
Lean Recruitment – Hire faster and better - ftpaul
http://blog.jobbox.io/lean-recruitment-hire-faster-and-better/?utm_source=hn&utm_medium=hn&utm_campaign=hn
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seanstickle
What I find disturbing about this is that lean concepts, from Deming to Toyota
to software dev and so forth, is meant to benefit both the company and the
customer — reduce waste, increase flow, make products and services that people
want and that make companies money.

"Lean recruitment" is a bastardization of the term, as it's basically a cool-
sounding way for companies to exploit job-seekers in a way that doesn't make
things better for the job seeker but certainly advantages the company.

Company gets some free (which may be illegal in some jurisdictions) or paid-
but-still-illegal (just saying "independent contractor" isn't a magic word)
labor and a low-cost way to vet candidates. Job-seekers get ... an opportunity
to work in a diminished capacity in the hopes of getting a job. And no,
calling someone an "independent contractor" doesn't necessarily make it so, if
the person is doing work in the office, under your direction, with your
equipment — companies get in trouble calling people independent contractors
when they're actually employees. The description from the original post
certainly sounds like it fits this pretty well.

I don't think the current interview process is working as well as it could,
and it's ripe for some rebooting. But I don't see that labelling "worker
exploitation" as "lean" gets us there.

~~~
ftpaul
So, what do you suggest? What is necessary to improve the recruitment process?

PS: Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, use tryouts to test
candidates, you can se more at [http://hbr.org/2014/04/the-ceo-of-automattic-
on-holding-audi...](http://hbr.org/2014/04/the-ceo-of-automattic-on-holding-
auditions-to-build-a-strong-team/ar/1)

~~~
seanstickle
When Hercules cleaned out the Augean stables, he wasn't then obligated to
refill them. Just because I can see a problem and criticize a fumbling attempt
at a solution, it does not follow that I have an alternative.

------
jasode
>2\. Bring in remaining candidates over the next 2-3 days and have them go
through the job that they will be performing if they were to be hired.

>...

>4\. Bring in final candidates (select few) based on multiple days of
feedback, have them perform the same job again for one day and make the final
decision.

So if I'm doing arithmetic correctly, you're asking candidates to participate
in a trial run for _a total of 3 to 4 full working days_ so you can evaluate
them.

I wonder if the writer of the article considered that it will skew the
candidate pool towards recent college grads trying to land their first job,
and/or unemployed people who can't quickly find a replacement job (because
they are undesirable.)

The ones who _won 't_ apply are the valuable stars already employed. It's very
likely they only have 10 PTO days. The writer needs a reality check if he
thinks desirable candidates would be willing to burn up 4 vacation days for a
trial work period.

No job recruiting strategy is perfect and most have unintentional side effects
(e.g. distorting the candidate pool) that are not explicitly discussed by
articles extolling whatever method they're proposing.

~~~
johnny99
Middle-aged dad here (not a recent grad). I agree that asking 3-4 days of a
candidate is too much. But if the ask is more reasonable (one or two days,
perhaps spread out), the candidate is paid market rates or higher, and the
project is well-defined, I think this can benefit both parties. The last point
is important: doing this requires work on the part of the company, and the
participation of a member of the engineering team for both guidance and
evaluation.

I did this myself before starting my current gig and was glad I did--I started
the job confident that I liked the work, and the people. And by paying market
rates you essentially get a small signing bonus. Consulting rates should be
higher than the equivalent salaried hourly.

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AaronBBrown
Unless I'm currently unemployed, if someone asked me to do this I would
politely say, "thank you, but no thank you." It has been my experience that
there are oodles of development and operations jobs out there and not enough
candidates to fill the positions. As a prospective employee, if I have
multiple companies interested in hiring me, I'm not going to take days off of
work in the off-chance that I might get an offer from you. And giving that
time up for free is a non-starter. At least pay me a market-rate contracting
fee.

I keep hearing this advice repeated. Maybe I live in Crazytown, but I doubt
it's realistic at any scale and likely self-selects for young, inexperienced,
or presently unemployed candidates.

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bkeroack
This is a terrible idea. I barely can schedule time when I'm job hunting
(while still employed) to do the marathon 5-8 hour interview blocks that many
companies demand. There's only so many PTO hours I can burn, and I'm certainly
skeptical of working several (!) possibly unpaid days just for the _chance_ of
being offered a position. The hell with that.

~~~
seanstickle
Also, depending on local and regional laws, asking people to work for free can
be illegal.

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hox
So the comments are focusing on the candidate, but how exactly does this
reduce the "expensive" up front cost of resume review, phone screens, and on-
site interviews cited? The described process still performs reviews and
screens, but instead of 1-4 or so man hours per employee of engineering time
"wasted" during interviewing, you are instead slowing the entire team down for
multiple days to effectively onboard temporary employees.

Sorry, this makes next to no sense from the candidate's viewpoint or the
company's.

~~~
mareofnight
I don't think there's anything actually "leaner" going on here. If anything,
it's the reverse - much higher investment of effort up-front for supposedly
avoiding risk of bad hiring choices and effort replacing them later.

I think the word they're looking for here is "internship". That's a longer
duration and more expensive, but probably(?) less distrustful to the regular
team.

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davedx
I'm currently involved in the recruitment process for our team -- this mostly
means administering programming tests, and very occasionally an interview.

My feedback on this "get them to work in your team for several days doing real
work" is that this would cause a massive productivity drop for our project,
and we would almost certainly miss deadlines. It's possible, sure, but the
time just to find a brand new person something that's possible to do,
introduce them to the code-base, review their code afterwards and still manage
the rest of the team would be a serious drain.

I also question the value of evaluating different people doing different bits
of work, which this seems to imply. Surely a programming test is better
because then you're measuring against the same thing with each different
person? It's not "real work", but I don't believe you can accurately measure
someone's "real productivity" from a 1-2 day crash course anyway.

It's always good to try out new things, and I'm happy it worked for the
company who did the interview, but for us I don't think we could afford to
hire this way.

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jlaswell
For those stating this would cause candidates to work for free:

"During this time, all Wonoloers would be considered as independent
contractors and get paid for the job performed. Wonolo would take care of
payroll as well as other administrative HR burdens involved."

This could also clear the air of expected compensation from the start.

Regardless, I do think the idea behind this approach has merit, but it could
also use some realistic iteration itself.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
Every single role I've had as an "independent contractor" through a third-
party has involved contract verbiage substantially similar to this:
"Contractor is an employee of ConsultancyX. Contractor _is not_ an employee of
WidgetCorp. Contractor will perfom duties on behalf of ConsultancyX as
assigned by supervisor employed by WidgetCorp at the times and places
specified by WidgetCorp using tools and equipment as directed by WidgetCorp".
I've been required to work on-site, using the client's equipment, during their
normal hours of business, and been required to adhere to and sign client's
various compliance standards: that is, I've been acting in the same capacity
as employees of the client, but been required to sign documentation explicitly
denying this fact ("contractor agrees he is not an employee of WidgetCorp").

That is to say, it's a farce. The consultancy pays the employee/contractor,
but the contractor is acting, by any reasonable interpretation of the relevant
laws and regulations, as an employee of the consultancy's client. The
involvement of the third-party is superficial and, in my opinion, borderline
fraudulent. There is such an imbalance of power in the US that very few
employees would actually dare to challenge it, and as a result the downside
for challenging it (implicit blacklisting) carries far more weight than the
upside (marginal compensation for the disparity in treatment).

~~~
jlaswell
I do have to agree to your point on the use of 'independent contractor' here.
It'd be interesting to see what they are basing that on.

My state provides some 'tips' for small businesses. One is employee types, and
this sort of a relationship is not an independent contractor. They make a
point to say that simply calling someone an independent contractor has no
baring on their status, exactly as you have said.

Thanks for the reminder.

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Bahamut
This article seems to give tips to companies, but some of the suggestions are
pretty disrespectful towards the candidates themselves. I am likely not going
to be interested in a company that asks for more than a phone screen and in-
person interview - they're time consuming, and assumes that the candidate has
the time to burn at their current job. I have plenty of companies to choose
from that are likely to be more respectful to me.

~~~
erroneousfunk
Maybe they're screening for people who never take vacations and have the
vacation time to burn? After a week for the holidays, a week of vacation in
the summer, and a couple of three day weekends/miscellaneous days, I certainly
don't have time for three day interviews...

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lordbusiness
To be honest, this is arrogance on the employers part to the absolute extreme.
Interviews are two-way streets.

When I interview, I am as much interviewing the company, if not more than they
are interviewing me.

With the shoe on the other foot, how about candidates vet employers for
suitable work environments, measuring them on things such as provision of
ergonomic workspaces, quality of perks promised, finesse and speed of HR
practices (do they pay on time, is just the tip of the iceberg there), acumen
of core founders (it sucks when you start a job and realize the founders are
actually utterly incompetent), etc.

This isn't a workable practise in either direction.

Also, if you cannot ascertain if the candidate is able to perform the job
function through a simple conversation then either A) the employee
representing the company isn't qualified to make the assessment, or B) the
role specification isn't clear to the company.

I'll accept that mis-hires happen, again, in both directions, but this is age-
old and won't be solved by this one-sided approach.

We're talking about human beings, who need to work for food. When we cut away
all the stuff about 'roles' and 'careers' and 'value', what we're really
talking about is a human paying another human to do a job.

And that's fine, as long as we don't pretend it's something it isn't.

------
BornInTheUSSR
I am currently in the process of hiring myself and I don't think there is any
way senior engineers will go for such a prolonged process.

What we do instead: filter through resumes, pick ones that we like for a 15-30
minute phone screen followed by a 1 hour conversation with the entire team if
we decide to move forward.

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joelwd
I suppose it depends heavily on your field, but I can't see this working well
for a job that has a lengthy ramp-up time (where it might take months of
training to start doing anything useful).

~~~
ftpaul
This is focused on tech jobs. What is for you, a "job that has a lengthy ramp-
up time"?

~~~
joelwd
To clarify, I'm speaking as an inexperienced electrical engineer. I feel like
anything I could do the day of hire with no time spent familiarizing myself
with the product could just as easily be demonstrated in an interview with
less time wasted.

~~~
VLM
Thats a real technology job, not "I'm writing a CRUD app for a marketing
experiment that will change the world"

------
jonnathanson
How is this process supposed to work for candidates who are currently
employed, and for whom even scheduling the time to sneak away for interviews
is a real challenge? If I'm going through this process, what am I supposed to
tell my boss? "Hey, remember how I got sick the other morning? Well, I'm going
to be sick again all day Thursday, and if that goes well, all day Friday."

~~~
angdis
It doesn't work for gainfully employed professionals! This is how you select
university students for entry level positions and interns.

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teixeira
I'm confused, because the best are working for someone already or for
themselves. How can they come in for 2-3 days?

~~~
ftpaul
In tech almost everyone are employee (for someone or themselves). They can
take vacation time, PTO or make some extra hours everyday (moonlighting).

~~~
albertoavila
Most of them can, but few would, I for one feel it's outrageous to expect
candidates to work 3 full days as a recruitment process, I'm sure I can find
something better without having to take half a week off.

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dreamweapon
Pros and cons to the team doing the hiring aside, this 2-3 day thing is almost
definitely a deal-breaker to anyone who currently has an actual job (you know,
the passive job seekers everyone says they're desperate to hire).

But for the perennially unemployed, sure, why not? What have they got to lose?

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VLM
"who will fit well within the organization"

Don't want any minorities to slip thru our carefully crafted filter, only
"bros". Because a fraternity ^H^H^H company exclusively staffed by bros is
awesome.

"who will be loyal through ups and downs"

Being gullible isn't necessarily a sign of productivity or quality. But for a
very weak manager, better someone gullible than not. Of course a weak manager
is going to fail anyway, so it doesn't matter in the long run. So yeah... go
ahead and select for a trait only losers select on, what could possibly go
wrong? (and see above WRT only hiring "frat bros")

"who will perform the best at the job."

LOL a one day interview is going in the wrong direction, so we'll go further
in the wrong direction by making our interviews three days.

I know, I know, we're digging ourselves deeper into a hole, so lets just
shovel a hole three times deeper and see if that sole change makes things
better.

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pmhn
> Bring in remaining candidates over the next 2-3 days .. Collect feedback at
> the end of each day

I would love to know how many candidates this is actually viable for. My
assumption is it would significantly reduce my selection pool.

~~~
endersdad
I would think a truly serious candidate would be willing to invest some of his
PTO for this type of scenario.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
I think you mean "desperate" rather than "serious." This idea may work with
modest results in a down market, or a market where employees expect to be
treated like supplicants to the almighty.

