Ask HN: What is the worst part of interviewing? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is the worst part of interviewing?

16 pointsgraphememes31 comments

I've done 15 interviews this past month. I have 3 offers, and 7 are still ongoing.

The worst part for me, is when you are rejected and aren't given a reason as to why. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Especially when it appears things are going well or you dedicate an entire day at their company doing an interview.

Time and expectation management. 45-60 mins is very limited time. What does the interviewer really want in 45 mins?

- Thought process/multiple solutions/tradeoffs (at the expense of writing awesome code in time and talking about what I am really good at)

- Great code and correct syntax (at the expense of tradeoff discussions and talking about what I'm really good at)

- Talking about what I am really good at (at the expense of tradeoff discussions and beautiful code)

It's really hard to gauge what the interviewer expects. Sometimes, even when they say what they are looking for, it's not really true and they are deluding themselves. Eg: Claiming that they want to see how I think, but reality is, without an optimal solution with good code, they'll just reject me (despite having given multiple answers, tradeoffs etc.)

There is so much truth to this. I interviewed recently with a company I really liked, and had this exact experience. The deciding factor came down to how I approached a specific problem they gave me. The challenge was, I was solving the problem while answering and asking questions, dealing with interruptions, and making sacrifices to code quality due to time constraints.

Super frustrating.

Welcome to the job market... It's been like that forever. Are you in the Bay Area? It's worse here companies really don't give a crap and right now, there are a zillion candidates on the market. If you apply via linkedin, you can see how many candidates applied to a position. I see something like 500 people for a single position at a unicorn startup. I can't even imaging the Google's, etc.. we're probably talking about thousands of candidates per position. So I'd feel lucky if I were you that they brought you onsite.

Job hunting and car shopping are very similar. It's all about smiling during the sale, then if you don't buy rudeness takes over. They're already onto the next customer. It's business my friend... just get over it and move on, there are a lot of opportunities out there and the hiring process is extremely subjective. I got rejected at round one from tiny startups while working my but off and landing jobs at the best companies in our field. So, don't get married to a company. They're hurting themselves by acting like that...

What's the alternative? Maybe starting a startup your friends.

At this point it appears being a CTO is actually an easier and more viable option for me, I have many offers to be a CTO.

For me it has to be lack of feedback / radio silence. I've applied to places, done the interviews, gotten good feedback, and then communication flatlines for months.

How do you expect employers to start giving feedback?

Getting back to candidates within 48 hours with either next steps or ending the process.

You misunderstood what I wrote: why would employers give feedback?

You did write "how" instead of "why":) Anyway, giving feedback about whether a candidate is still under consideration or not is, simply put, the right thing to do, and I think that's reason enough.

Setting aside any moral arguments, it does benefit the company's bottom line too - hiring talented people is an important thing for companies, so it deserves to have some attention paid to the flow from beginning to end.

My operating theory is that companies fail to provide prompt feedback not for any other reason other than apathy or a lack of attention to creating a good process, and not from some strategic deliberation around keeping options open. So failing to provide the feedback is a sign that the company is not putting the proper attention to the overall hiring process.

> I think that's reason enough.

That's not what companies think.

And a candidate that thinks of applying to a position knows nothing about the company's willingness to give feedback.

Candidates can learn about hiring processes before applying, like with talking with friends or sites like glassdoor.

How the hiring process functions is a factor in where I choose to apply. For example Google has a bad rep on this - supposedly it frequently takes months for them to make a decision. As a result I'd never consider applying there.

The shear amount of dumb coding challenges.

I interviewed with a company recently where, after sending links to extensive amounts of open-source code, was asked to three different take-home-style tests of things like calculate the fewest number of steps to sort these things but you have to follow these arbitrary rules, then during the interview they also wanted to do some tests about implementing low level lanugauge/library type features while they're on the other end of a hangout going "ahh", "ooop", "ehhhh", "sssssshhh" every time you make a typo.

I find 12 hour exploding offers pretty annoying and disrespectful.

Or the place that refused to give me a written offer until I agreed verbally.

Yeah. Changing employment is one of the more important decisions in life, there should be a compulsory waiting period.

These type of companies will never have any good/bright future.

100% in agreement. Red flags, run.

Random stupid algorithm questions from CS 101...

If you think I'm going to reinvent mergesort as part of my job for this company you are utterly mistaken and do not even understand what job you're interviewing me for.

Having to go on-site more than once. It ends up taking a huge toll.

Had to do this for one interview, had to decline, still got an offer but was a risk.

The inability of the interviewers to have an accurate idea of the candidate's ability after the interview is over is what I think is the worst thing about interviews.

It's especially bad when you have to jump through hoops (coding challenges or whatever) and afterwards, despite the effort, end up with a similarly uninformed opinion of the candidate's ability.

I particularly dislike having to make time for on-site interviews (which often requires lying at your current employer) and technical interviewers that fall for HR-esque questions like "From 0 to 10, how do you rate your skills in Django?"

I ask those questions, but that's because I'm trying determine the candidate's ability to self-evaluate.

I like to ask them what they think their skill level is with something I'm familiar with, then throw a few questions at them to figure out where I feel like they are. This is especially important when I'm trying to get someone on-board with a skill set my team doesn't have but we really needs some help in.

> you are rejected and aren't given a reason

worse is when you are not even told you were rejected. i consider it a most profound disrespect, specially after all the time and effort you've put

How about when you're told you pass and moving on to the next round, then never contacted again?

Or invited to an on-site at a specific time, then no one answers you, and there's no actual interview when you get to their location?

Or passing the interview process, them telling X salary was OK, then when it comes to the actual offer, they offer X/2 salary?

Had something similar happen to me and this recruiter will forever be on my blacklist.

I was referred to a company in SF. Received a phone screen from the recruiter and from the start it seemed like she was disinterested. Instead of just ending it early she said she will reach back and set up a technical phone interview with one of the engineers. I looked on glassdoor and it seems that the other candidates got the same experience I received.

If I was sourced through an internal referral and my resume still doesn't meet your company's expectations, please just go ahead and reject me. Don't waste my time. Salesforce and Uber rejected me after an internal referral and I respect 100% them for not wasting my time.

Not sending rejections after an internal referral seems to be a common theme. I personally still have about 8 open applications in Amazon's system after getting referred by an AWS architect. I'm guessing HR doesn't pay attention, and it's up to a team to become interested in me or kind enough to send a rejection.

The worst part for me is getting the time off work. I have limited days off so taking a day off to go interview is less than ideal, especially if I don't get the job.

Alrighty, let's try this again.

I'm thinking of writing a website that requires the employer to give feedback. Else the site will list the bad employers.

Or it requires the employer to pay upfront per candidate who applies, and they employer gets a full refund if they give full feedback.

If I were HR I'd be running away from this, because of liability, which is probably why employers don't give feedback at interviews. So the site will require candidates to sign away their rights of of suing the employer over the interview process.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13536957

What'd y'all think?

why would an employer ever sign up? sign up and non-0% chance of being on the bad list and end up spending some $. don't sign up and have a 0% chance of making the bad list and spend $0.

Because feedback is something candidates want. A site that had all candidates on it is where employers would go.

Do you see other ways of getting feedback?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com