Hiring as It Should Be
overseeapp.io
overseeapp.io
I'm very concerned about the "test." Coding tests are unprofessional IMO. They demand one sided value and reduce the candidate pool diversity to only those who are willing to tolerate unfair exchanges/relationships.
What I am gathering from this is that hiring as it should be involves removing the majority of human contact, test for skills, and blast into public digital channels.
There are so many other competitors out there that are actually innovating with DISCOVERY tools not TEST tools.
For example, I received a great coding test from Vertica, a database company. Their test was a 2-hour timed exercise involving improving a ~200 LoC data querying program. This is nicer for the following reasons:
- It doesn't require me to bootcamp with LeetCode because you have a bunch of people out there who train and "overperform" on such coding Qs.
- It's specific enough to the domain but still fairly generic. The test covers techniques covered in a standard intro sequence.
- It's timed, so it doesn't waste time like most take-home assessments.
- It's predictive power of t skiechnical ability is better (my opinion). People like to say that such tests don't test enough for problem solving. However, if you are missing 6 months-1 year worth of domain knowledge, you won't be able to contribute for a while no matter how good your problem solving ability is. An average candidate stays for <<10 years so you want the person who can start contributing sooner even if they have a lower "peak" potential. (Also, I believe generic problem solving is kinda BS. I was good at math and coding contests years ago, but now I would consider myself to be an average interviewer. Even though I'm an good problem-solver for certain systems problems, I don't consider myself one for ML ones or people-heavy problems.)
To summarize, I would love to see better tests than the ones we have now and think there's clear room to improve.
Those recruitment page photos of your ping-pong table and people laughing while eating salad are not helpful in telling me what the other 98% of my day will look like.
Unless I was desperate for work, I would refuse to participate in this type "interview" process as a candidate. Nor would I use it to hire people. There are some things that need a human touch. I want to get to know the people I will be spending a significant amount of my daily time with. I want to give them every possible opportunity to succeed at the interview and I actively try to help them at it.
I just recently finished an interview where the person interviewing me did just that.
He gave me a big hint at solving a problem he asked me to talk through as I was coding. Did I ever feel stupid because when he gave me that hint I realized that anyone at my level should have immediately reached for that method. But for whatever reason, perhaps nerves, it just didn't occur to me at the moment. It was good coding together like that and talking through the code. I got to know a little what it would be like working with him, and he got to understand a little bit about how I think while writing code. I got the job.
Also, you don't need to carefully go through 300+ job applications to find a suitable candidate for a position. If that's part of your hiring process, fix that first.
And while this app might be meant to reduce the cost a company spends on the hiring process, they are doing it at the expense of the person applying for the job who now has to invest more time. Sorry, but I don't want to work for a company that sees me only as an expense and / or as a source of profit. Spend the money to meet me as a human. Want to do an initial phone call for a quick screening to make sure my CV isn't a lie? No problem. But if you want to automate that away to an app, some folks are going to take a pass. And I would suspect the ones taking a pass are the top talent who are in demand and can pick and choose who they get to work for.