Ask HN: Pushback on Interviews?

[a_imho]

Interviews are becoming an ever increasing time sink. Multiple rounds of phone screens, quizzes, take home tests, online assessments and whiteboarding. It is ridiculous that companies who want to hire professional knowledge workers are expecting candidates to put in tens of hours of work (not counting any prep time) for free without having any skin in the game themselves. Where to draw the line? How to push back on ridiculous requirements? Is it fair to ask for compensation of your time? How to cut back on interview bloat?

[mytailorisrich]

I'd say the first thing to do is to enquire about the whole process during the first interview, which will probably be over the phone.

Then, I'm afraid as applicant you are not in a strong position to ask them to change it for you, and it might be out of their hands anyway.

So the only thing you can do if to think how much you'd like that job and decide whether to continue with the process or to politely decline. Probably best to consider that even if you decline politely they might conclude that you are not very serious or hard working if you don't want to make efforts to land a job.

Or you might get a nice surprise if they adapt rather than letting you go...

[tboyd47]

Ask if they can push any live interviews forward, before the coding challenge. Say the reason is that it saves both of us time. It takes longer to read code than to write it. So while it may take me thirty minutes to solve the challenge, it could take your team hours to read it and understand it, so let's get the easy part out of the way first.

Don't ask to be compensated. Don't push back. If that's their process then that's their process. But you can make suggestions in the interest of saving them time. They'll appreciate that.

[ThrowawayR2]

> "...without having any skin in the game themselves..."

From the other side of the chair, the cash cost and person-hours of recruiting staff, HR personnel, and the engineer-hours spent by interviewers both on preparation and the time spent on interviews add up to far more than what an interviewee spends on the interview.

[a_imho → ThrowawayR2]

For the dollar amounts, maybe, though I personally disagree. The associated risk is absolutely not the same however. Also, the idea of luring people with good salaries but valuing their time as 0 is a bit contradictory.