

Don't Treat Interview Candidates Like Detainees - asimjalis
http://www.ere.net/2010/03/15/how-candidate-abuse-is-costing-your-firm-millions-of-dollars-in-revenue/

======
dpritchett
It certainly lowers my estimation of the other party when there's no follow-up
or when there are brazenly disrespectful power games in the negotiation
process. It's one thing not to respond to a resume submission, quite another
to go silent after an interview or three.

" _Organizations like the Ritz-Carlton and Wal-Mart have elevated monitoring
guest satisfaction to a science and know the exact dollar cost of obtaining a
customer, upsetting a customer, and losing a lifelong customer. While such
evaluation is common in sales and customer support functions, it is nearly
unheard of in HR functions, which often interact with a significant volume of
potential customers in any given year. The impact of a poor “candidate
experience” is uncalculated, unreported, and not discussed, making it quite
possibly one of the largest “hidden costs” facing modern organizations._ "

------
dpritchett
Alternate link in case of server troubles (I found the page load suspiciously
slow):

[http://aspdd.com/news/recruiting-news/how-candidate-abuse-
is...](http://aspdd.com/news/recruiting-news/how-candidate-abuse-is-costing-
your-firm-millions-of-dollars-in-revenue/)

------
davidmurphy
The hiring process in America is broken. I agree completely. I'd like to see
startups address the broken-tech aspects, and hiring managers address the
cultural factors.

Even the "best" offerings like Taleo are highly lacking IMHO.

Then you have custom sites that have horrid designs, like USAJOBS.gov - used
by thousands and thousands of people.

Why in this era of LinkedIn should anyone ever have to retype a resume into
individual form fields? Insane.

~~~
pw0ncakes
_The hiring process in America is broken._

Although far away from relevant machinery, social class stratification is the
root problem. Very few people have substantial money or power. Since the
middle and lower classes have more people, and talent seems to be fairly
evenly distributed among social and ethnic groups, most of the talent is in
these relatively powerless classes-- separated from the means to get anything
done.

Back doors (social connections, informal gatherings, elite colleges) are
always going to be more effective for hiring and job-seeking than front doors
(HR). I think it's doomed to be that way. Back doors are in a miserable state
now because of the social entrenchment, gated communities, invitation-only
events, that reinforce the power of the hereditary aristocracy and marginalize
99+% of the talented (the young and poor++).

++ Here I define "poor" as anyone who would face financial ruin in event of
long-standing (several years, plus a need to go back to school) unemployment
or an unfortunate event (e.g. uncovered medical expenses). So the vast
majority of people, even those we'd consider "middle class", qualify as poor
by this definition.

With social gaps widening and "back doors" in a state of general failure, it
follows naturally (in my estimation, although I admit I've made no case for it
here) that front doors are going to fall into an even sorrier state.

------
j_baker
> "Little or no honest feedback throughout the process"

THANK YOU! I hate receiving that form email that says that this job isn't a
"good fit".

------
pw0ncakes
Most companies that I've worked in or with seem to treat interviewing as a
miserable bore, and most candidates as utter incompetents to be sifted
through. Whether this is accurate (I'd be ready to believe that the
incompetents spend much more time on the job market, but that would concede
the questionable possibility that most corporations' interview processes work)
or not is open to debate. Grading papers, an objectively miserable process,
has probably led a few teachers to conclude that their students are morons
just due to the unpleasantness of the task.

If you can get to an in-office interview, you have the shot of impressing
someone enough that people are actually excited about interviewing you--
people start talking about "the candidate" being really good today-- but this
doesn't happen often, and not until you've already passed enough hurdles to
get in person with someone who matters. Until that happens, you're just a
block of work to be dealt with.

~~~
LiveTheDream
_Most companies that I've worked in or with seem to treat interviewing as a
miserable bore, and most candidates as utter incompetents_

Jeff Atwood and Joel on Software blogged about how an absurdly high amount of
people applying for programming jobs can't actually program at all. Many
candidates are utter incompetents. Filtering the wheat from the chaff is hard
process for the average company, because interviewing well and performing a
job well are two different tasks.

~~~
tom_b
I think a large number of programming jobs aren't - this is how we wind up
with such a mind-numbing process for both job seeker and hiring organization.

I have interviewed at a number of places where the job description would have
led you to believe the position was for a hard-core development person, with a
desire for the type of experience in candidates that could only be obtained by
being a tech lead dev or architect with dev responsibilities at a forward-
thinking software shop. I've have generally been surprised to often find what
companies were really after was someone willing to work with a previously
purchased tool or framework, placate internal users, and perhaps do some
scripting on the side. Perfectly fine work, but in no way matching the job
description.

People who've been filling these positions now begin to think of themselves as
programmers (even if this type of job is all they have had). Then we, when
hiring for something approximating actual dev work, are surprised to find that
all they have done is lightweight admin of some tool set and some scripting.

A giant red flag for me at this point is to apply to a job, offer to provide
code samples, and have ZERO interest from the hiring group in seeing those
samples. Seriously? But, then I realize, they aren't REALLY looking for a
programmer - they are looking for more of the role I've described above. We
could look deeper under the covers at reasons for this weirdness, but it's
probably too depressing in general.

~~~
pw0ncakes
Question: in hiring, what would you read for in a code sample?

I ask this because, in my experience, the most destructive breed of lousy
programmer is not the sort who can't program but the "rock star" who writes
code fast that _seems_ acceptable on the local scale, but has no modularity or
organization at a more global level. This is the sort who can hammer out a
4000-line project over a weekend, but if you have him on something major, he
won't even understand his own code if it's older than 2 months (and no one
else will be able to understand it, either).

You can't really catch this kind of programmer in a code sample, unless you
know what to look for (and I think I'm among the majority of people who
don't).

~~~
tom_b
I think a code sample is really just a launching point for a discussion. Some
people would probably use a resume the exact same way. When I've offered code
samples to hiring managers, what I've tried to do is demonstrate technical
mastery needed to help them get work done.

My goal is to explain design choices, trade-offs, and situational information.
Stuff like, "I see you used this really weird and complex table function here
- why?" I like to explain what I did, try to provide some general fundamentals
as part of the explanation, "Well, we were able to eliminate x KLOC of Java by
using this table function to simplify our db access layer. Over here on this
other stuff, we did what amounts to some duct tape work because it was a one-
off for a customer, who btw, based a purchase decision on our ability to
provide this solution in a couple of days, which is why the code isn't
commented in a nice way, etc." This type of conversation is what I'm expecting
from a candidate as well.

But, you're dead-on on not being able to catch a destructive, lousy programmer
if you don't know what to look for. If you put me a room with some rock star
Lisp programmer, I'm not going to have the foggiest idea how to ferret out a
conversation based on a code sample. I'd probably try to have the candidate
teach me based on their sample.

Avoiding lousy, rock-star programmers . . . well, in reality, I simply haven't
had to make enough hiring decisions to hit this too often. I have noticed that
rock stars seem to be more ego-driven, code "hoarders" who struggle to explain
their designs without being condescending, can't talk about people they've
mentored (because they haven't), and seem squishy on details when you really
dig into code. But you might be awesome and just a lousy communicator. In
which case, you probably won't work well with me anyway and you're not passing
the "culture fit" test.

So much depends on context. Right now, I'm driving a project with two other
people working for me and I'm purposely making design choices that aren't that
great - we are incurring some technical debt as a trade-off for meeting a big
demo day deadline. Plus, we're focused heavily on iterating with our actual
users (who on this project are prone to ask for stuff and then when you show
them implementations tend to respond with "oh, what I really meant was . . .")
In the past, I've designed db access layers that were used by larger team, so
I had to do more measured, thought-out design and education of that team. The
ways I would talk about both projects in an interview would be very different.

