Has anyone ever tried a “make your own interview process” with job applicants? | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone ever tried a “make your own interview process” with job applicants?

2 pointsbaron8165 comments

I think it would be really interesting if companies would have a completely open ended interview process. Just have candidates come in for 1-3 hours and tell them to impress you. Let them show off projects, talk about interesting CS and programming concepts, live code, or whatever they want. Make them really sell you on why they should be hired. It couldn't be any worse than asking them to whiteboard contrived algorithms that have nothing to do with what they're really going to be doing.

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It could be a lot worse.

Interviews are trying to answer the question, "Is this person someone I want to do this job?"

Is the job going to be writing out code on a whiteboard in front of people? No, so don't do that.

Is the job going to be free-form impressing people with programming? No, so don't do that either.

The best interview is having someone work for you on a contract basis for a few weeks or a month. It lets you assess the person's fit, and it also doesn't put them in a position of having to do work (like homework) for you for free.

But how do you decide who does the contract week?

Also now you are constrained to considering only people able to work for you for a week, so presumably not employed now.

Also you are further limited to those people who didn't take another job from a quicker employer whilst you are dithering around organizing and running week long trials.

The best-case scenario is several weeks of work. If someone can't spare that much time, you could ask them to do a weekend-long project or just complete a few small tasks over the course of a few weeks.

If someone takes a job from a quicker employer and they prefer your company, they'll let you know. Fit is important, and it goes both ways. If someone chooses another employer, they probably wouldn't have been happy at your company anyway.

>>>If someone chooses another employer, they probably wouldn't have been happy at your company anyway.

That's not true, that's simply how slow companies rationalize being slow, so they can feel good about it.

Discriminatory against those with social anxiety, awkwardness, or who simply cannot sell.

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