

How Coursera Competes for the Best Talent - henrik_w
http://firstround.com/review/this-is-how-coursera-competes-against-google-and-facebook-for-the-best-talent/

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bfwi
So this guy invites people to interviews by saying: “You know what, I've
really enjoyed this conversation. Is there any chance you have a couple hours
in the next few days to come in and meet a few people on the team?”. Then, as
stated under "PHASE 3", the process is not staying for a couple hours and
meeting a few people on the team, but actually an interview lasting at least
50 minutes with hiring manager, a 90 minute session working on a problem, then
a talk about culture, another technical interview and finally an interview
about fit.

This might be an effective way to get people to accept the invitation, but it
doesn't seem totally honest.

~~~
steven2012
There's no way a competent hiring manager would ask someone to come in for a
"couple of hours" to meet the team, and then ambush them with a full-on
technical interview. This would not lead to a successful outcome.

I think from the context of the entire article, you need to read between the
lines and assume that it was obvious to both the candidate and the hiring
manager that the next step was a full technical interview. The hiring manager
was simply wording it in a way that sounded less intimidating.

~~~
bjacks
Actually, this exact thing happened to me. I was asked to come in for a couple
of hours to meet the team and see the office. When I arrived I was taken to a
room where I was interviewed for 3 hours, by 3 different interview teams. Two
of them were whiteboard interviews, then an interview with management.

Needless to say I rejected the offer, I was so unimpressed with the hiring
process. Disgusted actually.

~~~
otoburb
Did the disgust manifest after, or during, the 3 hour process? Curious to know
whether there were other factors in play (perhaps curiosity?) that made you
stay throughout the ordeal.

~~~
bjacks
Afterwards. I was basically in shock at the start of it..

------
fsloth
It's hard to gauge te quality of advice in general in this article. These are
the things that he thinks are important but in the end it's his intuition that
probably drives most of his decision making process. Thus things that within
his context might feed his subconsciousness with valid data end up being
worthless to anyone else. You can't teach hard skills piecemeal. I'm sure
getting mentored by this guy would improve ones skill in hiring but an
arbitrary collection of probing questions are quite worthless. Unless one is
being interviewed by him, of course :)

Taken out of context most of the advice sound questionable as rules of thumb
-Especially "The right candidate owns the content of their job. If they're
talking about a current project, you should be able to ask them any question
related to it and get an answer. If their response is, “Oh someone else works
on that part,” ... that's a huge red flag, Ciancutti says. You want to hire
people who are so passionate about their work that they know and understand
everything about it"

I could interpret that you only want to hire people whos current job is
technically so undemanding that they have the time to figure out everything
else in the system - or, even worse, who _think_ they understand the whole
system and gloss over the important details - these sort of guys can cause
real damage in long term profitability as they gloss over important technical
details.

~~~
mahyarm
There is a bunch of other 'only hire the hot people' type advice. Like “Are
they enthusiastic? Excited? If they're unhappy where they are, that's a bad
sign. They should be happy where they are.". But these people are also looking
for another job, and part of that reason is probably because they don't like
where they are. If they are happy where they are, then why would they move?
You also filter out low affect / foreign / shy type people when you do this,
when they can be some of the best engineers you can have.

With happy people, if your going offer them something market rate and they
already make market rate, then moving is even less attractive. If they've
worked at a start up for a few years, they probably know how the entire equity
compensation game works and will probably ask for something more than your
company is willing to part with. And the reason why is because it has to beat
the EV of working at Google.

~~~
fsloth
Actually, hiring people who are 'passionate' about the field would be a one
way hire them with lower costs rather than people who are just very good in
their chosen career. As a pathological example game programmers generally are
not well paid because they are so eager to work in games that employers can
use this as a leverage for lower pay.

~~~
mahyarm
An employee can still be very passionate about their career, but don't like
specific things about their workplace. Like I can like living in a city, but
not like the surprise loud noises that happen at 4am in my new apartment, and
I cannot get the police to stop them. I still really hate where I live and
want to move as a result, and it was a surprise, but I don't want to move out
of my town.

------
wbillingsley
If this works, then people are very gullible. It starts with fakery, as the
email can't be plain that it is the start of a standard recruitment process,
but says "...to tell you more about what we're up to" in a mock-casual way.
But of course they'd never tell you something that isn't ready for public
announcement because at that stage no you do not have a special relationship
with the company and might even have a stronger relationship with a
competitor.

Every company making cold calls to candidates pulls these sorts of tricks. If
you want to make yourself stand out enormously, and seem incredibly different
from every other company approaching candidates over email, LinkedIn,
StackOverflow, etc, then something you could do is look into the candidate's
public material enough that you can _start_ by telling them the offer you want
to make ($xxx,xxx), assuming there is a cultural fit.

For a lot of engineers there is a bucket load of the stuff out there. Tech
talks on YouTube, even from the smallest local meetups these days. More code
on github than you could get them to do in a thousand technical interviews. If
they did a PhD, or even an honours dissertations, it is probably on the web
and will tell you in great detail what they're interested in and how they went
about solving a tough problem.

If your email started with the fact that you're interested in hiring them,
here's the things you've already looked through, and so this is the offer
you'd like to make if there's a cultural fit, that will make a candidate feel
like you really have done your homework.

~~~
lobe
You say it's deceptive, but surely anyone who is contacted in this manner can
read between the lines and see it is about recruitment - what other goal would
the business have in mind?

And as for the suggestion of making an offer up front, I feel that is jumping
the gun. I'm sure the business would already have a good idea of what figure
to offer, but if you discuss that before anything else I see several scenarios
playing out.

1\. Candidate declines. A good outcome, quick and painless 2\. Candidate
accepts offer. Bad situation - do you really want a candidate that doesn't try
to sell themself or get a better offer? 3\. The conversation is hijacked by
discussing the offer and terms rather than the position. This is not
productive, and the candidate has all the leverage. May or may not end with an
agreement 4\. After more talks you decide the candidate is not a good fit. You
retract the offer, and candidate leaves with a bitter impression of the
business, feeling he was lured with an impressive offer.

I agree that the business could be (should be??) more upfront, however an
immediate offer is not the way. Perhaps instead give a realistic ballpark and
go from there.

------
mahyarm
I think a bunch of these tips have a bunch of 'filter out people who haven't
interviewed much yet' flavor to them. Lets say someone interviews with 10
different places. The first few interviews they may make several mistakes such
as be too negative about their previous work place, be too anxious, not seem
enthusiastic enough in some area, not acting like this is the only place you
want to work at, do not negotiate compensation in a sensitive manor or do
badly in an interview question type. After these negative experiences, they
will look up what they did wrong and if they did the interview again, probably
do better after a few of these experiences.

Since interviews tend to have repeating forms of questions, by interview #8 vs
interview #2, they will do much better, and they will pass most of these tips.
The thing is although, they will perform identically on the actual job, so
what are you actually filtering for?

I feel like 'tell me what you don't like about your previous work place' or
the reverse 'what do you like the best about your workplace' feels like the
new 'what is your greatest weakness' interview question. All your doing is
filtering out for is some sort of quickly learned social inexperience.

To see how common the mistakes I mentioned are, go see here:
[http://workplace.stackexchange.com/](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/)

I think this is a more accurate way of thinking about hiring engineers:
[http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-
post/](http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/)

~~~
Bahamut
I have asked some similar questions as listed in the article in the OP, but my
motivation is different from necessarily finding out something new - it is
more to understand where the candidate is coming from, and to hear them out.

My goal as a hirer is to get a wholesome picture of the candidate, how his/her
experiences have shaped him/her, and how sharp the person is. I don't even
walk into the room for a candidate's in-person interview with a set of
questions - I use cues in our conversation to get details that shapes what
technical questions I ask. While I need to efficiently get a certain set of
information about candidates, I also am respectful of their time and that they
have options - I take a more humanistic approach to the interview process with
candidates, which helps ease people in. I will tell candidates straight up
that I don't care about perfection for [insert technical question], but that I
want candidates to step through a problem and figure out a solid way to solve
it (potentially with help), then retroactively optimize if they get hung up
with trying to get the best solution off the bat due to typical interview
pressures. In a way, solving the technical questions themselves are not the
important part when I ask them (mostly) - it is the ability to walk through
the problem and collaborate that I care about.

Easing in the candidate is important to me when I interview - I want the
candidate to feel comfortable with the team, and be more willing to volunteer
important information for our evaluation. You cannot evaluate a candidate
properly otherwise, since you might miss important cues that affect the
evaluation.

------
kzhahou
I'm interested in the spreadsheet in the background. Anyone got info on that?

~~~
jacobkg
From the article:

"Before you speak with the person, get them a spreadsheet breaking down your
offer, and be accurate. Show what percentage equity they can expect to get in
the company. Show them your current valuation. Lay out the case for whatever
your expected multiple is. If you think the company will 20x from $50 million
in the next four years, don't just leave it at that, say why.

On the same spreadsheet, include information you have on the other companies
they are considering. If they're looking at Dropbox or Snapchat or whatever it
is, put the expected upside right next to yours. Build formulas into the
spreadsheet so the candidate can play around with them and calculate for
themselves what they think will happen at each place"

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jchendy
Does anybody happen to have a copy of the spreadsheet from the top photo?

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Rogerh91
I believe one of the key metrics for startup success is how efficient a
company is at getting together a great team. There's such a balance between
the time you need to spend here and the results you get, but if you maximize
the results and score an awesome team, that'll make all of the difference in
the world.

------
z3t4
Mu first though was: How can Coursera afford 80 engineers!??? What's their
business model?

------
bra-ket
why don't they send that first coding test to people to do at home

~~~
jedberg
Because they might cheat or have someone else do it for them.

It's definitely happened before. When we caught the candidate and asked them
why, they said, "I figured once I got in here I'd impress you with my
personality even though I can't code."

