no such
| trouble if they just privately think it.
| tidepod12 wrote:
| They were likely willing to hire the author anyway, even
| without the experience. But they ended up finding someone
| that was better than the author.
|
| >Can you explain why they might have gone with the above
| excuse rather than "we found someone better" or "we won't
| be moving forward"?
|
| They _did_ say "we found someone better". From the
| article: "They said that I interviewed extremely well, but
| that they decided to go with another candidate."
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| They thought this candidate was worth asking to prepare an
| interview task, but not worth hearing the result of that
| preparation.
|
| That's mightily disrespectful and sounds a lot like 'shits
| and giggles'.
| tidepod12 wrote:
| When they asked them to prepare the presentation, they
| likely had full intention to consider them for hiring.
| Then, another candidate filled the role, meaning the
| company no longer would be able to hire the author.
|
| Informing them of this and cancelling the interview is the
| _most_ respectful thing they could have done. It 's
| certainly better than wasting the author's time by making
| them give the presentation even though the company then
| knew there was no longer a position they could offer.
| trimbo wrote:
| Years ago, after doing well on regular interviews, I was once
| asked to do a presentation like this and I withdrew instead. For
| a regular interview, both candidate and employer give equal time.
| But for take home assignments, the employer is not putting in an
| equal amount. They're asking for more commitment than they're
| willing to put in (sometimes significantly so).
|
| Maybe fixing the technical interview process starts with the
| highly qualified candidates decisively saying no to these things.
| I understand that not everyone is in a position to do this, but
| those who are should just say no and maybe it will help fix
| things (the takehome assignment fad and other brokenness).
| just_random wrote:
| This happened to me as well. A recruiter told me that I had done
| very well in the PS, and would move me forward to the virtual
| onsite. I prepared for a week, including a whole weekend. Then I
| received a call from the recruiter telling me that the team that
| wanted me to interview changed their product direction, and would
| not move forward with me anymore. I was pretty upset, I just said
| thank you for letting me know since I did not know and do not
| know what else I could say. It was a totally waste of my time. I
| was actually pretty busy in that week, I could have done
| something else over that weekend. I guess this is how life goes.
| keithnz wrote:
| it is, its kind of unfortunate, but things are always in a
| state of flux. Can happen the other way around, a company goes
| through an entire elimination process, gets the final choice,
| and they turn it down.
| justincpollard wrote:
| My main takeaway from this article is that the author wasn't
| necessarily frustrated with spending 12 hours to prepare a 1-hour
| long presentation - though this does seem like a big ask - but
| was more frustrated that they didn't even get the opportunity to
| present it because the company was
|
| > looking for someone with a few years of experience working with
| a specific technology I had never used. But... they knew that
| from my resume. And from my first interview. And from my second
| interview. And when they told me that I needed to prep a talk.
|
| Shouldn't the company have seen this deal breaker before the
| interview process started? Or at least after the first interview
| or two? Acknowledging that the author wasn't the right fit would
| have saved both the company and the candidate the time and effort
| of going through an interview process that the company should
| have known wouldn't yield an offer.
|
| I'm not sure if this is common practice, but I've encountered
| something similar, going through multiple rounds of interviews
| over many hours only to have the recruiter tell me that "based on
| your resume, you don't have the skills we're looking for in a
| candidate for this position". Why waster my time, and yours,
| going through the interview process then?
|
| I don't think any of these rationales are very satisfying, but
| here are some possibilities: 1) The company didn't know what it
| was looking for when it started the process and came to a
| different understanding of the job requirements as the candidate
| moved deeper in the process. 2) The company is covering up the
| real reason they didn't want to move forward and "lack of
| relevant skill" is an easy excuse. 3) The company's recruiting
| process is immature/messy/sloppy/ineffective and they literally
| missed the lack of required skills until the very end. 4) The
| position had to be filled and the company wanted to maintain a
| backup candidate in case their first choice didn't work out.
|
| I'd love to hear from those with experience on the
| recruiting/hiring manager side to see whether any of these
| reasons ring true or if something else might be at play.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm guessing #2 is probably closest (to be charitable). The
| required skill may have been a soft requirement for a candidate
| who otherwise wowed them but, as they moved through the
| process, that just wasn't the case.
| derekp7 wrote:
| A few years ago we were interviewing for a position, and one
| of the candidates was very up front with what the knew /
| didn't know -- however everything about this candidate showed
| that they would excel in the skills that were listed. Another
| candidate matched up with the skills we were looking for, and
| on paper was very impressive (same with the technical answers
| in the interview). However this person came off as a bit
| arrogant and inflexible. So we went with the less qualified,
| but better personality fit candidate, and that was one of our
| better hires.
|
| So I can easily see the tables being turned the other way --
| a candidate that doesn't have all the skills, but failed to
| wow us, would lose out to a candidate that better matched the
| skill set we were looking for.
| tidepod12 wrote:
| My guess is that it wasn't actually a deal-breaker, and if
| there were no other candidates or if the other candidate ended
| up not being a good fit, the company wanted to go ahead with
| the presentation to see if they would be a good fit even
| without that specific experience.
|
| It's a complicated situation from both side. If you're the
| company, you have to anticipate that the other candidate might
| get another offer, or turn you down, or turn out to be a flop,
| so you want to interview other candidates at the same time to
| have a back-up plan. And that's a good thing for the article
| author too, because it gives them the chance to see if they're
| a fit for the job and could learn the required skills even if
| they don't have them now. And it's great if it works out... but
| shitty when it doesn't.
|
| It's worth realizing that it's a losing situation for the
| company, too. It's not like _they_ want to waste a bunch of
| time interviewing you for a job you 're ultimately not going to
| be in any more than _you_ want to waste time on it. But
| unfortunately "wasting a bunch of time interviewing" is just
| how job hunting/hiring works these days.
| justincpollard wrote:
| > And that's a good thing for the article author too, because
| it gives them the chance to see if they're a fit for the job
| and could learn the required skills even if they don't have
| them now.
|
| I think you're right on here, but I also think the benefits
| diminish the further a candidate goes in the process only to
| get turned down with an explanation that was known at the
| beginning. How many interviews does it take to come to that
| realization?
|
| > It's not like they want to waste a bunch of time
| interviewing you for a job you're ultimately not going to be
| in any more than you want to waste time on it.
|
| It seems like this should be true, and I hope it is, but I
| have worked for companies that seem to interview just for the
| sake of feeling or appearing to move forward in filling a
| position. Maybe the recruiter or hiring manager is
| incentivized in that way? Some action, even if it's in the
| wrong direction, is perceived as better than no action at
| all.
| tidepod12 wrote:
| >only to get turned down with an explanation that was known
| at the beginning. How many interviews does it take to come
| to that realization?
|
| The explanation likely wasn't known at the beginning. The
| thing that changed was the _other_ candidate, and the
| company almost certainly had no way of knowing if this
| other candidate was going to fill the role up until the
| moment they did, at which time (I 'm assuming) is when the
| company cancelled OP's presentation. The company likely had
| full intention to hire OP until that point.
|
| >It seems like this should be true, and I hope it is, but I
| have worked for companies that seem to interview just for
| the sake of feeling or appearing to move forward in filling
| a position. Maybe the recruiter or hiring manager is
| incentivized in that way? Some action, even if it's in the
| wrong direction, is perceived as better than no action at
| all.
|
| That's opposite my experience as a hiring manager. If we're
| "iffy" on a candidate, we'll likely give another interview
| to see if the first interview was a fluke. But if it's
| already known off the bat that the candidate won't be
| hired, we certainly don't waste time interviewing them
| anyway. Interviewing someone that's already a "no" means
| wasting multiple peoples' _entire day_ in interviews,
| meetings, debriefs for no progress. That 's something I
| want to avoid as much as humanly possible, and although I'm
| sure it happens some places, it's definitely not
| incentivized at any of the companies I've worked at.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Invoice them for your prep time, the time you'd have presented it
| (and recovery period), and double it for wasting your time.
| [deleted]
| razeonex wrote:
| I remember a fintech here at my country contacted me for a
| possition and they asked me to perform a technical assessment
| which I diligently executed even since I though that the
| technical things they were trying to test could be easily asked
| during an interview, and that it going to cost me some money
| because they were asking me to use an AWS account, anyways. After
| finishing the technical thing, I sent an email to notify and
| proceed with the process, after that they were so difficult to
| provide availability for the next interview, they wanted a single
| time which I told them I wasn't able to meet at that time because
| I was working on that time so they took more days and I ended up
| loosing 20 bucks and so frustrated because they didn't provide
| the actual time to proceed with the process, I told the recruiter
| that if they don't have enough time to get more people with their
| team then maybe they don't have enough time to actually spend on
| different things than working. Anyhow, I just wanted to rant
| that.
| keithnz wrote:
| a presentation about your projects you've worked on? hmmm, when I
| interview someone about their projects its pretty much a
| conversation where there is no set plan. Quite often you end up
| swapping what projects you talk about based on questions asked. I
| find freeform pretty effective to get to the interesting things.
| dnanabkchsbxb wrote:
| The only company I encountered recently who wanted me to give a
| presentation when applying for a software engineering job was
| Snowflake. I guess asking everyone to jump through that hoop is
| one way of cutting down on the number of candidates.
| bostik wrote:
| Back before the plague, we used to include a short presentation
| round for senior hires on the final day. After all, a senior
| engineer is expected to occasionally explain and simplify
| potentially complex issues to people outside their immediate
| circles.
|
| But we never made it a gauntlet. Presentation was for 15-20
| minutes, on a technical and hopefully interesting subject of
| the candidate's choosing. It was also the first "real"
| interview slot, because the idea was always that by allowing
| the candidates to warm up on a topic they were familiar and
| comfortable with, they would be more relaxed afterwards. And of
| course we explained the reasoning to the candidate, upfront.
|
| Sure enough - we have people who enjoy being exposed to new,
| interesting, technical things. If they learned something new,
| great. If they found the topic interesting enough to ask
| further questions thanks to their own curiosity, even better.
|
| On the other hand, Spotify used to require an on-the-spot adlib
| presentation during their initial interview a decade ago. That
| was disturbing.
| dnanabkchsbxb wrote:
| Something that held me back is that all of my work has been
| under NDA, and my side projects aren't worth presenting. I
| think discussions about my past work in interviews may
| borderline violate the NDA if I say the wrong thing, but
| putting it together into a formal presentation seems to cross
| some kind of line, and create documentation of a willful
| violation.
|
| If you're interviewing academics, people who work in open
| source, or people who have already gotten a presentation
| cleared to give a talk somewhere, that wouldn't be an issue.
| Those might be people you want to select for, but you should
| be aware that's what you're doing.
| ghaff wrote:
| For a senior position, a short technical presentation seems
| pretty reasonable to me. Many in that situation probably
| already have something they can repurpose. As you say, most
| senior technical positions aren't just about churning out
| code in a vacuum.
| devlopr wrote:
| It's one way to bias the interview towards extroverts. Based in
| the percentage of extroverts to introverts developers they will
| probably end up with less technically able development and the
| amount of meetings will be higher than average and meetings
| will be filled with people who need to add in something so
| meeting length will increase.
|
| Should have more people wanting to come into the office.
| dnautics wrote:
| What? No. Being good at presentations is IMO uncorrelated to
| extroversion, I have literally seen hundreds of them (science
| grad school, was in two labs with weekly group meetings and
| went to two journal clubs a week, plus lectures by visiting
| profs, etc) a rough estimate would be I've seen about 500
| presentations, most presented by people whom I know and have
| a good feel of whether or not they are extroverted.
| ghaff wrote:
| Maybe not _uncorrelated_ but I mostly agree. A presentation
| is a performance. And there are people who can be very good
| at performing who are not especially into introducing
| themselves to strangers one on one.
| dnautics wrote:
| The reason why I disagree is that presentation is a skill
| and introverts are more likely to be conscientious about
| their presentation, their mistakes, and put effort into
| patching them up over time. Even if it's their first go
| at it, they are likely to be conscientious about the
| _content_ of their preso because they know they 're going
| to suck at the live aspect (I'm an extrovert, btw). There
| might be a maturity aspect too, as in: when you're a high
| school or college student you are one-tracked to barf all
| of your knowledge onto the screen, probably due to
| insecurity, but that's uncorrelated to social temperament
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| My experience of the last year has taught me that if I need a job
| I am willing to put up with the interview process, but if I don't
| I am not. Companies however seem to think they can treat everyone
| they call in as if that person desperately needs the job.
| itronitron wrote:
| I've had some ridiculous experiences, and a few positive ones.
| The ridiculous ones have been frequent enough though that I now
| recognize that if the interview ends on a very positive note
| then that is a bad sign.
| jgwil2 wrote:
| I guess the moral is only spend time and effort on stuff that can
| be reused for multiple job candidacies, like a resume, website,
| or side project.
| jordache wrote:
| the topics author listed out are general topics for marketing
| yourself. I don't see that as wasted effort
| coldcode wrote:
| Companies these days expend way too much energy interviewing
| people, and people then fail to prepare for the interviews or
| communicate internally afterwards. When I went for interviews I
| hated it when people did not even read my resume and sometimes
| did not even know what position it was for. Companies demand so
| many interviews from their existing people that they become jaded
| and no longer care.
|
| I once went for an interview as a contractor and they scheduled 8
| consecutive interviews in a row. Half never showed up, or asked
| the same lame questions. Also what they were looking for was
| actually different than what they had told me, so I flew to
| another city (they paid) for nothing. I didn't get (or want) the
| job.
|
| Good thing too, a month later the entire division was shut down.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _Companies these days expend way too much energy interviewing
| people_
|
| The only thing that wastes more time than interviews is hiring
| the wrong person. Many companies take interviewing seriously,
| my company meets before each interview to go over the
| candidate's resume and discuss what we each want to talk to the
| candidate about. Then we have a debrief after the interview.
| Anyone can veto a candidate for any reason and only candidates
| that get a majority vote to proceed move on to the next step.
| If everyone is lukewarm on the candidate, then he doesn't move
| to the next step.
|
| Interviews don't guarantee that you'll hire the right person,
| but do help screen out the wrong people -- like bad personality
| fit, insufficient knowledge of what they claim to know, etc
|
| _Good thing too, a month later the entire division was shut
| down._
|
| Perhaps your experience at a failing division was not typical
| at this company
| colmvp wrote:
| Yes. FWIW, I've been in the recent position of not making it
| past multiple rounds with top tier companies. And of course,
| it hurts to get rejected.
|
| A mentor of mine essentially said to me it's not personal,
| think of how much each of those engineers are making and how
| much it costs to interview you. If you didn't leave a great
| impression (and I fully admit that I wasn't on my game), it's
| cheaper to move on. A bad hire is very costly in terms of
| money/time/energy.
|
| At the end of the day, there's other opportunities. Plus,
| there's nothing that says given more time improving oneself,
| one can't land the opportunity they were looking for.
| dudul wrote:
| > so I flew to another city (they paid) for nothing
|
| Remind me of the time when a company flew me to their office
| for a remote position to interview with the team, and 4 out of
| the 6 sessions were held over zoom because the interviewers
| were working from home that day.
|
| And then they ghosted me after telling me I was great.
| mengibar10 wrote:
| Good riddance, if they don't respect your time probably it is not
| a company to sink some portion of your life into it.
| Unfortunately people on the other side of hiring process have
| less respect for the candidates. Somehow they feel more powerful
| than the interviewee and forgetting that they were and will be on
| the other side one day.
| 1_2__4 wrote:
| I know it's a luxury that I'm in a position to do this, but
| anyway: in general I won't continue interviewing with a company
| that expects me to put in significant effort into just preparing
| for the interview. Make a full presentation, build a small
| service or other not-trivial take-home coding challenge, put
| together a business proposal, etc.: I'm sorry, I don't do any of
| that for free. My resume and references speak for my abilities,
| and while I'm happy to have them probed and challenged (heavily!)
| in an interview context, that doesn't extend to my putting in
| hours of work just go conduct the interview at all.
|
| This isn't high school, and you're not going to give me homework
| just for the chance to work for you. And I use the homework
| analogy intentionally, because just like with school, this
| doesn't scale. I can't interview at, say, 10+ companies all of
| whom are expecting me to put in paying-employee-level work just
| for the interview while also holding down my regular job. And I'm
| not going to go with a significantly shortened list of candidate
| companies just because their interview process is so onerous that
| I literally don't have the time to talk to more.
|
| Again, I know not everyone can do this, but realize that
| companies try to exploit you during the interview phase, too. You
| need to also have standards for what you're willing to put up
| with.
| nomel wrote:
| Could you give some insight as to how you perform interviews?
|
| How do you get the candidate to clearly show they have the
| broad knowledge and creativity required to be a good developer?
| What kinds of whiteboard coding problems do you usually give?
| wojciii wrote:
| I feel the same way about this. I will refuse anything that I'm
| going to spend more han 30 min on.
|
| I was lucky to get laid off and having time to find work
| without interviews last time I was looking for work.
|
| Also I have small children and zero time for stuff right now.
| devlopr wrote:
| I have found the more work you put in for free the less they
| respect you and the less chance you have to get hired.
| jordache wrote:
| To be fair, whatever time you prepare for this specific company
| is useful preparation for your current job search cycle anyways.
|
| My job search cycle is once every 2-4 years. Within each cycle,
| I've always found my later interviews go much smoother than the
| early ones, due to incremental preparations adding up to much
| smoother execution.
|
| The first new interviews are always rough, after a long hiatus. I
| generally look at those as warm-up interviews...
|
| So it's not necessarily a net-zero reward, for the story
| portrayed by the author.
| tidepod12 wrote:
| I don't think anyone would disagree with the statement that
| hiring is terribly, atrociously, and disastrously broken. It's
| been talked about ad nauseum. But I don't think I've ever seen
| (nor do I personally have) any practical solutions to improve it.
|
| Hiring is a two-way hard problem. On the company's side, they
| have conflicting interests where they want to hire someone as
| quickly and cheaply (cheap as in not spending hundreds of man
| hours interviewing just to fill a role), but also want to do due
| diligence so that they hire the right person. On the candidate's
| side, they also have conflicting interests where they just want a
| job and don't want to spend multiple entire days doing
| interviews, but they also need to do their due diligence to make
| sure the job is actually something they want.
|
| This almost necessitates spending a decent chunk of time with
| each other, but not too much. The balance that most big tech
| company's seem to go with is 6-7 hours total in interviews for
| each candidate (and then ~10+ additional hours for both the
| candidate and the company doing preparation/debriefs). I really
| don't know why or how this was the number arrived at, though.
| From my perspective as a candidate, even after 6-7 hours of
| interviews I often come away still knowing very little about
| _what the job actually is_. And from my perspective as an
| interviewer, I know that requiring so much time from internal
| employees serving as interviewers is draining and stressful. It
| seems like it ultimately comes out to a lose-lose, but for some
| reason it 's still what big tech sticks with.
| dchuk wrote:
| I'm building something to help for this on the hiring manager
| side! I think that all hiring software is focused on the
| recruiting funnel side of things rather than optimizing the
| actual interview/panel interview process to ensure fair data
| collection and execution overall.
|
| After having done a lot of hiring interviews (100s) over the
| years, I can say that my own methodologies have improved
| substantially in terms of asking the right questions and being as
| objective as possible, but ultimately 1) members of my panel
| might not have that many experiences to hone their skills and 2)
| the data capture and evaluation process is a "clunky spreadsheet"
| exercise at best.
|
| EDIT: The book "Who: The A Method for Hiring" is a great resource
| for this.
| garbene wrote:
| I went through something similar as a Junior engineer, except the
| presentation didn't get cancelled.
|
| The experienced engineers in the audience absolutely tore me and
| my code apart. It was a blood bath and semi-traumatizing.
|
| On the upside, I took their criticisms seriously and came out a
| better engineer in the end.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| A few years back I did a phone screen with an org that seemed
| interested in me; the phone screen went really well so they asked
| for an onsite. But they warned me that they wanted to take
| advantage of having me onsite, so the onsite would last all day.
| Ok, I thought, fair enough. I took a day off of my then-current
| job and showed up at 9 AM and spent the next 6 or so hours
| interviewing with various people (nobody ever thought to ask if
| I'd eaten lunch, which I didn't that day). The recruiter said it
| went well, but a few weeks later told me that there were some
| other people who wanted to talk to me in person. So they wanted
| another all-day on site. At that point, I figured I had already
| sunk so much time into this interview that I might as well go
| ahead and do it and - surely! - they wouldn't invite me back for
| a second all-day onsite interview if they weren't nearly positive
| they wanted to hire me by that point.
|
| I was wrong. After another all-day onsite (this time I had the
| foresight to bring some snacks because, again, there was no break
| for lunch although I spent quite a bit of time sitting by myself
| waiting for interviewers to show up), I never heard back from
| them again.
| ssully wrote:
| I did some interviewing last year. I've been in my current
| position for about 5 years; I enjoy it, but was looking to see
| what else was out there. After going through about 5 interviews I
| decided to call it quits. The entire process of tweaking resumes,
| writing cover letters, and applying eats up your post-work hours.
| Once you get a call back, preparing for the different interview
| stages will take up the rest of your nights, or weekends if you
| are assigned a work project. Working from home makes it easy to
| schedule calls during lunch hours, but that just makes your
| regular work day more stressful.
|
| After my fifth interview I decided to take a break. It was a good
| experience for me; I was incredibly rusty during my first few
| interviews, but gained a lot of confidence by my last one.
| Overall though it was incredibly stressful. This authors
| experience sounded terrible, but not at all surprising. I think
| job hunting while out of work would be stressful for other
| reasons, but being able to commit your full attention to
| searching and preparing would be advantageous in my opinion.
| itronitron wrote:
| I feel like the main blind spot for companies in the hiring
| process is that they expect candidates to already be caring
| about and deeply invested in what the company works on, and the
| more specialized the sub-field or tech the more the company
| expects candidates to have familiarity or expertise.
| ssully wrote:
| That is certainly a problem. I intentionally applied to
| companies I had some knowledge or interest in, but I
| definitely had to bullshit more when I knew less about the
| company. I tried to take the approach of putting my cards on
| the table; ex: I have a strong interest in security,
| automation, and devsecops, hopefully there is some
| intersection! Sometimes that worked, but I still ran into
| cases where I felt like I checked 9 out of 12 boxes, and by
| missing those 3 boxes they weren't interested, or they had
| someone who checked more then 9.
|
| Either way, I have major respect for anyone looking for a new
| job right now. I wish you the best of luck, and I empathize
| with how exhausting it can be.
| throaweyprimy wrote:
| Hah, thanks. I was interviewing for 9 months straight, but
| still didn't manage to land a gig. Took a two month hiatus,
| and now back into it. It's pretty brutal!
| nomel wrote:
| In my experience, it's caused by a reactive, rather than
| proactive, response to being short staffed. Interviews happen
| at _least_ a year after those in the trenches have realized,
| and signaled, that staffing is short. By the time of the
| interview, something negative has already happened (dates
| slipped, etc), with that being the trigger that caused
| management to approve a hire. Add some delay to actually
| finding the candidates and you 're well into fire fighting,
| and hiring someone with direct experience, with a minimal
| ramp up time, is a huge plus.
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