Crafting the worst interview process in 8 easy steps
pennyhacks.com
pennyhacks.com
I set up an in-person interview for a java developer position over e-mail. It was rescheduled a few times and I was given the address at last minute. It's the middle of summer, I'm in a suit (as is customary for interviewing on much of the east coast), with no car in a big city -- I had to leave pretty early to take a subway and walk to the place.
When I got there, the manager I was supposed to interview wasn't there. What was there was three guys in a cramped two-room space mostly filled with cardboard boxes, some of them open revealing electronics of some sort and RC cars. Their product was apparently some kind of software for radio controllers sold to the government or something like that, I never got the details. One of those guys pointed me to their 'other office' where I'd likely find the manager. That meant I was now late, through no fault of my own, but running several blocks through the city getting sweaty and flustered.
I was told the office is in the basement at this address... it's a huge old building and the basement looks like a warehouse with some rooms around the periphery. None of it looks like office space, just metal stairways and dim lighting. I eventually do find a door with the company's name on it and knock and inside is a man, in a single chair, behind a single metal desk, with a folder on it. Nothing else in the room -- this is no office. This man is in fact the manager I was meant to interview with, who offers no explanation for why he wasn't at their actual office that I was first sent to... and explains away the current decor as new space in the process of being set up.
I don't even remember the details of the interview at this point. If I wasn't a fresh young student I would've bailed before even getting to that point, but I did at least make the decision that there was no chance at all I'd be working for these people before I left.
I didn't hear back from them either.
-I was contacted by a company that found my resume and decided I was a "great fit" to an opportunity they had. They described a great, technically rewarding position.
-3 phone interviews and approximately 1 month later, I go to the in-person interview.
-HR guy says to me when I get to their offices that the original job is unavailable and asks if I'd like to interview for a much less desirable junior position. Also, by the way, I will be interviewed by completely different people and given different questions.
-Against my better judgement I stay there and go through 3 hours of whiteboard type questions (stuff like "implement atoi" -- I consider this legitimate, but I don't need to do 5 or 6 of them) with 3 sets of 2-4 people. It began at 11 and by the end I was pretty tired. HR guy came in and asked how I was doing around 1, told me it was pizza day (for everybody else), then left me alone for 15 minutes before some more questions.
-They say they'll call within the next 24 hours with an answer. 2 days later I get a call saying that they didn't think I'd be a good fit because I didn't seem enthusiastic. I was not enthusiastic because by the end I did not want the job.
During the same period I got offers from the other companies I applied to and took a job superior to the one available at the evil company. No way am I sitting through that sort of thing again!
I recommend people walk away when this BS happens. It's not worth it.
I assume that they were mostly incompetent rather than evil, but it doesn't matter from the perspective of a company attracting talent.
Many people looking to hire are clueless of this and cannot explain why they have trouble hiring (a guy once simultaneously complained to me that he couldn't find competent programmers and complained that I wouldn't do small, sporadic 3D geometry jobs for $50/hr). I have noticed a common smugness amongst people hiring (despite the fact that many quickly reveal themselves to be of less than stellar technical ability). This is probably a bad attitude in a market where the best talent can quickly get multiple job offers and where not every person hiring is a jerk.
Part of the problem seems to be that many companies get by on hiring cheap workers. In particular they take advantage of students just out of school. That doesn't work very well because it is hard to retain those people, but it appears to be enough to keep many companies afloat.
A recruiter contacted me. She asked if I had 7 years experience with Windows Server 2008.
I proceeded to tell her about my W2k3 and W2k8 experiences.
"I'm sorry, we're looking for someone with 7 years experience, at the very least, with Windows Server 2008."
She expertly disengaged from the conversation and that was that. I tried to explain...
I'm trying not to think about it. I hope this experience doesn't percolate in the back of my subconscious and end up as an aneurysm.
The worst part was, I'm sure they found plenty of people willing to add that line to their resume without hesitation...some of them probably even got hired. Sigh.
Because it takes you past the clueless recruiter and eventually you'll get to talk to someone that has a clue. But as long as the recruiter is the gatekeeper, you have to play by his or her stupid rules.
Perhaps the recruiters are speaking from their own frame of reference and expect people to be experimenting with iOS at near-light speeds. Asking that question would probably be another way to get them to expertly disengage the conversation.
...and then they wonder why they can't hire anyone.
I can't tell you how many companies did shit like this, just not this bad, and I was interviewing for senior level positions. It's huge red flag.
If someone emails you regarding a job, immediately press for details (if there weren't many in the email). I occassionally get emails from idiot recruiters who think that secrecy is the best way to go and won't tell me which companies they are representing but want to get me on the phone 'just for a few minutes' to talk about these amazing opportunities. I usually give them one more chance and email them to explain that its important for me to research potential employers before spending time on any sort of application process and that I would need the company info to go any further. If they don't comply, I blacklist any further communication from them.
Basically, you need to know what a company is all about before wasting any time, once you have at least the name of the company, go to their website, read any reviews you can find from past employees, etc, 'google map' their offices to see if its a dump or if it looks like a viable place of employment. There's no shame in blacklisting communication from people who are wasting your time, I now make it a regular part of sorting through the emails I get regarding 'opportunities'
Multiply the time wasted by 5x and throw in a 10-page proposal, and you have what is called the RFP process. Huge amounts of time wasted in writing, crafting solutions, meetings, and budgeting. And all for no response. At. All. That's what having your own development shop is like.
However.. "are you planning to have kids ?" ... now that is a different matter.
Make candidate do a take-home assignment that requires a day of work.
Luckily, I now have a job when I leave Uni, so don't have to go to another interview for a while. :)
So, knowing that other candidates are also in the pipe, candidates can't expect to be told whether they have got the job until after all of the candidates have been seen. I don't think that this is unreasonable on the company's part.
That said, the company should be able to give you a date for when the decision will be taken, and that date should be less than a day after the last interview, ie as soon as is possible.
You have 6 interviewees. Get them to your office on one day. Find 6 interviewers and 6 rooms. Put each interviewee in each room and rotate the interviewers. Discuss, decide and communicate.
Is it that hard!?!
I'm assuming you've never actually tried to do this. But even so, you could try this experiment for yourself - try and organise an evening out for you and six of your friends. Not any six mind, but start out with a group of six and say "I need all these six and only these six, no-one else will do". Now have a look at how far you have to plan ahead to get all six to be available. If your friends are anything like my friends, you are looking at needing about 2 months warning.
Job interviews are even worse. They last longer. They happen during office hours, when most good candidates already have a job, so candidates are going to need to negotiate time off. Candidates will have holidays planned, for some certain days of the week will just be impossible due to family constraints, or sport constraints, or whatever.