

Ask HN: How long does the programmer hiring cycle last at your company? - dlf

For each new hire, how many hours, on average, would you say it takes to do each of the following and what method do you use to accomplish it?<p>1. Analyzing skill/ability fit of a potential programming hire
2. Analyzing code samples
3. Narrowing down pool of applicants to those that you want to interview.<p>If you could add a bit of information about the sort of company you work for (large dev shop, small dev shop, startup, Google, etc.), that would be really helpful as well.<p>Thanks!
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tophercyll
Sure.

I aim to have our interview cycle take under a week, although in honesty, I
think it takes about 10 days. I often take on a little more work myself
(especially in the phone screen) if I believe it helps speed up the process
and saves others time. Speed is important. Keeping momentum during hiring
really makes the experience better for everyone.

For background, I work for a startup lab in Boston (we build prototypes that
we spin out into companies). We're about 35 employees.

Oh, and let me start by saying that while all the pre-interview work you've
listed above does take some time, the real time cost to hiring is from the
interview process itself since it involves multiple people.

1.) Resume review: 3 minutes. It took longer when I first got started. I used
to agonize over "call/dont-call." But you'll usually have a gut reaction to
the resume, and you'll eventually learn to trust that (for better or worse ;-)

2.) Code samples/Exercises: I don't bother with them, although another manager
I work with uses them to good effect. Unfortunately, they can add between
several days to a week to the process, so I do a more involved phone screen
instead to keep things moving.

3.) Phone screen: I spend up to 90 minutes in the phone screen. This seems to
be fairly unusual. 90 minutes is a lot of time to invest, but the key is, I
only spend that long with the candidates I think I'd like to bring in. The
call is setup so that I can cut it short at any point. Even still, I spend a
lot of time here. I get to know the candidate, feel out their passions, and
actually have them write code, live in an EtherPad derivative while talking to
them.

4.) Almost 6 person-hours. Our amazing director of talent greets the
candidate, and spends 15 minutes giving them the lay of the land, paperwork,
etc. Then two different two-person teams interview the candidate for an hour
each getting to know the candidate, sharing what life here is like, and
working on one large technical problem. Then our CTO and I spend 45 minutes
with the candidate answer questions, talking about the direction and strategy
of the company, and gauging their interest in what we do here. Interestingly,
the interview process we've been using on the UX side of things spends more
time working on a single practical exercise (using computers, not whiteboards)
and finishes with a broader meet-and-greet. Since I'm constantly experimenting
with this process, I'm planning on trying a variant of this on the software
engineer interviews as well.

But I aim to have the whole process from resume review to offer letter done in
a week.

~~~
dlf
Thanks for the excellent feedback! I'm in Boston as well. I'd be interested in
grabbing a coffee sometime if you're up for it.

