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Comment by taurath | Hacker News Reader

There's a class problem with C2H in almost all companies. Contractors are always seen as less than by management and especially hiring committees. I work at a company that I've been hired thru C2H. Everyone on the team, my manager knew I was one of the strongest programmers on the team. But when it came for my conversion interview I bombed. It was run by 3 of the most senior principles with the lowest acceptance rates and a penchant for "protecting" the company from bad hires. Being told despite amazingly good performance compared to peers you still aren't good enough is a nice little gut punch.

A short time later, I did another conversion interview, got people who were willing to tell me "look, we know you can code" because they had SEEN me code and design systems they were using every day. They still did some interview questions, but lo and behold I didn't feel like jumping out the window every second.

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I would think the idea of C2H is instead of having an intense interview you have a performance review and talk about how you work together. If you still have to pass a high pressure interview attempt to filter you out after working with a team for 3 months there’s no advantage to C2H.

If you /didn't/ have to pass through the same meatgrinder that every other employee did there's a reasonable argument that it could be seen as an opportunity for favoritism. But that sort of ignores that if an interviewer wants an interview to go well (because they feel more empathy for one interviewee over another for instance...) it tends to go better. We like to pretend that "a question is a question" but we're just testing the person's state of mind. I've had interview questions I've answered >10 times and drawn complete blanks because I'm trapped in a tiny room with a person with an inflated title and ego, and their shadow who is intently staring at every movement I make.

Who cares about favoritism vis-à-vis "the meat grinder," if you're just trying to hire good employees?

People who paid a lot of money to get their education and bonafides. Or antifavoritism crusaders that like to tell themselves they can make a biasless interview process.

It's not just that they're looked at as less than, it's that they have to be treated as such. I'm on a sort of "party" committee at my work (I know, I know) and we are explicitly told we have to go out of our way to ensure no one on contract gets invited to the events, receives any of the (shitty) gifts that management hands out etc. My understanding of the rule is pretty bad but I've been told it's because they can potentially make a case in court that they were treated as full employees and deserve the same benefits, protections etc.

Just the idea of a "conversion interview" seems nuts. Interviews are a way (albeit imperfect) for you to gauge the likeliness that a candidate would succeed in a position.

If you've already worked with the candidate, you already know this so there's no point in having an interview.

Interesting. I haven't thought too much about C2H in particular, but it seems like it might just kick the can down the road instead of solving the root problem; The root problem is human nature.

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