
Ask HN: (how) do you early reject candidates during onsite interviews? - epanastasi
I've known two people who were told "we can't find your final interviewer" while doing on-site interviews at Twitter.  They were then escorted out and told they'll be in contact soon to follow up.  At which point they were rejected.   The first time, I thought.. "that's kinda strange", but the second time I heard about it I said to myself - "oh, is that their early reject policy??"   I was wondering if anyone have a similar experience?<p>I know how difficult it is to walk a candidate out early; I've had to do it myself before.  I'm curious to know from the rest of HN:<p>Does your company have an official process for ending onsite interviews early, and under what circumstances (if any) is that okay?
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patio11
I'd be strongly inclined, especially in the current hiring environment, to do
whatever else was on the schedule anyway -- finish the interviews, take the
candidate to lunch, _sell them on the desirability of working at your company_
, whatever, _even if I received obvious signals that it was not a mutual fit_.

The rationale is partially "Even if this particular candidate does not end up
working for our organization, our treatment of them _will_ be repeated to
their friends, who -- since birds of a feather flock together -- likely
include other people who we may be interested in hiring."

(And partially it is just that I cannot contort my mind into believing that
any serious professional could think that "Our multinational
telecommunications company lost your interviwer. _Whoops!_ Happens all the
time -- door's on the left, security will see you out" is acceptable outside a
Dilbert strip.)

~~~
seiji
_any serious professional_

Have you met these bay area social media people?

I applied at twitter a few years ago (a direct referral from ev). The first
technical phone interviewer tweeted part of my resume along with a sarcastic
comment before the call. He then proceeded to not be very friendly on the
phone screen (and called 15 minutes late). A few days later, the second phone
interviewer asked half the same questions as the first interviewer.

The recruiting staff was excellent, and the people I met on-site for
interviews were great.

"Professional" to the engineering staff seems to mean "I'll do whatever makes
me feel good as quickly as possible."

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toomuchcoffee
_"we can't find your final interviewer"_

This is clearly disingenuous, and accomplishes nothing other than to to convey
a palpable sense of contempt and disregard for the candidate. It's an insult
to their intelligence, basically.

~~~
typpo
This is not an unusual practice. For example, Microsoft has been known for
sending people home early for quite some time. In some cases they'll tell you
the next guy is out of work today (which is disingenuous), in other cases
they'll tell you that you're done and send you home.

Not giving candidates a set schedule of interviews beforehand prevents these
awkward lies and interactions. This may be an acceptable level of honesty
because rejecting someone on the spot can be very difficult, both for the
interviewer and the candidate.

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specialist
It's been a long time (late '90s) since I've seen a formalized (documented)
interview process. It helped immensely. We basically treated recruiting like a
sales funnel, had a ranking/scoring system, had self-selecting teams, etc.

Since then, seems like everyone's just making it up as they go. Hiring, evals,
reqs, QA/test, whatever. The pinnacle of methodology may have sucked, but at
least we all pretended to try.

When I interview candidates now, when it's a "no", I chop it off asap. I give
precise reasons why, as nicely as possible. It's fair, honest, constructive,
and is how I would want to be treat. I also believe in the Roman Evaluation
Method, where anything less than a yes by everyone is a no.

Alas, I'm a solo act in a large organization. eg, Another interviewer, even
after it's a clear "No" (we compare notes via IM), let's things drag on,
always doing the "do you have any questions for us?" bit, and then wraps up
with a "our people will contact you..."

~~~
andrewcooke
if i were the candidate, i think i'd prefer this. it saves my time and it
sounds like you are reasonably courteous and give some kind of feedback, which
is more than i would get otherwise.

in the past, when i've been the interviewer, i've "kept going to the end".
i've not interviewed people recently, but if that changes in the future i will
try this approach.

(vaguely related - thinking back, at least twice, as the candidate, i've
volunteered myself as not suitable for the job. one resulted in an early exit;
the other limped awkwardly on.)

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codegeek
Whenever we participate in on-site interviews, candidates have been vetted
enough through phone interviews that you should hardly have to face a very bad
candidate that you want to reject right away on-site. However, even if that is
the case, the perception of a bad candidate could vary from interviewer to
interviewer. If I was personally called for an on-site interview and rejected
_early_ just on the basis of couple of interviewers, I would be upset at that
moment but probably be glad later. Interviewing should be collaborative and if
you have scheduled a candidate to come on-site, the least you can do is to
give him/her the chance to speak to _everyone_ who is supposed to interview
and _then_ decide. Otherwise, it reflects bad on your culture. Just my
personal opinion.

~~~
jfb
This. A few times at Apple a real disaster would make it through the phone
screen, and there would be a panic about what to do. Usually we just went
through with it, but it always seemed to me to be _more_ respectful to the
candidate and the interviewing team to just pull the chute as soon as it was
obvious.

The real answer of course was to fix the phone screens, but that requires
actual energy be put into thinking hard about the hiring process, and the
hiring process is deeply, fundamentally unsexy.

~~~
toomuchcoffee
Also, many of these "disaster" cases may simply be suffering from an
unfortunate, but all too human cases of stage fright, especially if it's their
first F2F at a big company like Apple. Some people just freeze up
involuntarily, and trip all over their tongues when being grilled by people
they look up to and respect. They're human beings, not quiz-answering
machines, after all.

Not that we need to slow down and make some kind of special accommodation when
this happens -- because indeed, such episodes may fairly be viewed as signs of
a lack of experience and confidence.

But it still surprises me how often people fail to see the basic humanity at
play in these situations: instead of thinking "poor guy, he seemed really
nervous", all that comes to mind is "What a _loser_! He couldn't solve that
Euler problem with me staring and grinning impatiently at him the whole time.
How did he ever make it through the phone screen?"

~~~
jfb
"Also, many of these "disaster" cases may simply be suffering from an
unfortunate, but all too human cases of stage fright, especially if it's their
first F2F at a big company like Apple."

This is absolutely correct, and there's no hard and fast set of rules to
determine if performance in a staged, artificial environment like an interview
correlates in any significant way with performance at the job intended.
There're a whole host of issues around hiring in particular and coping with
humans in general that the tech industry does an astonishingly bad job with.

To me, the goal of interviewing is not to find someone who is a clone of
someone who already is on the team, but rather to find someone who brings
different and useful perspectives to the job. If they can work on existing
problems day one, so much the better, but if they can never get beyond working
on existing problems, then they were a mis-hire.

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eshvk
I remember interviewing at a start up where I was repeatedly clearly told
through the interview process that if at any point they found me lacking, they
would cut short the process. Although, I enjoyed their process (purely from a
technical perspective), I definitely had the impression that they were a bunch
of dicks and would definitely not recommend them to friends. Having said that,
I think theirs was a much more rational policy than telling the candidate they
can't find the interviewer which borders on the incredulous.

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OllieJones
Who's the most important person in your software development shop on any given
day? The one you're interviewing. This person is, hopefully, your future.

What's the most important part of your job if you're a software developer in a
pre-revenue startup? Hiring people who are smarter than you.

If you don't believe that, do your colleagues and investors a favor and quit.

I'm serious.

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davidmr
As I learned to do phone screens, some people made it past me into an onsite
interview that really wouldn't have come close to getting a job. After meeting
two or three of us, we just told our internal recruiters that they weren't
suitable and would just be a waste of everyone's time to hold their interview
schedule. The recruiters just come in and end the interview, being relatively
noncommittal. It's still after at least three interviews, so it's not like
they're being chucked out on their ear after a few minutes.

I felt pretty terrible about it since it was 100% my fault that they wasted
their time by coming in, but time is too valuable to throw good after bad...

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unreal37
I never had much problem ending an interview early. It doesn't happen often,
but it does happen that after about 10 minutes I know this person had 0%
chance of getting hired. They just don't have the technical skills I am
looking for, let alone the other skills my bosses would need. I usually talk
with them til the 20/25 minute mark and thank them for coming and show them to
the door.

They don't need to know that there were other interviewers lined up after. And
the others are thankful the "guaranteed no's" don't get to them.

