
Hacking the Hiring Process - johns
http://blog.twilio.com/2009/09/hacking-the-hiring-process-part-1.html
======
tom_b
Using some test like this to rate applicants probably only points out a
weakness in communication skills, but is better than just slamming through
random resumes. A well-written cover letter should easily answer the first two
(and listed as most important to twilio in the article as the folks building
the team) points listed.

I think it is also entirely NOT scalable. What if you get 1000 submissions? In
my area of the world (Research Triangle Park in NC) there is a company that
famously gets hundreds to a thousand of resume and cover letter submissions
per SW dev opening, especially when the job market is tight. One healthcare
software startup I knew about was getting so many resumes for open positions
that they developed a policy of trashing resumes received after 9AM on any
given day. Just to keep the piles manageable. How can that be effective?

But maybe a bulk of the applicants to the positions mentioned in the article
clearly just shot a resume at a job listing with no further effort
demonstrated? Can we get some numbers on how many applicants just sent a
resume versus attempting some of the "extra" work you asked for?

I've thought for some time that the best thing an applicant to a job could do
would be to provide a portfolio of code (or website or demo) that clearly
shows finished projects and results they have achieved previously. But that
could be a pretty intense process on the employer side - how do you review
even 50 of these portfolios in a meaningful way if each one is even small code
samples (say 2K lines of code)? Then the employer and candidate could sit down
and talk through the design choices and schedule trade-offs made on that code.

Plus, using previously written code completely punts on the idea that you
might prefer a really smart hacker who is inexperienced in some technology
instead of poor developer who has spent a career in that technology churning
out mediocre work. My guess is that the hackers who would care enough to
actually have a code portfolio out there for employers to see are probably a
cut above the average software dev type anyway.

Maybe this is my startup - given many portfolios of hacker's work, how do we
make it effectively searchable by employers who need to find good matches?
There has to be a good web app out there for this - recruiters get big
percentages on candidate placements, so there is clearly some potential
market. I don't have any data to back up this supposition, but don't we think
that recruiter candidate placements can be pretty closely approximated with
some data mining given a portfolio of work and simple heuristics?

An additional problem is that many hires are made via personal networks - it's
just easier to say, oh yeah, that person worked with our friends who were
really happy with his/her work on that project, we should think about bringing
him/her in.

The problem of hiring and finding great candidates has been bubbling in my
head. But I haven't had any blinding flashes of inspiration for really great
solutions - any thoughts out there?

~~~
eru
Please keep me informed, if you hit on anything. I like your way of thinking
through it.

------
JshWright
"Can they write a little code? Do they have enough experience to be able to
deploy code somewhere? (An[sic] fairly good test we've found of whether or not
somebody is a "hacker". Hackers have playgrounds.)"

I guess you could assume a negative correlation there (no playground == not a
'hacker'), but I doubt there's an equally strong positive correlation. I know
plenty of people with a VPS or in-home sandbox server whom I wouldn't put in
the 'hacker' category (myself included).

------
maxcap
(more details follow)

You should not hire people that do any of the things you ask. They are giving
their valuable services away for free - since your company exists to make
money, your employees giving their time so freely is likely to affect your
profitability.

People thinking about applying - Reconsider. The company is too cheap to pay
for good work - they extract what they need from interviews. Its likely that
you'll never discuss pay with them since you're not going to get hired once
they have their answers.

(the details)

Getting work done in an interview is a poor practice since the candidate does
not know if the work relates to an actual problem or is fictional.

If an actual problem, you are asking for the candidate's time and could end up
using the candidate's approach - this puts you into a conflict of interest:
you have a candidate that just gave you what you need and you are in a
position to hire.

If the problem is fictional, why bother? How does it help?

Besides, candidates are smart too: it's likely they hacking the interview
process too. Not sure where that leaves anyone, but good luck with that.

[want a solution? hire me ;) ]

~~~
eru
Possible solution: Pay the candidates for the time they spent working on your
problems in the interview.

Though I doubt this is a problem in interviews. But asking for a solution even
before the interview will skew your distribution of appliciants, like you
point out.

Not sure if this is a bad thing --- you want to hire people for whom solving
your problems is easy.

~~~
maxcap
It is a problem for freelancers - people always ask for free solutions to real
problems and various ways. Candidate employees are in the same situation, but
during the worst possible time - the interview.

As you said, you want to hire people for whom solving your problems is easy.
Keep in mind that your problems are not unique and probably already have a
solution, so you really need someone that.....woops...almost gave it away ;)

~~~
eru
Yes. Though drafting a cover letter and tweaking your resume also takes some
time (not to mention the research).

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asmosoinio
Good ideas! I have been doing a bit of hiring lately, and wish I had read this
before I started. Sounds like a really scalable way of doing a first
selection.

~~~
rfreytag
It is completely scalable. I did it. The second round was an estimate for a
more significant 'paid' task that advanced the company's goals (i.e. real
work). The third round was completion and delivery of the task (which paid
just enough to keep qualified candidates interested). My time was more
valuable than the cost of having the few interested candidates that got that
far do the various useful bits of work.

At the end I did a few long long interviews and really got to know who I was
going to be working with and they me.

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dmor
Web Technologies Engineer:
[http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=743818&f...](http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=743818&fromSearch=0&sik=1252997713223)

Twilio Core Engineer:
[http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=743817&f...](http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=743817&fromSearch=1&sik=1252997713223)

------
shiranaihito
Pretty soon we'll be seeing headlines like "Hacking riding a bicycle"..

~~~
jcl
This is actually a fairly clever and atypical approach to hiring. I agree that
the meaning of "hacking" is often stretched, and maybe this is one of those
cases, but it's hardly the worst.

(However, like the Microsoft/Google brainteaser interviews, I could see these
little extraneous tasks getting pretty annoying if they became widespread.)

------
ilyak
"You're a web developer? Write a few lines of PHP code." Lovely PHP people!
Please go love yourself!

