

Ask HN: What's your hiring process like? - dfischer

Hiring people can be a risky thing. You&#x27;re bringing someone in the family and hoping they can deliver. What are some things you do to minimize that risk? Do you contract first? Coding challenge? I&#x27;m curious what others do to minimize the risk when you haven&#x27;t worked with someone before.
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alexpotato
For questions like these, I like to quote a story I once read about dating in
New York City:

"I have a female friend. She asks every guy she meets at a bar two questions:

1\. Do you have a passport?

2\. Do you have a Kindle/Nook/library card?

Why does she ask these questions? If the answer to 1 is no then he doesn't
like to travel abroad and if the answer to 2 is no then he doesn't like to
read."

In essence, she determined two quick filters that were the most important to
her.

I had a manager who had a similar test for candidates. He would give them a 5
question tech test where the first question had a "trick" item. Specifically,
sort multiple 5GB+ files on a box with 1GB of RAM but 100GB of disk space. If
the candidate got the first question wrong, that was the end of the line for
the candidate. Why? It showed that they:

a. Didn't have attention to detail

b. Didn't fully understand basic technical constraints e.g. in this case RAM
is limited but disk is not.

One other point I always like to make is to screen candidates in parallel. For
example, if your process is to bring someone in to the office and then give
them a tech test, that's a serial process.

On the other hand, if you give the tech test to recruiters and say "Have
candidates fill this out and then send it in", you just created a parallel
process to screen candidates.

I've also heard people say "What if they look up the answers?" to which I
reply: if you give someone a test with google-able answers and they still get
it wrong, you just filtered out a pretty bad candidate. Win for you.

~~~
dataminer
Parallelization is a very good advice, I am going through a hiring process
right now where the company employs this method and according to them it has
made their lives alot easier.

The take home code test they use is totally googlable, however there are
multiple ways to solve the problem and they ask candidates to provide tests
for their solutions. If they are happy with the solution and find it
distinctive the candidate gets to explain the solution during the onsite
interview.

I found the whole process very relaxed and enjoyable.

~~~
notlikejohn
It also forces the candidates to invest their own time and brainpower before
you expend resources to screen/interview them. Helps cut down on individuals
who are interviewing only to test the market and may not be really serious
about the position.

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itaifrenkel
At Forter (www.Forter.com) a big part is the screening of CVs. HR and RnD work
closely to contact only relevant candidates, and when we a CV could be
relevant the RnD manager or the lead developer calls the candidate for 15
minutes focusing on a key strength that makes the candidate relevant and why
working at Forter is so great. The first interview is about the candidate's
comfort zone. You would be amazed how many people don't know what they were
working on about the past few years... plus a hands on algorithmic coding task
that does not require experience (we hire also coders before college). The
rest of the process (usually three more interviews) are mixed. Include
technical, personal discussion. We try to fit all interviews into one day.
Even though Israel is small and travel is non issue , there is a strong
psychological effect if the candidate gets an offer after one visit. This
might require in some cases talking with the candidates recommenders while she
is interviewed in the next room.

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hga
Here are some general principles and tests I accumulated over a long career,
mostly gotten from managers a lot better at hiring that I was ^_^:

If you have doubt over a certain low threshold about the candidate, don't
hire. A bad hire, especially in a startup, is terribly expensive.

Testing coding is mandatory. Back in the '90s when C/C++ were the game, we
used two tests, write code to create a doubly linked list, and look at a small
function we'd put up on the white board and find problems with it. Both were
graded generously, it was pretty clear if the candidate had a clue or not.

Then general problem solving, i.e. some design problems, perhaps including a
big/relatively difficult one, and have the candidate describe some design
solutions they were proud of.

Code samples were very welcome if available, of course.

In all of this, you'd get a pretty good sense of whether you'd like to work
with this person. You'd also use the whole process to sell the company/project
to the candidate, and see how they responded to that, they had to show either
some interest in it, or for the more professionally oriented, something like
an attitude that it would be no problem in due course and they would like the
work.

Ah, especially for startups, get across the concept that "you can't be too
proud to not sweep floors" if needed, but that each engineer would be
allocated both some of the less interesting work that just has to be done, and
the interesting work.

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alir
When we started hiring about 6 months ago at our startup (groopic.com), here's
what my thought process was: We need great people that we want to work with -
Incubators and Accelerators invest in people - They know how to judge them -
World's best accelerator (YC) asks the founders a few questions and short
lists companies on the basis of the answers - There must be something in those
questions - Adapt them for you hiring to screen the pool of applicants. In our
case, it has worked like magic. We are able to filter about 65% of the
applicants. For the rest, we call them for first interview, only 10% left
after that. They are the ones we spend a lot of time on, and we hired 5% of
the applicants in the last 6 months.

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sighype
I prefer the contract-to-hire model, but I say this as an employee. It's hard
to know whether I'll like a place, but if the place is open to 3-6 month
contracts, I can find out and can make it work. Unfortunately, this isn't the
way things seem to work.

Also, the duration of 6 month is short enough that, even if I don't like the
place, the incentive is there to put the best foot forward to get the best
recommendation possible to go somewhere else.

