
Hiring Processes Are Also Engineering Processes - ramblinjan
http://ramblinjan.com/development/2016/12/05/Your-Hiring-Process-is-your-engineering-process/
======
CoolGuySteve
Where does this assumption come from that rejecting the majority of candidates
leads to better results? At some point you're just cutting into the bone and
rejecting candidates that are perfectly acceptable.

The more candidates you reject, the more time you waste and the more people
come out of your interview with a negative experience of the company.

These costs can easily outweigh the cost of a bad hire. Nobody writing these
blog-anecdotes even quantifies what that cost is.

At the end of the day, programming interviews seem more like hazing than
anything. No other profession hires with a full day oral examination. It's
fucking ridiculous.

~~~
ramblinjan
It depends on your definition of "perfectly acceptable." Almost every job in
every industry with a hiring cycle rejects "a majority of candidates,"
especially when there's limited space.

> These costs can easily outweigh the cost of a bad hire.

How so? You're right that I've relied a good bit on the anecdotal, but aren't
you doing so a bit here? Bad hires are ridiculously costly--especially on a
small team--because they aren't just expensive. On a good team, almost every
new hire lowers everyone else's productivity initially.

Hiring more people because of loss aversion also falls prey to the trap of
"more people = more productive" that's been pretty thoroughly debunked in the
software industry ([http://a.co/3ierKnl](http://a.co/3ierKnl))

~~~
user5994461
> Bad hires are ridiculously costly

Here's a serious question. Please make an effort to think about it and come
with an answer for your company: What is a "bad hire"?

~~~
flukus
Someone who writes code bad enough that the maintenance costs of the code
outweigh the cost of employing them to write it.

Of course this is often an organizational issue more than a hiring one, but we
seem to have given up on fixing those.

~~~
ramblinjan
There's also the cost of impact on a team, etc.

Shameless self-plug, though, for another post I wrote about organizational
process: [http://ramblinjan.com/development/2016/07/05/Going-Agile-
Whe...](http://ramblinjan.com/development/2016/07/05/Going-Agile-When-You-
Have-No-Authority/)

I definitely haven't given up on fixing those. I just, uh...I have a lot of
feelings.

------
fecak
Resume writer and ~20 year tech recruiter here. Just a comment to readers
about the author's estimate that your resume is being reviewed for 5 minutes.
_It 's not,_ so be sure not to write your resume as if it is going to get that
much attention.

Don't save the good stuff for the ending, thinking "the reader will get to
that." Interview or delete decisions are often made in under thirty seconds,
at least for things like a quick phone screen. If you start out the resume too
slow, many readers are not getting to page two.

~~~
ramblinjan
Good point. I tried to be pretty conservative so it didn't feel like I was
fudging numbers to make a point about speed in earlier rounds, but I wonder if
I should clarify.

I'll definitely include this when I write more for an audience of applicants.
Resumes are soooooo boring, so anything to stick out is a big deal.

~~~
fecak
I was hoping not to seem pedantic on this, but it's potentially a key detail
to a reader and I wouldn't want anyone to think they have 5 minutes to make an
impression when the reality is much closer to 5 seconds to make an immediate
positive impression. Then you likely get some more review time once the
initial gut reaction is over.

Nicely written article BTW.

~~~
ramblinjan
Thanks!

Definitely didn't take it as pedantic. Thanks for the reminder about the
impact this could have on an audience I didn't think about. I added a small
disclaimer.

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petesalty
Hiring fast is actually really important. It sets a really good tone with
candidates and forces you to have a hiring process with good decision points
and processes.

At Voxy we had a 1 week turn around goal from receiving a resume to having on
offer on the table. Didn't always work out like that because of candidates,
and vacations and what not, but that was the goal. The day of last interviews
we either said no thanks that night, or got the offer out.

~~~
pjmorris
Anec-data to your point: The two best companies I've worked for made their
offers at the end of the interview day.

~~~
__derek__
How did they go about doing that? It seems like it would be very difficult to
avoid pressuring someone to decide on the spot. When that's not the intent
(i.e. when the company respects a person's right to think about the offer), it
seems like that risks becoming an uncomfortable situation.

~~~
pjmorris
The offer was made: they didn't require an immediate response. They had
refined their decision process, they didn't constrain my decision process
beyond what's customary.

~~~
__derek__
Cool. So they just said, "Hey, we would like to offer you the job. Here are
the details. Please take your time and let us know when you've made a
decision"?

~~~
pjmorris
That's right, although they said something like 'Please decide within the
week' or something to that effect. I'd have to dig up old, old paperwork to
get the exact phrasing, but it wasn't 'Hey dude, it's chill, whenever you make
up your mind'

~~~
__derek__
Ha! Right, right. Good on them, and thanks for indulging me.

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bcbrown
I especially liked this part:

> If you need someone who can hit the ground running right away, test them
> with the exact tools they’ll be using on the job. If you need someone
> flexible who can learn anything, test them on something new and unique. If
> you need someone with a level head, try to frustrate your candidates and
> ditch the ones with short tempers.

Edit: Except for deliberately frustrating candidates.

~~~
ramblinjan
Thanks for the feedback. I'll have to give it some thought because it seems
like I failed to explain this well enough (though I may just straight up be
wrong about it altogether).

The candidates who ended up frustrated weren't feeling that way because we
were jerks to them (I don't think). Maybe what I'm getting at is don't be
afraid to push people to the limit a little bit in a task, because their
reactions to it say as much as their approach.

~~~
TheCowboy
Most jobs don't require people who can endure getting "pushed to the limit"
every week, hour, day, etc. Especially while under close observation and
scrutiny. That would strain most any person. If it is that demanding, then be
upfront about that instead of surprising candidates during a stressful
interview.

People should be aware of what they accidentally select for in candidates. I
feel like I am skilled at remaining calm in crisis work situations where
people (customers, co-workers, owners) are dependent upon me, but I can bomb
interviews just as easily as the next person. Some approaches might
consistently filter people who get stressed during interviews, rather than
select people who maintain poise.

~~~
ramblinjan
> then be upfront about that instead of surprising candidates during a
> stressful interview

People are rarely humble enough to actually reflect on this if they're excited
about a job.

> People should be aware of what they accidentally select for in candidates

Absolutely.

------
noahmbarr
Andy Groove "High Output Management" covers this topic and more. Highly
recommend!
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015VACHOK](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015VACHOK)

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achanda358
Not communicating clearly and on time definitely leads to terrible candidate
experience. I was on the receiving end of this when a recruiter from a famous
hosting company told me over the phone that they are going to make an offer by
the end of the month. When that time came, he told me that they would need to
conduct another interview with the CTO who is out till the end of that month.
By this time, it had already been 3 months in the pipeline. I hung on to it
because I liked talking to the team and loved the product. But this is surely
not worth my time.

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aml183
It's not an issue of time, but expectation. If it is clearly known that it
will take 5 days to respond then the developer won't be peeved. The most
important part of the process is to be transparent.

~~~
ramblinjan
Made a small edit based on your comment. Thanks!

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misterbowfinger
_I want to say this again: a technical recruiter should not define hiring
policy or hiring process. Their value is in their relatively low cost per
candidate._

I look at this a little differently. OP seems to treat Engineering as a
totally independent organization within a company. In bigger companies, I
understand. But I don't think it makes as much sense in a smaller company,
where, often, the tight-knit culture is what's keeping the ship afloat.

Engineering is one piece of the pie. The success of the company is everyone's
success. Consequently, the team's hiring process _can and should_ be
influenced by people outside of Engineering, to some extent. One has to take
the comapany's culture in account.

~~~
ramblinjan
You've got me looking back at what I've written, because I actually agree with
you on company culture (if the company's culture is a positive force). My
point about technical recruiters is because they're very often totally
separated from the engineering culture. Oddly enough, I'm speaking about
smaller companies more so than bigger ones because a large company is less
likely to give their engineering teams enough autonomy to really do anything
with what I've written.

The main thing I wanted to get at here is that a hiring process can not be
thought of as separate from your engineering process. I'm not trying to argue
that hiring should be insulated from reality. I'm arguing that there are a lot
of companies who are ignoring the fact that it isn't.

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wbillingsley
Most hiring processes are engineering processes in the same sense that
throwing a sheet over two chairs to make a cubby house is civil engineering...

~~~
ramblinjan
The title got updated by HN, I think. I'm not trying to call everything
engineering (I don't actually think everything should be approached as an
engineering process). My argument is that the decisions you make about culture
and process in hiring inevitably affect your actual team's process.

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Apocryphon
Was there ever a time in the tech industry where employers would provide
actual training to new hires? Besides Facebook's boot camp.

~~~
grigjd3
Every new hire takes training.

