

“Blink” and the Art of Hiring the Best  - b-man
http://consulting.assembla.com/blog/blink-and-the-art-of-hiring-the-best/

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pmichaud
I do the same thing -- I give new developers some repository credentials and
give them a small task.

One thing to watch out for though, is competent developers who are unreliable
over time. They have the skills, but they spend their time surfing.

~~~
ryansloan
> One thing to watch out for though, is competent developers who are
> unreliable over time. They have the skills, but they spend their time
> surfing.

I think this is more a problem of motivation. I think if you throw enough
interesting projects into the pipe (with the boring, necessary ones, of
course) it helps keep them on task. Says the guy who's replying to a HN thread
at work...

~~~
benatkin
I agree. The best will quit a boring job, though, right?

(says someone who sticks around)

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param
Sounds like a great idea. I would definitely like to try it out in my
organization. The few problems I see with the approach are:

1\. For closed source companies, does this increase the recruiting complexity
by requiring potential candidates to sign NDAs as they will be looking at
proprietary code?

2\. Does it add overhead if you have a lot of applicants? They would all be
sending in questions that you need to review. Since the process may take long
and is not time boxed, you may lose productivity as you get interrupts from a
new channel. From the article it didn't seem as if the author performs any
kind of pre-screening

[EDIT]2.1 If the applicant pool is large, this also sounds like a waste of
money.

3\. For reasonably complex systems (I am currently in enterprise software),
you would need to provide a quick way for a new hire to finish setup of your
application. There was a time when we expected a new guy to finish the first
install of our app in a week (!!). Things are much better now with hosted VMs
that you can just fire up with the install being 1 click, but not all
companies are going to have that luxury

I am also assuming that to accommodate applicants that are applying while
still being employed (they need to pay their bills too!), we would need to
ensure that the task to complete is short enough/can be done over the weekend
or off hours.

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imack
The only concern I have with giving programming puzzles for hiring is that it
can be quite the burden on candidates. This is fine if your company is a top
player and candidates REALLY REALLY want to work for you, but if you aren't
that established (like as a startup), the candidates might not like the amount
of effort needed to apply. We tried this for some interns a while ago and
about half balked at the idea and it wasn't necessarily the "bad" half.

Top talent are going to have options. If you ask too much too early, they may
just wonder if it's worth 10 hours of coding up front to get the honour of
applying to your company. One should always look for code before hiring, but
it shouldn't be done in a way where you are filtering out the non-desperate as
well as the incompetent.

~~~
b-man
"The only concern I have with giving programming puzzles for hiring"

That is really not what the author is advocating. A paid trial period is more
in line with his approach. I can personally vouch for its efficacy.

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gregwebs
Sounds like good advice, but why does Blink have anything to do with this?
Isn't it obvious that you only want to base your decisions on factors that
actually have to do with the outcome?

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b-man
If anyone is interested in more details, I've just posted an interview here
with the same guy. Worths the check.

[http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/10041/...](http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/10041/Distributed-
Agile-Interview-Dan-Mezick-chats-with-Andy-Singleton.aspx)

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fmendez
In my opinion, the procedure he describes sounds great to measure the skills
of the candidate(s), but that's too early to called the 'Best' resource of the
bunch. It will not be until he or she is actually working there that you will
be able to measure the real quality (both on the technical and the human
perspective ) of him/her.

~~~
daemin
Yes, the candidate does have to fit in with the team. However the article
mentioned that he was doing a lot of recruiting for distributed teams.
Therefore the output generated would probably be worth more than how the
people get along face to face.

