

Ask HN: Work samples from recruiter's candidates - ChuckMcM

So like lots of folks I get a crap ton of mail from recruiters, although since I have &#x27;VP&#x27; in my title much of it is recruiters trying to &#x27;sell me&#x27; on candidates.  This sets up an interesting dynamic, its a pain to try to figure out from the chopped up and &#x27;anonymized&#x27; resume if the candidate is any good, and if you do ask them to send you the name its still a pain to figure out if they are worth talking to.<p>My new strategy is this, ask the recruiter to send the candidate programmer a programming task. Have them send me the results, an explanation of the results, and an analysis of the requirements. (fundamental skills that anyone who wants to get an onsite interview has to have).<p>So if you&#x27;re an engineer and the recruiter asks if you&#x27;d be willing to do this exercise to see if the job is a good fit, are you ok with that? angry? curious?
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tptacek
What worthwhile candidate would ever do this? Why would you create a
recruiting process that selects for the most desperate, least informed
candidates in the hottest seller's market for talent in the last 20 years?

I'm not "angry" about it, just bewildered.

(I'm also a hiring manager; we simply don't work with recruiters.)

~~~
ChuckMcM
> What worthwhile candidate would ever do this?

One who was looking for a job but didn't know where to apply? I come across
people all the time who are worthwhile candidates but the person who trying to
get them placed is clueless. And I come across recruiters who are a waste of
oxygen but you can't really know that unless you've got some way to measure
their capabilities.

> (I'm also a hiring manager; we simply don't work with recruiters.)

Generally I don't either as there are enough people in my network that when
I'm looking to fill a role I can find someone, however when you need to fill a
role with a deadline and you don't have a ready source of candidates (this is
not uncommon in the Bay Area) for places other than Google, Apple, and
Facebook :-).

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saturdayplace
I don't get a crap ton of recruiter mail. (Yay?) I'm in a good gig now, so I
don't really respond to the ones that I _do_ get. Sometimes, if I feel that
they're not too slimy, I'll respond by saying "I'm OK now, I'll keep you in
mind down the road if I ever need anything," and file away their contact info
in the event my current gig goes south. My life is busy enough that I'd
probably be annoyed at the presumption I've got time to deal with a work
sample test _on top of_ dealing with the spam in the first place. However...

I'm definitely one of those people described in XKCD's nerd sniping strip.[0]
If the sample problem actually flicked that little nerve in my brain, you
might get a response from me just because I couldn't help myself. But here's
the kicker. You'd only get my solution _as long as I could email it directly
to you instead of the recruiter_. At that point, even if I'm not interested in
working for you _now_ the sample problem you wrote has sparked some interest.
Now, I'm interested in striking up a relationship with that might not amount
to much at the moment, but may prove fruitful in the future. If we've gotten
this far, I'm not interested in dealing with the recruiter any more.

[0] [http://xkcd.com/356/](http://xkcd.com/356/)

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mchannon
This task is beyond most recruiters' skill sets to do properly. Most
recruiters are also paranoid about any level of direct interaction, since both
candidate and interviewer have significant financial incentives to cut them
out of the deal, so you'll have to deal with (and work around) that fear.

A five-minute programming exercise that you spend more than 5 minutes
designing, that you grade yourself, will be about the most you can do before
you start turning off qualified applicants, at least at this early stage. If I
want to spend 3 hours on a programming challenge with no guarantee of payment,
I can certainly come up with more enjoyable ways to do so where I don't get
constant reminders that I'm taking too long.

The best time for the programming challenge comes after the initial "does this
person look like they fit into our organization?" set of interviews. Those
interviews not only screen out a large percentage of your pool, but also sells
your organization to the applicant, incentivizing them to take longer to get
the job.

~~~
ChuckMcM
There are also the fairly thinly veiled 'hack a thon' type things where you
offer a prize of a Macbook Air for best hack using technology X and as part of
the signup you get both a number of people's names and a good sense of their
coding ability.

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mechanical_fish
This is the first impression you want to make on your candidates? You're the
busywork company?

These are the kind of candidates you want? The ones who are willing to have
_their_ introduction to a future employer be an annotated answer to a
"fundamental skills" problem? Instead of, say, a five-minute chat that touches
on such issues as "who am I?" and "who are you?" and "what's the job, really,
because the recruiter obviously doesn't know?" and "why might I be unusually
happy and successful in this job, and also fun to work with, and therefore
worth a lot of your company's money?"

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bjourne
I wouldn't. I get mail from recruiters every day so it's not feasible to take
the time to solve even smallers puzzles. However, I could direct them to my
public github work to prove my skills.

Also, I'm not sure all interviewers consider it fantastic if you ace the
puzzle if everyone else who works there barely finished it. On the other hand,
if I was _guaranteed_ to get an offer by completing the puzzle, it would
change my mind. But most companies that wants programming tasks solved assign
such a low value to it and values other factors much higher that it just isn't
worth the time.

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AznHisoka
I would think about it IF this was a current problem the company was having,
and they want to see what potential solutions are out there. So it can't be an
imaginary problem (ie typical interview questions)

But then you'll get into all sorts of legal issues (like can you actually use
code candidates wrote, etc). So that makes it impractical. So it now enters
the realm of boredom since it's an imaginary problem :)

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salahxanadu
No. Recruiters seem to try to fit any candidate into roles they are not
appropriate for.

If it was a programming challenge I'd rather be approached by the company
doing the hiring.

