The following information will be collected during the duration of the exam:
Your microphone
Your webcam
Your physical location
Your head movements
Your eye movements
Your mouth movements
These companies are typically used in settings where some level of rigor is expected (e.g. administering an exam for an accredited university). In that context, I think these restrictions make sense in order to ensure some degree of validity in the test results (especially since you're only expected to run the software for the duration of the test).
Why not do an onsite if you want to make sure of the validity?
Perhaps most critically, it is a more subtle test for the prospective employee-- are you the kind of person who would comply with a ridiculous request that violates your privacy in the hopes that it will land you a job?
I dunno. If I were an employer and an applicant actually installed this without question, it would make me seriously reluctant to hire them-- this is the sort of unquestioning, docile employee who could be more vulnerable to social engineering,who would not be likely to consider consequences of their actions, who does not take security, privacy, and safety as a priority for even themselves (and is therefore less likely to do so for customers and clients).
These may not be qualities that some companies value, but from my perspective, I think the "nope" letter to Amazon shows strength in independent thinking, creativity, and moral character.
It's like those companies that required you to hand over your social media passwords so HR could dig through your history.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/job-seekers-getting-asked-fac...
That is horrifying. If Amazon doesn't hire you because of this, it says quite a bit about their company, fuck 'em. Their loss. There are companies out there that actually respect their employees.
Congratulations. You passed the test.
Asking this of you, before you're even working for them is presumptive and not a good sign that this is a place you're going to want to be. It's basically a huge flashing "We Fuck Our Employees!" right there on your job application.
This is also the company that requires warehouse workers to queue for bag searches on unpaid time.
Without the secrecy aspect, I don't think you can say it's spying by the definition people typically use. If you went to an examination hall and took a real proctored exam [1], would you consider that the proctor was "spying" on you?
> Moreover, it is invasive and unsettling.
This, I can't argue with. It's hard to pin a definition on what makes things creepy or unsettling. Some people find clowns creepy. Why? I have no idea. But there's no sense in arguing about it.
Personally, I think it's a clever use of technology to streamline and scale a traditional process (exam proctoring) that avoids making you travel to an exam hall or interview.
I mean it in the sense of "I went on a blind date, but my parents sat at the adjacent booth to spy on me". I knew they were there, but it was inappropriate invasion of privacy.
> If you went to an examination hall and took a real proctored exam [1], would you consider that the proctor was "spying" on you?
If I was taking the exam on a personal laptop and was handed mysterious software at the examination hall to install on my machine... (along with images of the inside of my home), then yeah...
Convenience and logistics. Is it worth yours (or Amazon's) time to pay for travel expenses, when applicants could literally be located anywhere? Evidently not, at least not in the early stages of the process.
That's a very long-winded way to describe a prescreening questionnaire. Are you saying that you think no one should ever take a job if there's a prescreening process?
Imagine you're hiring someone to do your taxes. Sure, you'd expect them to use a calculator to do all the hard addition/subtraction, or more likely spreadsheets. But if you asked them to add 5 and 3, and they said "I would use a calculator, this is a stupid question, I can't just tell you off the top of my head" then you're probably not going to hire them.
It's a super basic test of 'Can this person code themselves out a paper bag."
being able to solve problems is more important than how you solve problems. (generally speaking, yes i know there are exceptions)
When I was last in school I struggled with "networking your way into a company" and wound up landing my internship (and ultimately full employment) on the one company who offered a test before the "Fly you out to meet us" step.
I think I'd only consider doing this if I used a computer I could wipe completely before and after. Even then the amount of distrust is off-putting.
I can understand why ProctorU does what it does, but that process puts a significant burden on the test taker, one which is entirely different than taking a proctored exam in a classroom.
I sat about a dozen university exams in the last couple of years and in no instance did I have someone staring at my face, or peeking over my shoulder, during them. There were always supervisors in the theater, but they mostly walked along the aisles of desks and made sure to be unobtrusive and quiet as a mouse.
I really don't see any justification for what you describe.
I connected with a Lady via cam and she asked me to show via cam in a 360 style if I had anything else in the room I was in (books, someone helping,etc).
Took the exam after that and passed it. It is a bit unusual but very very convinient. If I had to take the exam physically somewhere I would have needed to take a day off.
In the case you describe you have to be physically present at a fixed location at a fixed time. In many cases that might be inconvenient or impossible, and I can certainly see situations where it'd be nice to have an alternative. Not having to have my physical location coincide with the physical location of my university of choice could be quite handy.
I can't imagine why...? That would be like seeing a freeway and instantly thinking of the Nazis.
It's not exactly that far fetched to think that someone might someday think it's a good idea to start applying some of those new AI APIs to the candidate interview videos just to see what happens. In fact given enough time and enough departments/companies, it frankly seems more likely than not.
Especially given that we already have AI scouring GitHub looking for people to recruit. Assuming it's not already happening, it seems unlikely that there won't be startups applying AI to hiring interview videos within the next couple years.
That's a pretty serious accusation, one that could spark a lot of successful lawsuits against those companies -- especially in the current political climate in the states they tend to be located in. Do you have any specific evidence to back it up?
C.f. what Malcom Gladwell has to say about this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLQC3EzDGr4
Okay, then. Good luck with the lawsuits.
Using GPA as a screening measure when members of a racial demographic routinely preform more poorly due to socioeconomic factors, it starts to look more like a proxy for race.
In the news right now: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/new-program-decides-crimina...
If Amazon has chosen to use use Proctorio, with an understanding of how it operates, then it's very much Amazon's restrictions.
And if they don't "understand" their constraints (or pretend not to)... why would you want to work for them?
I'd just take it naked. I'm a fat hairy guy. I'm sure it'll be fun for all of us.
Any website you visit
What a fantastic way of driving away virtually every candidate that's even remotely high-caliber.
These conditions only apply for the 24 minutes in which you take the test. How is this different than if a person were watching you during an interview?
Using such a system in the first place also signals their ineptitude at hiring, or at least an ignorance of quality hiring practices.
>What are you going to do, take a break and load up some porn?
Well, yes:
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/669103856106668033/UF3c... [NSFW]
Paid homework projects are far superior. Plagiarism checks can be run on the provided solutions, and a follow-up conversation concerning the project at the interview should easily suss out anyone who had a third party to do it for them.
That approach also has the advantage of actually being a relevant to the position—unlike some generalized intelligence test.
Frankly if people are putting up with the test they have now, Amazon could probably get away with issuing unpaid homework projects, however classless that would be.
This will lead to hiring people who can be coached until they sort of understand a solution, although they still couldn't create it.
Every non-perfect solution is worthless?
I've found that the answer to all this is to give a 30-60m remote test (no proctoring), where they get to write the thing as they want, and a 15m discussion where you analyze their solution and assign one new feature then let them walk you through the changes. No code, no whiteboard, just discussion.
A lot of people can't whiteboard code from scratch but can take a piece of code they've just written and discuss next steps. And it's also an actual work skill that many good coders are bad at, so it gives you a good insight into high and low-level people.
If they're collecting this much data already, how much of a stretch do you think it is to obtain your browser history?
It's different because they're recording you, not to mention they're doing it by installing spyware on your computer. That's not what a person does when they watch you, unless they're watching you through a camera.
Although in this extreme case it does sound like checking stackoverflow is considered cheating.
This is hardly a new concept: exams work pretty much the same way. There are other ways to assess candidates (like looking at their portfolios), but they have their own weaknesses, and testing skills in a constrained environment can still reveal things.
[1] And this is for the benefit of both parties: I've lost count of how many people I've heard complain about companies that have gauntlets of technical interviews.
This is the core problem with tech hiring circa 2016. The sooner this idea dies, the better. It's surprising that more companies haven't noticed the most effective interviews are ones that resemble the company's day-to-day work as closely as possible.
(Disclaimer: I completed an internship at Amazon and accepted a second internship)
It's kind of like when you notice someone staring at you in the subway -- you note to yourself that it's creepy (which it is), and you move on.
"Secure Exam Proctor Exam Environment: You can generally utilize the Secure Exam Proctor for taking a proctored examination without revealing any Personally Identifiable Information about yourself. The types of information collected depend on the exam settings and can include video, audio, desktop recording, and websites visited. The aforementioned data is encrypted and will not be used by Proctorio in anyway. This information may be used by "Authorized School Officials" to review the actions of Students during exam administration. Proctorio may collect additional information set forth below in the "Aggregate Information" and anonymous information. Aggregate and anonymous information will be used to improve the quality of the Secure Exam Service. Note: Proctorio utilizes zero-knowledge encryption to keep your information safe."
They’d be completely fooled.
It’s completely useless, and so needlessly invasive.
That’s why you install the system below the desk, and use it that way.
Holy hell, did I miss that or wasn't it mentioned? This might even be the most invasive of all.
If you stick a magnet to your tongue, and move it around, a modern phone can recognize that even from below the desk.
So if you had a tongue piercing, and magnetic jewelry for that, you could use that as a crude input device that’s invisible.
Also at an in-person interview, the interviewee has a symmetrical power relationship to the interviewer in that they can both observe on another. This practice slides the power relationship heavily toward the interviewer.
Furthermore, at an in-person interview, the information is not analyzed in an unspecified manner which further skews the power balance toward the large corporation.
Finally, at an in-person interview, the information is not digitally stored at an unspecified location for an unspecified time and transmitted to unspecified parties. Nor is it subject to unauthorized access by unspecified parties in unspecified countries due to unspecified security arrangements.
I will probably never be in a situation that comes close to the staggering power asymmetry of someone deciding whether or not I will have a job. Even if I'm charged with a crime the court has less power over me than an interviewer, in that its decisions are subject to juries and appeals and I get to watch the proceedings.
The information is analyzed unscientifically according to the personal biases and tastes of the interviewer to form an emotional impression he may not even be conscious of. "Not enough eye contact, I don't like this guy." I'd much rather it be judged by an algorithm trained on actual job performance years in.
Ever heard of Greenhouse? Your interview performance (as reported by the interviewer) is absolutely stored indefinitely in some 3rd party's database subject to unspecified controls.
Amazon has piloted a program to make offers solely on the basis of the test, not just to put a gate in front of the onsite. They should be making it at least as resilient to fraud as an onsite, which is why I think these measures are appropriate.
It's not so much the recording of these metrics that I'd be worried about, but them storing it to build profiles. Different story.
These particular metrics are now quite common for online exam systems.
Mind you, these are valid concerns, and anyone should feel free to reject them. But on the other hand it's nice to have a remote option (for certifications, exams, interviews...) and at the same time a cheat-prevention system.
You'd be creeped out by the stories I have of freelancers or even consulting companies having some "star" employees doing interviews and then other employees showing up at work instead (remotely or even physically). Once you've been burned by stuff like that, you understand they take precautions.
In OPs position, I'd ask for the storage and retention terms and conditions though.
They just want you to be able to take a test remotely without cheaters.
If this were a regular website, sure, but it's for a specific reason, during a specific event, that ultimately you are participating in.
If you were to go and 'take an exam' on Amazon campus - they'd be doing the same thing - but a human proctor would be looking for the same things :)
I think the contextualization of it (i.e. it's 'your home') definitely seems 'creepy' - but I don't think it's a cause for concern - there's a reason they are doing it, it's not nefarious, they are open about it.
Again - it may feel a little creep-show because we're not used to this, or rather, in any other situation it would be truly creepy ... but I don't think there is cause for concern here.
I also think that the logical questions are not unreasonable.
i have no problem with a candidate doing something totally by themself in part 2 of 5 before in in person interview; theres still another 3 different interviews (many of which will be in person) to catch cheating and such
it's just a filter; it's not the interview