What are people doing as alternatives to these kinds of interviews? The research is quite clear that technical interviews are worse than useless (literally -- they will select for the wrong traits in your candidate pool), yet they still seem to be the dominant hiring practice.
My current company does a few rounds of low-key chatting, some about technical stuff, then a 1 to 2 month trial period with the understanding that there is no guarantee of a job at the end, it only becomes permanent if it's a good fit on both ends. Obviously this is time consuming and expensive, but it works because we're a small and very stable company, which I realize is very much _not_ the norm. This does work great, though. They've managed to build a team of excellent, autonomous, highly skilled developers who stick around for the long haul. Wow, that sounds a bit self-aggrandizing -- I'm really thinking of my co-workers, I hardly count myself in that category. Maybe someday.
Anyway, I'm genuinely curious what other models you all use that work well. By "work" I guess I mean result in high quality and long lasting additions to a team.
I like that model your company is using. Though there is a major drawback: your sapping the momentum of your candidates in their job search. If they sign on for the 2 month trial and it doesn't work out, contacts in their job search will have moved on, and they'll effectively have to start over from the beginning. Ultimately, a contract-to-hire strategy overwhelmingly favors the employer's interest.
Interesting, I hadn't thought about it that way. I always prefer a month or two trial run before I commit to joining a company for the long term. I just can't tell enough in a few hours of interviewing whether I'll enjoy working with the people or not. And also you rarely get to meet all your future co-workers in the interview. But then, this has always worked out well for me. I could see it being worse and/or disruptive if it led to a situation of doing one or two month contracts for a really long time.
My current company does a few rounds of low-key chatting, some about technical stuff, then a 1 to 2 month trial period with the understanding that there is no guarantee of a job at the end, it only becomes permanent if it's a good fit on both ends. Obviously this is time consuming and expensive, but it works because we're a small and very stable company, which I realize is very much _not_ the norm. This does work great, though. They've managed to build a team of excellent, autonomous, highly skilled developers who stick around for the long haul. Wow, that sounds a bit self-aggrandizing -- I'm really thinking of my co-workers, I hardly count myself in that category. Maybe someday.
Anyway, I'm genuinely curious what other models you all use that work well. By "work" I guess I mean result in high quality and long lasting additions to a team.