
Ask HN: Need for better technical interviewing tools? - timsegraves
So I've been doing development for about 12 years and have been an active member of the hiring process for at least half of those at various companies. It's always been a mix of random tools we use from Google Docs, to Collabedit, to Evernote, etc. I got frustrated a couple months ago and started building something I thought would work better.<p>I have an MVP about ready to start letting a few people test out but I thought I'd open up the idea to the Eye of Mordor (different HN thread) and see what people thought. Are there things I'm missing? Is the idea just dumb? Is there another option out there I couldn't find?<p>I put up a little splash page you can find below with some screenshots of what I have and the basic idea I'm going for.  Feel free to ask questions, suggest ideas, throw rocks.  Thanks.<p>http://interviewsy.com
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staunch
There's a _lot_ of friction to getting people to use new tools to manage the
entire process. It could be quite profitable, but it probably requires someone
who's really good at selling to companies.

The low hanging fruit I see is for standardizing part of the interview
process. If you ask every candidate the same 20 questions, and then rate their
responses on a scale from 1-10, you get a really nice and _somewhat_ objective
measurement.

It's just one signal, it doesn't solve the whole problem, but it's something
every company should probably do every time. HR loves it because it's
documentation (for any potential discrimination lawsuits). In fact, that could
be half your sales pitch. Sell it to HR as a tool to protect the company
legally and to hiring managers as a way to more objectively measure
candidates.

It could be useful for phone screens or in-person interviews. Provide lots of
pre-made questions for each job type, but let people customize them. Maybe
have each interviewer rate the candidate separately on the same questions, so
you can make it even more objective.

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timsegraves
Thanks staunch, that's great feedback. I think you're totally right that
getting the entire process replace would be tough. I like the idea of an
objective measurement score. It wouldn't be everything but could help out
deciding between a couple candidates that were otherwise equal.

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tptacek
I run hiring for Matasano, which is one of the hiring-est companies (in its
size tier, I guess) on HN. We've looked at a couple tools like this and none
of them have kept us too engaged.

A feature idea for you: when you do the scheduling, have contact information
for all the interviewers enrolled in the system, and the candidate, and
(optionally) SMS them 15 minutes in advance of the interview.

~~~
timsegraves
Yeah, the reminder scheduling piece is definitely a challenge. I think the
site will need to maintain that and do notifications, but I feel like to do it
right I'll need to integrate with as many calendar providers as possible to
make sure I'm not scheduling over someone's meeting. I have the Google
calendar part about done but that probably covers less than half of small tech
companies out there.

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ScottWhigham
<http://interviewsy.com/>

I like the board layout and how you pull the social info. But I don't
understand focusing on "technical interviews" - that's just illogical to me. A
typical 100+ person company's technical interviews happen much less frequently
than their non-technical interviews, don't they? Maybe that's not clear - in
other words, for your typical company that has technical employees, don't
those same companies also need to hire non-technical employees as well? Of
course they do. So... if I, the hiring person, use your tool for the technical
interviews, what tool do I use for the non-technical interviews? If the answer
is, "Uhhhh..." or "A different site", then that's it - I won't use you. I
don't want to have to use multiple sites/tools during hiring; I want to either
use one site or no sites.

Here's an idea - maybe you open up the board layout/social part for all
interviewees, and make the coding/testing aspects an in-site purchase/option?
I don't know - it's your business and all - but it seems to me that people
will pay a premium for those extra features:

* Coding tests

* Intelligence testing

* Custom Q&A with grading (like @staunch said)

~~~
timsegraves
I think this is a good point and something I've thought about a little bit. My
thought was most of the basic features such as scheduling and applicant
management would carry over to other non-technical roles. I do need to learn a
lot more hiring for sales, marketing, etc. to know if there are any special
needs from those types of teams.

Having the developer specific stuff an additional purchase option is an
interesting idea I hadn't thought of. Thanks again for the feedback.

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mariusz331
at the angelhack last weekend, my partner created streetcodr.com. it was well
accepted and seemed like a cool way to code.

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omnisci
Just to bump this, I was at angelhack and saw the demo for streetcodr, it was
awesome! I could totally see this being a useful tool for interviewing.
Congrats on an awesome app guys Keith @omniscience

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manish_lnmiit
personally I am also the part of hiring process. and same level of frustration
I got as you got while interviewing them. I think its a good idea what you
going to do and I totally suport it. There must be a common platform for each
applicant where all the corporate information is available there, where any
one can host the interview, call for interview, scheduling of interview and
many more things can be handled there.

~~~
timsegraves
Thanks for the feedback manish. I think there a lot of ways the process could
be improved and could see this going a few different ways. I'm trying to focus
on the most painful parts for developers doing the interviewing initially. I
know what's painful for me but am looking to hear what others find painful
about the process.

