Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

If you want change, the conversation needs to be about proposing better alternatives for interview formats. Nobody likes interviewing because nobody likes being judged. However, interviews are structured as tests because companies can’t simply hire people based on what they claim on their resume.

It’s not true that programmers are the only profession in which candidates are tested on their knowledge or asked to perform example work. In fact, programming interviews were relatively straightforward compared to some of the trials I’ve seen given when hiring for non-programming roles. In fact, many of my non-programming peers are blown away when I tell them that our interview study material is freely available online and there are multiple free websites that will help you practice for interviews.

> Why is it considered normal for me to have to schedule a 2 hour technical interview in the middle of your current job's workday?

Why would it be abnormal to ask someone to invest 2 hours of their time in an interview? You’re applying for a job that you might hold for the next 3 years or more. Is a part day of interviewing really a dealbreaker? If nothing else, use that time to get a feel for your future coworkers and ask them questions.

It's not one 2 hour interview though, it's usually a 5 stage process if not more

I was quoting your 2 hour claim, but the fact remains: You need to propose better alternatives if you want progress. It’s not enough to simply complain. Companies can’t just not interview candidates or hire people based on whoever claims the most experience on their resume.

My better alternative is to just skip the code test part. You can still have the candidate chat with other engineers which is usually enough to be able to probe and figure if someone knows what they're talking about.

I can learn much more about the technical ability of a candidate by speaking to them about their projects and how they work than by checking whether they know how to implement a binary tree

In fact, I have been pondering over the same controversies over technical interview for quite sometime, and I think the sheer intention of a company on recruitment is to recruit the candidates that fit their requirement/expectation as much as possible.

I have been thinking: are the following approach works better in terms of technical recruitment and interview?

- Say a company wants to recruit .NET Core developer with experience/knowledge in Sql Server.

- In the job scope, as usual, they would put in their expectation / requirements. At the same time, they should put few (but reasonable enough) specially curated training videos (either from YouTube channel, pluralsight, lynda, oreilly, udemy and you name it) by the company on .NET Core and Sql Server that they expect the potential candidates to go through.

- Most of the interview questions should come from those videos. During interview, the interviewer can ask additional questions with its answers won't be directly from the training videos but more to the experience that candidates put in their CV/resume.

With this, those candidates who are really interested in the openings will take the initiative to go through the training videos and equip themselves better for the interview. Those are not prepared, they, themselves are well aware that they most probably won't pass the interview questions which its answers can be obtained from the training videos and most probably they won't even go for the interview too.

This, i guess is the most effective way for both the recruiters as well as the candidates to find their perfect match.

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