
Show HN: HiDimensional – senior engineers recommend candidates to startups - pradeep_m
Hi HN! We’re excited to share with you the public beta launch of our startup, HiDimensional (www.hidimensional.com). We are a platform consisting of senior engineering leaders who interview candidates and provide recommendations of the best candidates and their strengths. We then use the recommendations to refer these candidates to founders of startups that match their strengths and interests.<p>The recommendation serves as a personal referral from the interviewer, so for candidates, it amplifies their application and fast-tracks them through the process. And for companies, they are receiving pre-vetted candidates endorsed by someone they can trust. That last point is key - our interviewers are established senior engineers (e.g., former Head of ML @ Quora, former VP @ Addepar, former Head of Newsfeed @ Facebook, etc.) and technical founders and hiring managers, so we believe their word carries weight.  We have over 30 such interviewers today, and they cover a variety of engineering disciplines from full-stack&#x2F;product engineers to data scientists to backend&#x2F;data engineers, and everything in between.<p>There’s more detail about the platform, how it works here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.hidimensional.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;09&#x2F;07&#x2F;introducing-hidimensional&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.hidimensional.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;09&#x2F;07&#x2F;introducing-hidime...</a><p>We’d love to hear your feedback or if you have any questions about this or generally about technical hiring, feel free to drop us a message at hello@hidimensional.com!  And of course, if you’re interested in trying out the service as a candidate, sign up on our website: www.hidimensional.com&#x2F;signup<p>Thanks!
Pradeep &amp; Nikhil<p>P.S. If you’d like to interview on our platform or hire our candidates, we’d love to hear from you.  Send us a note at hello@hidimensional.com.
======
graphememes
Oh hey look, another recruiting firm acting as a startup.

~~~
pradeep_m
ha, I agree we are a recruiting company. However, we do believe we are solving
a couple of different pain points.

a) For companies, resume doesn't convey the complete picture and any
additional signal would be super valuable. We believe the level of signal you
get from a senior interviewer is far more valuable than resume-based signals
or coding test-based signals.

b) For candidates, they get feedback directly from the senior engineers about
what they are good at and what they should improve on. Most companies provide
no feedback at all and that can be frustrating! In addition to that, if you do
well, you get a direct referral from the senior engineer to all startups. And
because of the referral, you get fast-tracked to onsites!

------
srikantaggarwal
I am very thankful to HiDimensional for helping me out throughout my interview
process.

The feedback provided by Pradeep and Stefan helped me understand my week
points and work on them to be better at cracking interviews.

It was next to impossible for me to be interviewed with startups like Rippling
without the much needed help by HiDimensional.

Even after my interviews, HiDimensional personally helped me in deciding my
next career move which was awesome.

I salute the HiDimensional team to give such a personalized interview
experience and never backing out from helping the candidates. Kudos to the
HiDimensional team! You guys rock...

------
swaroopgrs
My friend and I interviewed with them and I can tell you it works. My friend
got offers from 2 very good startups. The interviews work very differently and
the personal referral can be invaluable. Apart from all these, you will make a
lot of great contacts.

PS. I have no relation with the company.

------
reiinakano
Having nobody you know at top tech companies to vouch for you is one of the
biggest problems for people from other countries (esp. 3rd world countries)
when applying. Can't even get through the resume screen.

This seems like a great way to provide a solution to this problem. Are you
currently open to people who would need any form of visa sponsorship in the
future? Assuming great performance, would they finally have a realistic shot
at a job in a top tech company?

------
literallycancer
The interviewer showcase box at the bottom of your page should wait for the
picture to load and render the changes together, now it looks weird when the
info changes but the old picture stays there for a moment.

Another one: your signup form doesn't handle international phone numbers well.

~~~
pradeep_m
Oh - thanks for the feedback! We'll fix.

~~~
literallycancer
Another one: your signup form doesn't handle international phone numbers well.

------
lozzo
Before giving my details I always take a look at the site. If it looks
professional and maybe I might indulge.

The problem here is that it would take any half decent developer less than a
day to knock up a website similar to yours. So why should I trust you good
luck but not for me.

------
gigatexal
Would junior{developers, engineers} etc. apply?

~~~
pradeep_m
Yes, we work with junior engineers too.

~~~
gigatexal
Signed up.

------
iamfunatparties
It's liked hired, honeypot and other recruiting websites?

~~~
pradeep_m
Hired, Vettery and other recruiting websites typically connect candidates to
companies based on almost little to no vetting (Their vetting is based on your
resume: essentially pedigree).

On HiDimensional, as a candidate, you interview with a senior engineer in your
field and based on what you are strongest at, you get a personal referral from
that engineer to the companies we work with. The engineer fills out an
evaluation highlighting your strengths and we match you with the companies
looking for your strengths.

Also, you get very clear feedback about what you are good at and what you can
improve on from the senior engineers directly. For example, if you are an ML
engineer, do you believe it'd be useful to interview with and get a direct
referral from the former Head of ML at Quora to all startups?

The end goal is the same, but this approach yields a better experience for all
parties.

~~~
vthallam
So then you are like Triplebyte?

Also, this will definitely work great until you scale and when you are out of
qualified engineering leaders who can help you vet candidates. How do you plan
to manage that?

~~~
pradeep_m
Yes, I'd agree they are a closer comparable. Our primary difference is that
our interview process is personalized to each individual candidate because we
match candidates to an independent interviewer relevant to their domain and
field of interest. We don't specify what the interviewer should ask. Instead
our direction to them is: "We matched this candidate to you because they
expressed these skills/interests. Try to identify where their strengths are
and if you would recommend them for a role in your specialty."

The evaluations our interviewers write as a result gives us a lot of nuance
and evidence to match candidates with the best roles for them.

The fact that the interviewers are independent is also another differentiator.
This gives candidates an opportunity to make a valuable connection, and we
expect interviewers to take ~10-15 min at the end to share feedback on the
candidate's performance, how they can improve, and answer any questions /
share personalized advice. We have heard many frustrated accounts from our
candidates about receiving rejections with no feedback and how this is one of
their most valued benefits of our approach.

On the scaling point - it's a very good question. We are collecting a lot of
data about each interviewer and specifically their skill at evaluating skill
(i.e., how predictive is their evaluation). So over time, we will be able to
understand interviewer strength and what they are qualified to evaluate, and
seniority of the interviewer becomes less important.

~~~
reiinakano
Sure, but without seniority of the interviewer, would his/her reference carry
as much weight?

Instead of banking on an interviewer's reputation, you would in essence be
asking companies to trust your ability "to understand interviewer strength and
what they are qualified to evaluate". Not so sure how well that'll work...

~~~
pradeep_m
Fair question. We collect data about every interviewer (at a very granular
level to understand what skills they are good at evaluating and how predictive
they are).

Also, we provide interviewing history data as part of the evaluation. For
example, if you knew the last 10 candidates a particular interviewer has
endorsed have ended up at companies like Airbnb, Stripe, Google, Facebook,
etc, would the interviewer's reputation still be in question?

