But their experience is quite unusual. They have many people keen to join them so they can do stupid things and not notice it. Most other companies don't have this magnet to favor them.
Have you tried hiring in tech recently? Good candidates disappear after a week. You have to move fast. And even if you are good many candidates slip through your fingers. I doubt Google's Hire service would help me much on that.
* You need someone at least slightly technical to screen CVs.
* Then screen round 2 with truly technical people,
ideally from target teams.
* Then figuring out if any of the job openings is a match for
the candidate (from language to expected job position)
* Then a very personal call with them
* Then a single planned-ahead phone interview with goals
(e.g. is the candidate really competent with X)
* Then interview on-site in a single afternoon/morning
(take them to lunch!)
* Offer should be in a short time, ideally the day of
the on-site interviews.
Or you can do what most people do and just offer 30% above market, cross your fingers, and see what sticks.
> Build work-sample tests.
Instead of asking questions about the kind of work you do, have candidates actually do the work.
Careful. I am not saying candidates should spend a 2-week trial period as a 1099 contractor. That’s a terrible plan: the best candidates won’t do it. But more importantly: it doesn’t work. Unlike a trial period, work sample tests have all three of these characteristics:
they mirror as closely as possible the actual work a candidate will be called on to perform in their job,
they’re standardized, so that every candidate faces the same test,
they generates data and a grade, not a simple pass/fail result.
Work samples are the only thing that have ever proved to be consistent indicators about a candidate. The only other thing that even comes close is pair programming with someone on the hiring team, and you can have the pair do a work sample anyway.
I'm hiring into Dublin, Ireland, I think the expectations around timelines are different for me, especially if the candidate will be relocating.
I don't remember having anyone enter the pipeline and leave it again by their own choice before we've made an offer. I do remember there being one candidate who got dropped somehow who got pissed off at how long things were taking, but that was human error (or arguably bad tooling) more than bad process.
Heh some years ago while interviewing at the Googleplex, I was forgotten about over lunchtime. It was overall a weird interview experience, even though I ended up getting an offer. I definitely get more ruthless and efficient when I am hungry, so maybe that's why I did okay. But it was still an eye-opening experience, and not in a good way.
Hiring is a two-way street, if you send me a Hackerrank test before I've spoken to someone about the basics you will have immediately lost me as a candidate. Not even Google is this deaf to the human side of hiring.
This is a really important point that many companies don’t seem to care about. Some companies seem to operate on the assumption that everyone absolutely wants to work for them and that applicants will spent lots of time.
This lack of respect of or recognition of the value of applicants time will filter out what’s likely your most desired applicants, people with low amounts of time due to current employment or lots of leads.
There needs to be some interaction with the applicant to show you are worthy of a mini project or multi-hour hackerrank test. Your job description better be amazing with details to motivate an applicant to spend time on a test off the bat.
It's crazy how you complain about the lack of recognition for your time but refuse the shortest pipeline of interview. It's much easier to take a quick coding test online anytime, than to schedule phone interviews with HR and hiring managers.
I don't refuse the shortest pipeline of interview. I'm a big fan of pretty intensive interviews, both giving and taking.
My issue is about the shotgun approach of many recruiters. I don't mind taking a coding test, I think they're great. It's frustrating to have to take a coding test to find out the area of the company, or pay grade, or basic position info. Or being put into a phone screening for a Java position because the recruiter mixed up Java and JavaScript, etc. etc.
This gets worse with the higher level of effort test. I think that it helps when companies describe the position well. Otherwise it takes some sort of knowledge of each other before I think it's worth actually dedicating time.
It may be different if you're looking for a job full time while unemployed. But spending 10 hours of time is only something I'll consider if I think I'd take the position should the org want to hire me.
How do you know as the one being recruited these tests are not sent to 100 other programmers. Wasting time without wasting the recruiters time too is a no-go for me unless I would be desperate.
It's a three way street. One third of candidates don't try, one third can't do the only question that is to print numbers from 1 to N, one third succeed.
It saves a lot of time for everyone. Including time for the phone call with the team lead/manager where you will have the opportunity to discuss the role and the company in much greater details.
Have you tried hiring in tech recently? Good candidates disappear after a week. You have to move fast. And even if you are good many candidates slip through your fingers. I doubt Google's Hire service would help me much on that.
Or you can do what most people do and just offer 30% above market, cross your fingers, and see what sticks.