

World's Best Rails Rails Hiring Process - jpg
http://startups.learnhub.com/lesson/page/1061-worlds-best-rails-hiring-process
The comments on the article are the best part.
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comatose_kid
This is not the world's best rails hiring process - there's no such thing. The
title makes you sound arrogant; it will surely turn some potential hires off.

Anyways, here are a few assumptions your process makes:

1) Of the pool of Rails developers world-wide that you could hire, the
smartest/best ones are among the 10-50 devs that show up to a local rails/pub
nite.

2) That there is a strong correlation between the number of reference checks
(beyond 3), and the quality of a hire.

3) Bloggers and open source contributors are better programmers than those
that aren't.

Here are a few things I would change:

1) A take-home project is fine, but I would not expect a potential hire to
spend 10 hours. Why can't you think up a problem that takes an hour or so to
solve instead? I've hired plenty of sharp engineers by asking them to perform
a short take-home.

2) Because your project is now a lot shorter, you could have the candidate do
this before they meet face-to-face. This would save you time, and moving the
face-to-face near then end of the process allows you gather the most info
before committing to a whole day of interviews.

3) A much more interesting phone screen question would be 'What are the
disadvantages of TDD?'. I want flexible thinkers, ones who can argue both
sides of a point.

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teej
A 10 hour project seems a -little- extreme for a hiring process, but I suppose
if people really want to work there, then that's fine.

10-15 references? Now that IS extreme.

~~~
jpg
references can/should be really fast. can get them all done in a couple
hours... worth it, given all the good stuff you can discover. You are going to
work and pay this person for months/years.

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utnick
Regardless of how long it takes the interviewer to review them, I think it is
pretty extreme to ask the interviewee to give 15 references, assembling 10-15
references, especially if you are young or maybe have worked at a small shop
for a long time would be pretty annoying

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aaronblohowiak
Agreed. If I can provide references from peers and superiors at my previous
jobs and also character references from outside of work, why would I need more
references?

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jpg
The 10-15 includes all references of all kinds, professional, friends, even
family.

I spoke to one of my hire's father, one time, because he worked for him for 2
years. You'd be surprised, family members are often the most honest. The point
is to get to know the candidate as quickly as possible and make a good
decision. Speak with as many people that know them as possible.

~~~
tptacek
Asking for "friends and family" references is unprofessional.

~~~
jpg
I wouldn't specifically ask for friends and family of course. The moral of the
story is to try to collect as many perspectives as you can on the candidate.

~~~
tptacek
So, without commenting on the "ethics" of this --- I don't care that much ---
it's worth it for readers to consider the practical implications of your
approach.

(1) Most interviewers won't ask for a 10 hour sample project.

(2) Most interviewers won't ask for 10 references.

(3) Good serverside web dev talent, even in this economy, is not in surplus.

(4) There are extremely talented developers who are just going to say "no" to
these weird requests.

Your loss.

I don't mean "unprofessional" as in, "you'll get kicked out of the guild". I
mean, "this will make you look bad". It's as much an interviewer's job to sell
their company as it is to qualify a candidate. Perhaps if you're getting a
stream of people that's so bad you feel like you need to talk to their Mom and
get them to work on spec for you, your real problem is that you just have a
really crappy hiring pipeline.

~~~
jonny_noog
I agree. I think it's great that these guys want to make sure that they get
good talent, but yeah, I'd have to _really_ want to work at a place before I'd
put in the time to complete a 10 hour project and provide 10 - 15 referees
plus whatever else is also involved. Maybe these guys are awesome to work for
and stuff, I'm not really meaning to comment on this.

But from personal experience, I very much agree that it is also the
interviewers responsibility to sell their company. I've been in the fortunate
position for some years now that I haven't _needed_ a job. When I move, it's
from the position of already being employed. Near the end of a job interview
there will usually be the point where the interviewers will ask if I have any
questions for them. My stock questions always include:

a) What do you like about working here?

b) What do you not like about working here?

I love observing their reaction/response to question b) particularly. :) And I
feel asking these kinds of questions sends a clear message to the interviewers
that I am not _desperate_ for the job, which puts me in a better bargaining
position when it comes time to talk salary etc. Of course, this tactic only
works when you really aren't desperate.

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tptacek
TEN to FIFTEEN references? If you're (a) "that fast" on reference checks, or
(b) that totally dependent on references the candidate provides you instead of
backdoor references at their employer, you are doing that part wrong.

Sad, because references are extremely important.

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azanar
How do you know that a back-door reference from someone they did not list
would not poison the well on an otherwise qualified candidate? Perhaps the
candidate is ill-placed enough at his current employer to be likely to garner
a one or more middling reviews -- perhaps that is why he is looking elsewhere.
It's possible that your corporate culture is sufficiently different that he
can thrive, but how would you know?

Really the opposite could be said for references he provided; they'll sing his
praises, even if he is a total dud.

Not saying references aren't extremely important, but I wouldn't mind some
thoughts on getting past the apparent fragility in the process.

~~~
tptacek
You don't, just like you don't know whether a "front-door" reference would
_really_ hire the candidate again, or is in fact just being nice. The whole
references thing is frought with peril; I got tanked on (one, longshot) VC due
diligence thing from a bad back-door reference. A friend of mine I recruited
for a company I worked for got tanked on her back-door reference. She went on
to be a total rock-star at the job she got instead of us.

On the other hand, I have stories about back-door references that were
collected too late to avoid tragic mistakes.

You want to do both. The back-door reference is harder. The idea that you're
getting real information from "10-15" fast reference checks from friends and
family seems crazy.

~~~
azanar
I agree that 10-15 references is totally bogus; I said so much in a reply to a
different comment.

I'm still boggling though, actually more so than I was before your reply. You
mention examples here that make the whole process seem incredibly error-prone,
bound to result in false positives and negatives, and as you described it
fraught with peril. This is a discouraging testament to the utility of doing
reference checks.

I feel quite uneasy questioning years of standard hiring practice, but do the
benefits of this sufficiently outweigh the drawbacks? You gather data about
the candidate, but no metadata about the recommendation, which I can see make
a considerable difference in how the reference is acted on. Metadata such as:

* the relationship dynamics of the recommender to other people besides the candidate

* how candid the recommender is about the benefits and drawbacks of things he/she evaluates

* what sort of events the recommender encountered, and what mood that set him/her in before talking with you.

All of these would put the recommendation in better context. There are
probably other data points (recommendations of the recommenders, etc), that
could be considered, and then there are time/benefit trade offs to decide
which are best left unconsidered.

I will agree that a reference check will likely shuffle out someone who is
obviously a raving lunatic, and would never work out no matter where they are
hired. But, beyond that, it seems more nebulous. I have the sense that there
is a combination of institutional inertia and real benefit that drives this
practice; I want to understand where the bounds of each are, and whether my
intuition is completely off-base.

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nradov
I'll never understand why someone would want to hire a "Rails developer". That
makes as much sense as hiring a "Blub developer". Rails is just another
framework in a sea of similar products that all do similar things. Wouldn't it
make more sense to hire skilled and intelligent developers who can learn Rails
if necessary?

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compay
I think a lot of what was said is right on - hiring the right people is hard
and I've _really_ stuggled with that at times.

But I think making people code for free is somewhat unethical unless it's for
open source. As an applicant I would feel that I was being taken advantage of
if you used my code, didn't open source it, and didn't give me the job.

I'm not a lawyer, so I could be totally wrong on this one - but I'd be a
little worried that this could become grounds for a lawsuit. Perhaps not a
serious one, but, for example, a lawsuit to obstruct an eventual IPO or
investment.

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jpg
Totally agree! and so does the article... See point #5, the second bullet.

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tptacek
Presumably, you're only providing _suggestions_ for what your applicant
writes; if they want to demonstrate their ability by writing a modular
synthesizer simulator in Ruby with an AJAX front end, you're going to let them
do that instead. Open source or not, asking for portions of your own product
up front is spec work, and it's also unprofessional.

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jpg
Call it what you will, but as a hiring manager you really should review as
much code as possible before hiring. Usually they can't show you proprietary
code from their last company, so unless they've already done open source
contributions, there won't be much to look at unless you give them a project.

In the past I've given candidates projects that we've come up with together.
Check out the ones mentioned in the article... fairly straightforward Rails
plugins. One of the was particularly successful, and included in the Advanced
Rails Recipe book.

~~~
tptacek
So you're fine with (a) open source contributors just providing you with
samples of their previous work, (b) people who _can_ show you non-public code
just showing you that, and (c) candidates coming up with example projects
totally unrelated to your own products, so long as it's demonstrative of the
right expertise.

You should write that, then.

~~~
jpg
Yeah... guess I should have explained it that way. Good feedback, thanks.

Hopefully the point remains: review as much code as you can, and don't be shy
of asking them to demonstrate their skillz.

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ardit33
The whole tone of the process sounds really immature and unprofessional.

Good people wont put up with this. 15 references, thats a red flag right away.
Sorry, but only desperate, or naive people will put up with it.

Remember, a person that has choice (even in a down economy), will be
interviewing you as a company just as well.

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mikeryan
"Company Win: We get a chunk of code that we need"

Wow that's bullshit - interviewers aren't developers working on spec.

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ksvs
_interviewers aren't developers working on spec._

...till they are. If it's a consensual relationship, who cares?

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kschrader
I know a lot of good developers, and I can't imagine any of them jumping
through all of these hoops to work for you (or anyone).

When you get this extreme with your process you're filtering out a bunch of
great people who won't put up with this all of this bullshit.

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thomasmallen
That's not the best hiring process, but I'll grant that it's the best
_vetting_ process.

