
On Hiring: Trial Week - Yay or Nay? - fredwu
http://fredwu.me/post/65426660472/on-hiring-trial-week-yay-or-nay
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Spooky23
"Trial week" sounds like a pretty blatant attempt to keep the workforce young
and dumb.

If you have other things going on in life (home, family), you're not going to
roll the dice of getting canned in a week. And burning vacation time at a
previous employer is (by my standard) an ethical issue to me. When I leave a
gig, I generally give sufficient notice so that my duties can be transitioned
in an orderly way. Obviously there are exception (ie. you give notice and get
escorted out by company policy)

If your company need to do something like this, do it the Zappos way. Bring
someone on and offer a check to leave after a certain period.

~~~
ronaldx
I would suggest the contrary.

As an employed person, I have some resistance to giving up a reasonable job to
enter into a permanent contract that has potential but that may not suit me as
much.

A trial week gives me, as a mature employee, an equal and fair chance to
decide whether or not it's a good idea give up what I already have (just as
the company gets to decide whether I am a good risk at my larger-than-novice
pay rate).

I approve of the idea that companies and employees should mutually agree a
probation period that is satisfactory to both - it seems to me that a one week
period at first is a good idea.

I would be willing to give up a week of vacation time for this opportunity (if
I thought it had a good chance of resulting in a positive outcome). If I was
worried about the loss of vacation, I would explain this and ask the new
employer to consider additional vacation - the result of this discussion would
also be important in my consideration.

~~~
dsl
What if it doesn't work out? You show up to work the following Monday and ask
for another week off to go check out another place?

~~~
ronaldx
OK, personally what would I do in that hypothetical situation?

Note that I would only take the trial week if I thought there was a good
chance of it being a mutual match.

If it didn't work out despite that, then I would consider it a good investment
of my time. Compared to starting a permanent contract and it not working out,
it's a _great_ outcome.

If I had several opportunities at that level of significance, then I would
have already considered whether resignation from my existing job was an
option.

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jqueryin
My comment from the blog:

 _I 've seen several variations of the "trial week" in effect on a smaller
scale. In the cases I'm aware of, the timeframe was drastically reduced to a
weekend or a single workday. Candidates were given a realistic problem to
solve and a set amount of time to solve it. Most implementation details were
left out beyond general scope and what constituted completion. If someone was
truly interested in being hired for the company, they'd jump at the chance.
Beyond this, I've also been in situations where the candidates were paid for
their time, even on weekends. It's an incentive that the company is also
investing themselves in the candidate. The company is essentially saying
"We're interested enough in hiring you to pay you for your time." This bodes
well with both parties in my experience._

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jasonlotito
So, I wonder what kind of people are getting hired by "interview" games? Are
these interviewing techniques bringing in high-caliber people? Or are they
bringing in the highest-caliber people they can bring in. Are you hiring
people from well-established firms, or hiring people from companies that are
just that much farther off.

I guess what I'm wondering is are the people applying doing so because of the
opportunity to work on interesting challenges, or are they just people who
have a worse job and really have nothing to lose by applying. I look at these
week long games and wonder what incentive is there for someone in my position
to apply?

It's useless to talk about numbers unless you also talk about results. And
hiring 50% or 75% of people that jump through hoops is a useless number. If
those same people are just people coming out from college or jumping from
another startup, is the number really impressive?

My thought is no. The additional games seem more like over-compensation for a
deficiency.

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damncabbage
My comment from the blog:

Additional point: the candidate may not be able to work (paid) at another
company for a week without breaking part of their contract, such as a
"devotion" clause.

(For example, something like a _" the Employee must not, without the Company's
prior written consent, engage in any other employment or business activity"_
line in the contract.)

~~~
yareally
Do such contract stipulations ever actually hold up court or have been
challenged?

~~~
dsl
Do you really want to hire someone who cares so little for agreements they
sign in good faith?

~~~
VLM
You can't sign something unethical and immoral in good faith, by definition.
You need a meeting of the minds on an equal playing field.

~~~
dsl
> something unethical and immoral

That sir, is your opinion and has no bearing on the legal definition of good
faith.

There is nothing inherently evil about exclusive employment agreements for
full time employees and is fair to both parties.

------
electronvolt
As a person currently interviewing with companies (student, graduating, etc.),
I definitely wouldn't be able to commit to a week long trial process, even if
paid, in the next 6-8 months. (Unless over Christmas/New Years; even the week
long Spring break is nearly 6 months out.) I'm hoping (fingers crossed, etc.)
that I'll have a job lined up in the next two months; I don't want to be
looking for a job in 6-8.

Asking someone to drop everything for a week (particularly with what is likely
a month of notice, if that, given how long hiring processes seem to take)
seems ridiculously presumptuous about what people's motivations/etc. are. I'd
imagine that many good candidates also just have other things in their life:
such as responsibilities related to children. I know that I have a hard time
re-arranging my responsibilities (to my grad classes, both part time jobs with
very flexible hours, and to a lesser degree to extracurricular organizations)
so that I'm free to spend a day or so travelling for a day long interview with
a month's notice: and I'm a student with (supposedly) all the free time in the
world and a much more flexible schedule. I don't see where working
professionals with (supposedly) more rigid schedules and more obligations
(work, sure, but also family or any other obligations in their lives) would
find the time to spend a full week interviewing (assuming the weekend is spent
travelling, so that the full work week is available).

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chollida1
After thinking it over, I don't really have a problem with a trial period. All
employment agreements I've seen allow for a 3 month trial period already.

The only stipulation I'd add is that salary and benefits already be finalized.
Someone taking a week away from their current job, or quitting it outright,
has weakened their negotiation position so the paper work had better be done
before the trial week starts.

Also I don't think too many companies would go down thsi trial road.... By
definition if you are doing a 1 week trial period then you are excluding the
top 5-10% of people from your potential set of hires as they'd never put up
with this, but the companies that do this like Weebly don't need to hire the
top 5-10% of hackers.

Weebly is probably content with hiring in the top 40% and therefore the system
works for them.

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mcv
The best interiew process I ever went through was pretty much like this. Of
course they first check the CV, then a regular interview, and when that went
well, I got a programming assignment. Something very simple, but in a
framework I wasn't familiar with. Had about a week to do it in my own time,
could contact them with questions, and at the end, I presented my code to the
devs, who asked questions. Afterwards, the devs vote by email.

I haven't heard of a better way to do it yet.

~~~
jimzvz
I like this. Being able to do it in your own time relieves the pressure of
being put on the spot and working in a foreign environment.

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andrewcooke
personally, i can see why people want this, but as an engineer i'd only do it
if i was either pretty desperate (like, not having a job), or if there was a
chance to learn something pretty cool. if the trial week were as interesting
as, say, the matasano crypto challenge, then i'd do it even if i wasn't
looking for a job. but i guess making something like that is difficult.

now i suspect most companies would like candidates who think that working
there is "pretty cool" in itself. but let's be honest - jobs aren't like that.
they have good bits and bad bits. and picking out just the good bits for a
week, for someone who doesn't understand the context, is hard.

so it seems to me that there's a disadvantage to the company - they are
discouraging people who are good enough to not be desperate and attract people
who think that a typical job (sorry, but most are, by definition) is "pretty
cool".

or maybe they just get younger, less cynical employees ;o)

~~~
mason55
Yeah I've considered doing this a bunch of times but my biggest problem is
coming up with small chunks of work that require little-to-no domain knowledge
and can be done in a day/weekend/week.

We've switched to having candidates do two take home problems that are derived
from actual problems we faced and it's worked very well. It cuts down on the
number of bad candidates that get to the office and waste an hour of time and
it gives a chance to candidates who are good coders but bad whiteboarders.

------
Zenst
Trial week, only if the company trials the payroll into my bank account for
that week as well. Otherwise it would be illegal to work less than minimum
wage in many countries unless registered charity.

Also ironicly for many who are unemployed - such an arrangement would legaly
stop there benifits and in short place them into a dangerous position.

Fact is you already get a trial period - it is called probabtion period and
with that it works both ways for early termination. Call it a cooling of
period. This is how the legal system has such an arrangement to accomodate
such setups and for a company to skip all that at the expense of the employee
is moraly wrong.

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VLM
Its an interesting article. I would have liked "66% Hire Rate Suggests Deeper
Hiring Issue" to have been further explored before conclusions were drawn.

The article assumption was the amazing 1/3 failure rate must have been due to
their highly unusual hiring practices. But when you hear hooves, think horses
not zebras unless you've ruled out horses, which hasn't been done. Most hiring
failures are management failures, or culture problems on either or both side,
or moral/ethical problems, or simple logistics ...

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INTPenis
My second and third job in IT had a trial period of 6 months, which is quite
common here in Sweden.

Some people get to skip this depending on the contract they sign but I'm a
high school drop out so I believe that's why I've always had to prove myself.

I find it perfectly acceptable to make sure that an employee knows what
they're doing and get feedback from the whole team before 6 months are over.

~~~
mcv
In Netherland, the standard trial period is a month, during which you can be
fired at any time for anything. I'm not sure it's legal to extend that trial
period, but after that, people usually get a half-year contract, which won't
get extended if it turns out they suck during that half year. There's a strict
limit to how many temporary contracts you can get. Eventually, the employer
has to offer a permanent contract. You can't let the employee live with that
kind of uncertainty indefinitely.

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fecak
If you read the comments in the post, the company employees are saying that
the majority of the people in trial week are from out of the area. This
changes the story quite a bit.

If I were to offer you a position in a different city, you'd probably want to
check out the city first. I offer to pay for your trip and I'll even put you
up for a week, and you can even come work with us for a week, and I'll pay you
for that too. Sounds great, or at least better than not being paid.

The risk in this situation isn't just the risk of hiring a new employee being
mitigated by the company. It's also the risk of relocating to a new city,
combined with taking a new job with a new company, being mitigated by the job
seeker. When the company takes away much of that risk by paying for the trip,
putting up the worker, and paying for the work being done during that trip, it
takes away much of the risk for the job seeker.

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mathattack
I think there are many upsides:

\- The candidate gets to know the company better.

\- The company gets to know the candidate better.

\- You can check for fit as well as technical competency.

Some of the downsides people raise make less sense:

\- Yes it's a week of vacation lost, but you can get it back if you switch
companies and you're paid for your time.

\- Yes, it's expensive, but it's cheaper than a bad hire.

\- It's entirely voluntary, there's no exploitation.

There's only two downsides in my mind: You won't be able to pry any superstars
away with this, and sometimes a week isn't enough. The solution is to go
further in the direction that this company is going - offers lots of real-work
internships to college students. You need to identify the best while they're
still sophomores and juniors. It's usually too tough to get them after they're
seniors, and they're usually too happy in their jobs to take a week off to
work somewhere else.

~~~
VLM
"There's only two downsides in my mind: You won't be able to pry any
superstars away with this"

There is an unexplored dimension to this situation. If I understand the
situation correctly, this is hiring at weebly. My impression is they're a 50
or so employee webhoster with an integrated custom CMS and a slick UI. They
seem to be in maintain/upgrade mode rather than invent a product mode. They
don't want or need a superstar. This is not a binary world, claiming they
don't want or need a superstar does NOT imply I think they're dirtbags or
losers, solely implying average people doing an average job at an average
company doing very average and traditional business. Anyone vaguely near the
median skill level would be a perfect fit and there's absolutely nothing wrong
with it.

I agree that their unusual hiring plan would be a horrible idea for a startup
doing something new or challenging where they need high end skills. If they
were developing their platform in, say, '96 they would have needed a superstar
for the development phase. In 2013 during maintenance of an existing product,
its the equivalent of stamping out license plates.

Filtering out "super stars" or "rock stars" might be a perfectly valid design
goal of a hiring process where you don't want or need super stars. What would
a "super star" do at a webhost in 2013 other than get really bored? The
business model or UI or internal processes might be very innovative; that
doesn't mean every job there is currently innovative. "Oh great, I get to
maintain an existing CRUD app for the customer database, how cutting edge"

~~~
mathattack
You're correct here. Superstars are expensive, and need certain types of roles
to stay. If you don't have that offer, it's better to not design recruiting
strategies around that.

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josefresco
Isn't most employment _at-will_ essentially making it a "trial" of
undetermined length?

~~~
damncabbage
In the US, in some places, yes.

The post's author is Australian, and is writing from that perspective. We have
minimum legal notice periods from both sides (a week for the first year,
evenutally going up to four weeks):
[http://www.fairwork.gov.au/TERMINATION/NOTICE-
PERIODS/Pages/...](http://www.fairwork.gov.au/TERMINATION/NOTICE-
PERIODS/Pages/default.aspx)

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ssharp
_But hold on, didn’t I mention one week is not enough for a candidate to be
productive and effective? Yes! And that’s why most places have a three-month
probation._

If I had to change jobs, I'd be MUCH more comfortable taking a week's
vacation, doing a "trial" week, and then making a decision than I would making
the decision and then being subjected to a three-month probationary period.

The trial weeks let's both parties dip their toes in the water. I think for
many employees, it reduces their risk quite a bit. If it doesn't work out,
you're out a week's vacation. If you're three month probation doesn't work
out, you're out of a job altogether.

~~~
arkem
Probation in the article's context is mostly an artifact of Australia's Fair
Work Act and not being an at-will employment country.

For the probationary period the employer can fire you for almost any reason
(like in the US) but afterwards there's a procedure involved where the
employer has to show cause and give the employee a chance to rectify the
issues before dismissal.

It's not like a trial week that last 3 months, it's more regular employment
but you receive tenure (or a sort) after 3 months.

------
hcho
As it is with every market out there, it is a matter of equilibrium between
buyers and sellers.

Sure you can find enough people to do a trial week if you are a poster child
of startups. Good luck if you are anything less than that.

Yay for Tesla Inc.; Nay for vowelless.ly

~~~
damncabbage
For the moment, yes; it's an employees' market right now.

What I hate to think about is what happen when the pendulum starts swinging
back. My partner is in print design, and most companies seem to put candidates
through onerous application procedures _because they can_.

~~~
VLM
If you'd like to experience the future, today, simply look for a job outside
SV, NYC, or maybe Austin.

This is part of why the fizzbuzz test sounds so funny away from the coasts. If
the supply-demand dynamic is such that you "have to" interview any warm body
that applies, you need a fizzbuzz test. If the supply-demand dynamic is such
that the entire workforce is ridiculously overeducated and overexperienced for
the job, you only need fizzbuzz if you're trying to bottom feed (only offering
$12/hr 1099 no benefits, that kind of thing)

~~~
vonmoltke
I wish I had more than one upvote for this. As somebody in Dallas my job
searches over the past five years have been a hell of arbitrary, narrow
requirements lists and lack of interest in anything I have done that is not
professional work.

To make things worse, I can't get SV companies to give me the time of day.
They all seem to be focused on poaching "rock stars" from each other and
operating under the arrogant assumption[1] that anyone worth a damn has
already moved there because, duh, everyone wants to be here.

[1] An assumption I have seen voiced here and elsewhere, and can probably dig
up the references if I try hard enough.

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Bahamut
I would suspect that the main people interested would be the desperate ones -
this isn't going to attract the best & brightest, who know what they're about
and don't need to waste their time on something like this.

So in short, nay.

------
fecak
If they are hiring 66% of people that go through "trial week", it appears as
if the decision to hire was already fairly well established before the
candidate had to endure trial week. No company would be bragging about a 66%
hire rate on all candidates, as that would show you are probably not very
selective at all (assuming the applicants represent the industry as a whole).

They don't provide data as to how many interviews they do before the invite,
or what percentage of candidates are invited to participate in trial week. I'd
imagine that, if this company is truly selective, the percentage of candidates
invited to trial week is rather low - well below 50%, probably closer to 10%.

If they are hiring 66% of the candidates that make it through trial week, and
only 5% of candidates are rejecting the opportunity for a trial week, then how
much value does the trial week actually add? One could argue that the cost of
wasting an entire week with the 34% of candidates that you aren't going to
hire is substantial (while most here could argue that you could end up getting
some great ideas on the process out of that candidate even if you don't hire
him/her).

And who is to say that the 34% wouldn't have worked out in the long run? They
provide an anecdote about a candidate that didn't handle interview pressure
well but did great during trial week. Couldn't at least some percentage of the
34% that are rejected perhaps feel that same pressure in trial week, and could
do well when the guise of an audition is no longer present?

But if you have a 66% positive rate on trial week, it seems the main purpose
it serves is to just verify what you already know - that you want to hire this
person. But it also serves, perhaps, a more important purpose as well.

What I think is the true secret sauce here is the concept related to the
willingness of candidates to participate in the process. One of the hiring
criteria is a clear interest in the company and a belief in the product. If
someone is willing to jump through this kind of hoop at the chance to work for
this company, they are either very interested in the company or desperate for
any job. That 5% that reject the trial week can be deemed not a fit, due to
their unwillingness to jump through this hoop.

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tonydiv
What about the same 'trial' concept, except limit it to possibly 2 days, like
a Friday and a Saturday. Assuming the company is small, it might even be
possible to do Saturday/Sunday. I'd also let the interviewee choose which
weekend is best for him/her.

I like the idea of a trial since I do believe interviews are a limited window
of analysis, but I agree with Fred's points–asking anyone with a current job
to take a week off is not reasonable.

------
pandaman
The problem is not even that top people will not bother. The problem is that
other companies hiring the same person will have a week on you.

If your candidate has any value to your competition you just left him or her
on the market for additional 1 week plus how many weeks it takes to schedule
yours.

