Ask HN: Apply to multiple jobs with one technical interview | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Apply to multiple jobs with one technical interview

11 pointsdominikdarnel13 comments

I was wondering:

Why do we have to prove our technical skills multiple times when we developers apply to a role (e.g. Senior React Developer)?

I know there is some variability in what a company needs from a particular developer, but wouldn't that be more efficient for both devs and the companies, if a candidate went through a tech interview once, and presented their score to multiple companies they apply to?

Lots of money and time could be saved for both devs and companies IMHO.

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That sounds like what Triplebyte is trying to do - vet candidates then provide the list to hiring managers. There are other consulting firms doing the same thing. So the idea is valid - it is mostly a question of such a company building enough trust that everyone is willing to work with their candidate list.

Yes it would be more efficient. But we know bad actors would manipulate the process. If i could make a dummy profile, see a question, then create a new profile after having time to prepare i could ace interviews for jobs im not really qualified for. Ive attempted to hire multiple devs over last year that clearly had someone else on a technical interview call so we ended up just cancelling their start date after discussion.

But if company has good relationship with recruiter it works,

I interviewed through a recruiter, company X gave me some questions, answered them correctly, did one or two algo questions correctly. X hiring manager wanted more experience regardless of my decent performance.

Recruiter shared results with company Y, Y hired me and was happy to avoid sitting through an additional 1 hour interview session with me.

A lot of times, there's much more going on in interviews than assessing technical competence. Some of the things interviewers might be looking for include the ability to communicate, ability to translate technical information into something other people can understand, how the candidate reacts under pressure, their thinking process, how they go about solving problems, their composure during the pay/benefit negotiating process, and more. It's incredibly disruptive and expensive to hire a bad candidate and increasingly common to encounter companies with a "no jerks" policy, regardless of how smart someone is.

Logically you should be able to tell if a candidate is technically competent from their resume and referees. But it's blatantly clear that different companies have very different standards around what's considered a "competent" level of coding skills. I'd also say the fact a candidate is prepared to commit the time and mental energy to doing a good job on a test just for a particular company is a pretty good indication of how keen they are.

" if a candidate went through a tech interview once, and presented their score to multiple companies they apply to?"

that is why computer science degrees and universities exist.

And graduates consistently not knowing how to code is why interviews exist.

if you graduate a CS program in europe at a university, or at an ivy league university in the US, the chances of you not knowing how to write software are extremely small.

employment is at will here in the US, so you can be fired at any time. so there is no reason to not hire you based on your degree. companies can request transcripts and see how well you did in your various subjects. AFTER requesting a degree and transcript copy, they can decide to give you a coding interview, or not.

the interview processes today exist primarily to make it difficult for you to get paid fair compensation. they do not exist to weed out incompetent people.

I have made it much easier to rank developers and other job candidates, with Trovinto.com

You can create the interview manuscript you need from just the job ad, then turn that into a questionnaire which can be sent with candidates and submissions are automatically ranked.

i like it.

i been thinking about recording an 'intro video' of sorts - kind of like a VirtualMe that could be used, at least, for recruiters - answer their first ten or fifteen questions - say what i'm looking for, etc. - all in 3 minutes or less.

then _try_ to hand it out selectively maybe? they submit an email, i send a verification link to that email (say, it might have to be at some legit company or agency), then i approve or it's auto-approved for viewing. obv, video can be downloaded/scraped, but...

maybe i'll try it out just to see if i dig it. if nothing else, i might learn something.

Companies in general have very low IQ. Each one thinks they are a special snowflake whose hiring procedure matters. Of course, they are wrong.

Toptal kinda does that for freelancing IIRC

https://www.toptal.com/

Also, imagine bad scores sent to 30 companies? Too much riding on a single test.

because it is a way for the companies to wear you out such that by the time you get to the offer stage you take whatever offer they give you.

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