My last gig was great in that aspect. My client found my LinkedIn, we had a quick 15 minute call to discuss the project and I was working for them the next day.
Might not work in all cases, but really, if you're trying to sniff out a pretender vs someone who can write software, would not having a heavily technical conversation about details, challenges and other things not make it clearly evident after 15-30-45 minutes if this person is who you need? Rest of the time can be spent napkin designing something or peer programming to check off those to be sure.
I had a interview in 2021 where I had to do a 1.5 hour timed exercise, that apparently isn't sufficient, so their interview pipeline has 3x1hour additional live coding sessions with engineers. Over 4 hours of coding just to prove I can write code up to their standards. Then another 3+ hours of behavioral interviews, meeting the team. Multiply that by the ~5 candidates you interview per position multiplied by each position you hire for in a given year.
In the intervening time, a candidate not quite ticking all the boxes but with motivation and energy could have learned what they needed to and moved whatever the project is forward.
And for me it's clearly a people one.
It can be that the manager don't want to actually hire someone because they have personal interest of using consultants to do the job. Or the manager lack confidence and is looking for a unicorn to avoid making any mistake (probably the most common). Or the manager expectations are disconnected with the job proposal (they want a senior but the salary is for a junior or like said in another comment, they want someone with skills exactly aligned with the tech stack).
Here we have a trial period of at least three months so it's quite easy to get rid of someone if they don't fit but it's rarely used in IT and I don't understand why. And once the trial is over, it's quite hard to get rid of someone. But basically it seems that once your in, if the trial period is used as a quick exit it's mainly by the new employee and not by the company.
I agree. In Switzerland employment law is governed by the code des obligations, or for the parent poster who asked in the first place, Obligationenrecht. There are various notice periods, 1 week in the first 3 months, 1 month for the first year and so on. An employer isn't required to give a reason for dismissing someone either.
I think it is entirely a people issue.
Not all hiring managers and not even all engineers understand that every requirement winnows down the available candidates. Eventually you're left with only the people who are desperate enough to apply despite not meeting half your list of requirements. Those candidates are on average not as strong as the ones you'd get if you just asked for software engineers with any experience in consensus algorithms and listed your tech stack as an FYI.
Went on to join the highest performing team I've ever worked on. I miss the first few years of that job... before the acquisition!
When I was interviewing for both junior and senior positions, my typical tack was to look through their resume and look for something interesting that I have some kind of background knowledge of. Or, alternatively, just ask them "what's the coolest project you've worked on?" From there I'd just let it be a pretty organic conversation where I'd just keep asking for more details until we've either gotten to the bottom of the tech implementation or have gotten to the point where they can say "I don't know, someone else worked on that".
So far I haven't been disappointed with any of the outcomes from that process; there was one where my conclusion was "no hire" and then down the road they were hired anyway... and it turned out pretty much how I figured it would. Good surface technical knowledge with a super scattered implementation.
This is the first question I ask followed by, "What's the worst project you've worked on?" The answers are pretty insightful.
"They made developers write unit tests!!!" vs "There were some personality clashes which unfortunately impacted on the team's ability to collaborate effectively".
I'll happily trade for your rock.
But before that company I had a manager at a very small company who absolutely had no ability to do the work — and would have failed a personality test on top of that.
So I'm inclined to think your 15 minute intuition is nearly enough - the worst people reveal themselves very quickly. And so does the best people. Where a little bit more time might be needed is sometimes in the middle, but it's rare for more conversation to change the initial judgement.
Over nearly 30 years, there have been borderline cases where we might have overpaid someone, and a couple I'd have preferred not to have hired, but who still could deliver, but I don't think we've ended up with anyone who were bad enough to justify these kinds of extensive hiring processes.
I tend to see these complex hiring processes more as tests to determine which candidates are willing to jump through hoops and prove their eagerness and loyalty. E.g. when a FAANG sent me a reading list.... I declined, pointing out that if I needed to study for their interviews they weren't testing my skills, but how desperate I was to work for the. Their recruiters called me back a couple of times to try to convince me again.
I can understand them doing so, because they can, and getting people to who will see it as an achievement to get past these barriers might be worth it to them, but to me it just felt like I didn't want to work in an environment where people were so eager work there that they'd put up with that.
Just gouging their enthusiasm and knowledge of topics they may not necessarily need to be aware of for the job.
At least it seems to bear out so far, and if not, then it means all candidates are just decent and it doesn’t matter whom we hire.
... and then, after wasting thousands of dollars per candidate, many companies opt for RTO policies to "trim fat". Yeah, makes sense if you're an accountant / stock market analyst only focusing on capex vs opex and long-term liabilities (which employment contracts are everywhere but in the US with at-will), but from a holistic viewpoint it's all an utter waste.
Assume 30k of hiring costs related to filling any new position (and that's on the lower end), it makes zero sense to not grant existing employees even 2 grands a year in wage increase... but here we are. Financial games have ruined everything.
That is MUCH too low. Most recruiters are paid 20-30% of first year annual salary as a placement fee.