The State of Hiring

I 100% agree with the problem Alex brings up here. The interviewing process at most companies is broken. The problem is that I don't think his solution works and I am not sure what the solution should be. When you think of the "Google" way of doing interviews (i.e. doing a series of extremely hard whiteboard problems with almost any mistake dooming the interviewer), they no doubt miss out on a lot of qualified candidates. However, how many people that they actually hire are dumb? Not many. I doubt that Google likes the thought of missing out on a candidate that is great, but they are playing the numbers game. It is more important to them that the people they do hire are all great and they have accepted the fact that they will reject a lot of good candidates.

It is true that having a 3 month trial period would alleviate this issue in theory, however, there are two issues. One is that, as Alex points out, you will still end up missing out on a lot of great candidates that don't want to take on the risk of getting canned in 3 months (though you could argue that if someone is really good they wouldn't worry about that). The other issue is that if your requirements are too lax for the 3 month trial, you may end up wasting a lot of time and resources burning through candidates that don't work out. So, you may save yourself time on the front side, but it will cost you on the back side.

Now that I think about it, I do have one potential solution to this problem. Instead of the 3 month trial, how about paying the candidate a 1 week project. The candidate could continue to look for other jobs and doesn't have to worry about explaining a weird 3 month blip on their resume. They are getting paid to do something in between jobs which is always good. And the employer gets to see a more real-world example of what the candidate can do. Sure, this would cost money for the employer, but you would only do it for people that pass a couple rounds of interviews and that cost likely pales in comparison to the time and resources wasted if you bring on dead weight.