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Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

If this isn't a counter to the inane recruiting requirements of "5 years with language X" I don't know what is:

We don’t bring them in specifically because the engineer knows Erlang,” Mahdavi said on Monday. “We expect the engineer to come in and spend their first week getting familiar with the language and learning to use the environment. If you hire smart people, they’ll be able to do that.”

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And yet on their Server Software Developer ad [0] they have:

" Experience: - 2+ Years of Erlang Programming"

[0]: https://www.whatsapp.com/join/?dept=software-engineering&id=...

This reminds me of how we have been hiring engineers.

We sit them down for a day with a fairly simple task (build a simple web or mobile app, about three screens with a basic data model) but we make sure to give them a language or framework they are unfamiliar with.

They have Google, Stack Overflow, and other employees to use as a resource. It's a great way to get to know new hires while seeing how resourceful and interested in learning they are.

Every candidate has built the app to spec with a few hours remaining, but it's really good to see those who take the initiative to spend a bit of extra time polishing it and explaining it to us, and responding to our feedback.

Does this interviewing methodology mean that you only hire devs that don't currently have a gig or have vacation days to blow on the possibility of getting a job with you?

We do have an initial hour meeting with candidates just to get to know them and propose the trial if they seem like a possibility.

Wouldn't most people take a day off to interview somewhere? I know I wouldn't be comfortable ducking out for a few hours to interview — it would feel tense and uncomfortable.

Facebook, and I'm sure many other places, do full-day interviews. It's certainly not unusual.

I guess I'm not really thinking this is a hardship on the interviewee, but wondering more if you're implicitly filtering your candidate pool. But you make good points.

> Wouldn't most people take a day off to interview somewhere?

Not always possible. One of the big annoyances when I was working for a company was that if I wanted time off it was two weeks notice. Doesn't work particularly well when the interview invitation tends to be more along the lines of, 'Hi, your interview date is next week.'

Or maybe you have had many life events (births, deaths, etc.) and your employer wasn't very understanding. So you've already burned all your time off and are ready to find an employer who's a better fit.

Sick days?

and do you pay them my day rate is £500 :-)

My thinking is when you require a day of someone, or anything above 2 hours, you pay them. That is whether or not you hire them.

And your employees are cool with being bugged day in and day out by potential hires? I am skeptical this could work for anything but a small shop.

Actually, I think this is a fair way to evaluate new hires. That said, I hope you don't look over their shoulders? I can't tie my shoe laces with someone looking over my shoulders. Or, secretly view their progress? I'm o.k. With reviewing their progress at the end of the day though?

Plus, if you are going to hire in this fashion, why even bother with resumes, or extensive resumes? Just bring people in for a test? If they do well--hire them?

I always felt a test is the fairest way to hire new employees. Tests do away with upperclass privilege(better contacts, padded resumes, etc.) I wish more companies vetted employees in this fashion. It might get rid of something I have always dreaded, and get slightly nauseous when I see the behavior in action--and that is Networking. Sorry, I always thought it was phoney.

I still imagine your company relies heavily on resumes, and uses the test--because they can? Meaning--there's still a lot of desperate software engineers out there; willing to do anything to land a job?

I have been looking for full time openings at the moment and I prefer this kind of hiring practice but it's been rare.

Can you share where you work? :)

This is one of the most interesting interview ideas I've read in a while. I'm sure a lot of people would love a writeup of your experiences with it.

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