Trial week: Our hiring secret
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sequoiacap.com
I don't know about you guys, but if you're only getting 2 or 3 weeks of vacation a year, I think it's pretty insane to waste up to half of it on testing out a job. You need your vacation days for, you know, vacation, for your long-term mental sanity.
For a candidate who's already employed, that comes across as a completely unreasonable request. I mean, imagine if you interviewed at two companies like this -- you get no vacation that year! Ugh.
But then, I'd respond to that by asking what temp-to-perm is actually buying you, in exchange for the expense of filtering your candidate pool down to people willing to do you a favor in the hottest seller's market for talent in 10 years.
You've built what is by all accounts an excellent team and an enviable workplace, so it is with all possible respect that I say that I'm discouraged that you're employing a temp-to-perm arrangement in your hiring practice --- but if it's working for you, I'm not sure what else I can say.
So many people are frustrated with the traditional interview process, and we think it's pretty broken, too. This trial week is really about being able to assess all the things you can't in an interview.
Also, since a majority of our team is relocating from elsewhere, it's a big decision for them and it's turned out to be very valuable on their end as well.
This wasn't addressed in the original article other than the mention of paying for flights, and this relocation angle is probably a bit more of a factor than you probably expect regarding the willingness of candidates (95%) agreeing to do it.
If someone is moving to a new city, getting a paid trip to visit the city for a week while considering a job is a win. A candidate could even potentially interview off-hours with other companies on their dime, while exploring what the city has to offer and look into housing, schooling, etc.
If this trial week was mostly local candidates, the 95% being willing to sacrifice vacation time would be much more surprising (and potentially more risky, since I'm assuming most candidates aren't telling their current employers that they are doing this).
If these are mostly out-of-area candidates, it's not all that surprising that they would be willing to take a paid week of work and a free trip to see whether relocating makes sense for them.
Most wouldn't accept a position in a new city without getting the chance to look at the city, and what better way than a free trip?
then again, if you have a decent amount of evidence you are competent and not an asshole i would imagine this raises your odds significantly.
66% seems quite low for that kind of arrangement, enough to be discouraged from applying in the first place unless you're currently jobless. I can definitely understand the 90-100% temp-permanent programs though.
The point is, evaluation works both ways. Did they fail your test or did you fail theirs? :)
Nice point of view though, thanks for sharing!
In Netherland, there's a legal 1 month trial period for any new job, but it's extremely rare that someone will be fired in that month.
Unpaid vacation, in my experience, is most often given when a job seeker starts a new position and has travel plans in the first few months. If the hire hasn't accrued their vacation time (and doesn't want to burn it all up right away), an unpaid leave is usually a good option.
What I like about this is it also sells the company on the candidate. They have a full week to convince people they like to stick around.
I know U.S. health insurance is based around the current employer - is that the reason? Or a meager one month of salary, which you can probably offset just by getting offers from more companies which will determine your salary probably for the next 2 years at least - if money is the reason.
Also, what happens if the candidate's contract with their employer says they can't do other work while they're employed there? What happens if the contract says - any IP you create, we own, unless we clear this in advance?
All in all, the trial-week arrangement sounds to me like it's better for all sides, assuming people are willing to first quit, then look for another job. A lot of people end up miserable at their jobs, so why doesn't everyone do it?
It's best to have a job while looking for one, but depending on who you are it won't always be a huge detriment to be unemployed during a search.
Of course, my Scottish relatives think it's completely normal. And I tend to agree. With only 3 weeks of leave, it's really hard to take 2 weeks off in a block. And I find a 2 week vacation is really required to relax and let go of work.
As a freelancer I'm glad I can take as much vacation as I like.
On one hand, companies are loathe to make a hiring decision without running candidates through a meat grinder. Resumes? Those doesn't tell us anything. Code samples? You might not have even written the code and truth be told, we're not going to take the time to look at them anyway. References? Everyone says you're a rockstar, but how do we know you'll be a hit with our team?
On the other hand, prospective candidates who are currently employed often expect offers without doing much of anything. Four-plus hours of interviews? I can't take time out from my job. A real-world coding test of some sort? I could get in trouble with my current employer, and I want to spend time with my family tonight. And by the way, how much are you going to pay me again, because if total comp is less than $xxx,xxx, we should end this conversation before it even gets started.
Don't get me wrong: the cost of a bad hire or career move can be very high, and companies and prospective employees should use common sense (and gut instinct) to filter out relationships that clearly aren't likely to work. But it's insane to believe that every element of risk can be eliminated in these transactions, which is precisely what both sides so frequently seem to be doing.
As a company, if you demand to try before you buy and the word "employee development" is a foreign concept, you're likely to have problems. As a prospective employee, don't expect a company to hand you the goods if you act like you're window shopping.
Maybe I'm a paranoid pessimist, but it seems to me that the worst case is that their employer finds out about this and then fires them because of breach of contract, specifically the non-compete clause. Granted, not everyone is under a non-compete clause, but it's still a risk people should think about. And it's still something Weebly should think about, too, unless they actually completely throw away the work their candidates produced during the trial week.
The use of a "trial week" says to me that the company in question sucks at being able to accurately assess candidates, and is taking the cheap and easy (for them) way out. I know that other companies are capable of doing a good job of interviewing someone in a day or two, why can't these people?
I can't think of any circumstance under which I'd entertain an offer on these terms. I don't think any of the people I've worked with and can recommend would, either. This company is probably losing good people up front; folks who have been around, have experience, and can go elsewhere with less hassle, and so who don't bother to send in a resume.
All told: Meh. I'm not impressed.
The more I think about it, the more I become convinced that this practice can open you up to a tortious interference lawsuit from a former employer of one of your hires.
Keep in mind that, even in the context of non-compete, California isn't the be-all-and-end-all of the subject. It is the state where the prior employment took place that matters. (Usually, choice of law questions can get complicated.)
Exhibit B
CALIFORNIA LABOR CODE 2870 NOTICE:
California Labor Code Section 2870 provides as follows: Any provision in an employment agreement which provides that an employee shall assign, or offer to assign, any of his or her rights in an invention to his or her employer shall not apply to an invention that the employee developed entirely on his or her own time without using the employer’s equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information except for those inventions that either: (1) relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer’s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer; or (2) result from any work performed by the employee for the employer. To the extent a provision in an employment agreement purports to require an employee to assign an invention otherwise excluded from being required to be assigned under California Labor Code Section2870(a), the provision is against the public policy of this state and is unenforceable.
If you were to 'trial' an employee who had signed a copyright assignment agreement with his current employer in a state where such agreements are enforceable, the prior employer would have a colorable argument that it owned any code written during that week.* If the employee had signed an agreement containing an "anti-moonlighting" provision, again in a state where such provisions are enforceable, the prior employer would have a cause of action against the employee for breach of contract and possibly against your company for tortious interference with a contract.
As I say in the sibling comment, I really think you should talk to your lawyer about this, particularly since the policy is now been subject to a fair amount of publicity that a disgruntled ex-employer might reasonably come across. Although I don't like your hiring policy, I have nothing against your company and would hate to read in a few months that you are bogged down in litigation.
*Federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction over copyright actions, but will apply substantive state law in interpreting and applying contracts. Which state's laws can be complicated, but the most likely one is where the employment took place.
Locality aside, non-compete isn't what would get you here.
For most companies, they likely have specific policy in place - that you agree to around taking outside work while still employed by them. It might be they allow it, in which case it's fine. More typical is that you need to get some level of approval for work that doesn't conflict. In some cases they ban it outright, though I suspect the latter isn't particularly enforceable.
Certainly I've been in situations where I've picked up non-conflicting side contracts, and my employer has turned the other cheek because the approval process was tedious. However, that will vary significantly by company, and - legality aside - IMO they would've been within their rights to call me to task for it, because I knowingly agreed to their terms on the matter.
"Employers of salaried employees generally don't need cause to fire employees"
That's only so much handwaving. Yes, they generally can fire you for any reason or none at all. On the other hand, they typically won't. Unless you give them cause by taking an action contrary to the actual terms of employment you agree to. Then they certainly will do so.
I'm not disputing the risk of doing a temp-to-perm project for a prospective new employer. But the operators of these programs would probably retort by saying that they're the last step before confirming that you're giving notice anyways.
I'd view it overall as less of an issue if there were numbers better than 2/3rds (I believe I saw posted elsewhere) proceeding to the offer phase. To me that represents a huge risk: a 33% chance that I'll have done this contract work, lost vacation time, and jeopardized my current employer relationship.
If the number is higher than that, then I'd have to ask if there is really as much benefit as it seems. If the purpose is ultimately to weed out those who just aren't compatible, it seems a 1 day project would suffice.
Despite having very strong domain knowledge in the areas that I interview in, and having had lots of experience - it's unclear to me that my "interviews" do anything other than eliminate those manifestly unqualified for the position, that should have been filtered out during a phone screen by a qualified technical recruiter (or, for that matter, by the candidate themselves after reading through the requirements and comparing them with their own skillset/experience)
Indeed, the only process that I've observed in the last 10 years that really correlates well with the actual outcome of a candidate, is getting a reference, either my own, or someone I trust, from someone who has worked with that person for a significant (1 year+) period of time.
Interviewing is really next to worthless - I think even Google has discovered that, even in their incredibly quantitative process, there really isn't much in the way of correlation with how candidates perform on the job and what the interviewers thought of them. Even worse, there is some evidence to suggest that some candidates who performed poorly on the interviews (but still got hired) ended up performing better on the job.
Negative Correlation!
I think Weebly is on the right track here - but unfortunately the process doesn't scale, and, eventually, they'll end up with too many star candidates who will just pass them up rather than jump through these hoops. These types of candidates already have lots of job offers, and they certainly aren't going to "burn a week of vacation" on the off chance they might get a job.
It's the sort of thing you can do when you have under a couple hundred employees, but starts to fall apart as you grow.
Google's process is not that incredibly quantitative. When I interviewed there everyone I spoke to had seen my resume, for example, if you wanted your process to be quantitative you would want your datapoints to be correlated as little as possible. I think they are doing it more to keep up with appearances (it should look hard, to attract the best candidates and repel the worst ones) than anything scientific. They also copied a lot of their hiring process from Microsoft (and most software houses in SV are just copying from Google).
I couldn't see anyone with a current job willing to do this. Not only does it cost a week of vacation (difficult to justify to a spouse), but how much advance notice can you give your current management?
Edit: Honestly, I wouldn't have agreed to this in college either. A week is long time to dedicate to one potential job offer when other companies have more reasonable expectations. Weebly would have to be offering something really special.
On the college student front, we're trying to make improvements to get better at that. As a small startup, we never made the long-term investment in properly timing the recruiting and interviewing process, but now that we're a bit bigger, we're focusing on it more.
Its much harder to get a worker with family commitments to work long hours/weekends etc
Still, if you were to do such a work-trial program, I can't imagine a better way to do it than this.
Also, older programmers (even those who've declined management by choice) threaten the lie on which the VC-funded world stands, which is that being a subordinate engineer (and getting jack-shit equity) at 22 is a sure path to being an exec at 27, a founder at 31, and an investor (either an angel, meaning "rich", or a VC, meaning "given a soft landing") at 35. The brutal career age-grading comes from a need to exclude those who refute the lie of promised progress.
The logistics of certain hiring practices may be themselves biased in terms of age (or other factors), which is questionably ethical. This trial week seems to discriminate against those who cannot trivially sacrifice vacation time (employees with families, for example). There are others, too; I've heard other founders scheduling interviews with candidates late into the evening or night, even on weekends. With kids to tend to, that would be an incredibly frustrating situation.
Nothing is quite so black and white that these acts are themselves evil, but I do hope companies aren't becoming culturally biased. If you're flexible with your policies, then perhaps you'll do fine. With that said, there's something to be said to sticking to some conventions in the interest of not alienating candidates
Especially when relocating their families, it's actually a positive -- you end up feeling much more comfortable this is a place you will be at for a while before making that commitment.
I am personally willing to do a trial week at a company that I would really like to work for, because I don't like the traditional 1-hour stress-filled interview, and also because it'd let me evaluate the company and co-workers over a period of time. (Many companies are uglier on the inside that they would seem if you go by their web presence, and a few hour interview.)
But I can think of many awesome people I've hired over the hires who have other life commitments and would have passed if we'd used a trial-week policy for hiring.
So it's tricky, but I think you can pull this off if you're an "in demand" company with a good funnel of candidates; you would simply have to live with many excellent candidates passing on your company.
Even if it weren't the case, you're still giving up a significant amount in a form you cannot get back. Paid vacation is not easily come by, and the company is asking the people to work during that time? It is a process biased against those who do not have the luxury of taking a week off on a whim.
The only issue is for those who don't get an offer or don't accept the offer, which is why this is (or should be) reserved for very late in the interview process.
I've seen people that have been great in week 1, showing initiative, energy, insights into the problem, etc. But by week 3, their insights are gone, their initiative has shrank, and their energy is wiped - despite everyone working to support their success.
What I'm saying is, it's easy to put in one great week of work - especially when everything is new, and you're amazing people with the speed at which you pick things up. After 3 - 4 weeks, you'll see the real employee emerge.
For an example, see a poster above who goes on military training at that time, - it likely is more exhausting than any computer job, but perfectly okay anyways.
USA labor laws are messed up!
Are you comfortable precluding such people from applying to your company?
He liked the new job, came back from "vacation", and gave his notice. I don't remember how much notice he gave.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, I guess.
I love it and hope more companies like Sequoia publish useful content for entrepreneurs, whatever the medium -- their own site, or wherever.
Most of the interviews bored me to death. Coming up with a solution for a non-existing problem was a pain. "How many tennis balls would fit into a ..."
Fortunately for the jobs I really wanted I was asked to solve real problems the companies had at that time. It got me excited and I was hired in no time, without any effort or stress.
On the other hand some good developers were not this lucky and they struggled finding a job they actually enjoy. Having a chance to prove themselves is all they need.
"Other commitments" is moot point. A new job is a life-changing event for most of us. The potential of finding a great job where you feel happy every day worth it many times over. (Yes, I do have a family and other commitments.)
Outside of financial compensation, though, I hope that companies that do this are very flexible on the scheduling of the week of work.
I know that it would be difficult to take a week off of work at the wrong time without burning too many bridges. I try to give my company plenty of notice on vacation (months sometimes) so that they can plan ahead for my absence. It's a two way street, since they try and give me plenty notice for when I'm absolutely necessary. Most interview processes I've been through would not have that flexibility.
I share the sentiment that you shouldn't just adopt whatever whizbang hiring scheme you read about. It takes experience to hone in on.
How many people decline the interview process before you've offered them trial week because they are aware that's how you hire?
All in all, from someone with a somewhat legal background this seems like a pretty unsubtle form of age discrimination. It wouldn't be very hard to argue that this actively discourages people with families (aka older people) from applying.
It is also very silly to think that people will now work with no pressure for a week. In fact this like a 5 day interview session. It is more stressful!
Instead, hire people to the best of your knowledge and make sure you have the correct feedback, review loops in place. Hire the best management. Make sure under performers are not allowed to hang around. Those are better things to invest in than this.
I always try to convince companies I'm interviewing with to do a "try-before-you-buy". Of course, it's a lot easier to do the trial week as an employee if you're starting out from a position of being unemployed, rather than taking vacation to do this.
You can get more references by doing freelance projects, but if you have a bad reference, then you need to fix it. Contact me offline (michael.o.church at Google's email service) and I'll explain the decision-tree for that game.
Coming from Sweden it is very common to have a trial 6-months, but then once you're hired its hard to get fired/let go. When I was looking for a job straight out of school I would have preferred a one week trial versus busting my a*# for 6 months straight with the risk of being let go, although this is very rare (you need to mess up big time).
The project people work on is dependent on their role (front-end, back-end, etc). It is meant to be representative of their full-time job and is a standardized project so that we can objectively compare across candidates.
I think the real hiring secret here is more around measuring a candidate's interest in the company, and it seems a main hiring criteria is a willingness to show your dedication and 'loyalty' to the company before being hired. If the candidate wasn't compensated, this is similar to a one week pledging for a fraternity or sorority, where the decision to hire/induct the applicant is verified by their willingness to participate in the process.
Would the company consider hiring anybody that was unable (work contract, family responsibility) or unwilling to go through this process?
Even though the company is paying candidates, taking a week of vacation time to audition is still a significant investment of time. Most candidates in the industry are comfortable with the amount they earn, and many would sacrifice 2% of their salary for an extra week of vacation.
To prove this theory, as a recruiter I've had countless candidates try to negotiate lower salaries or benefits for additional PTO (or unpaid time off). I have had exactly one candidate in my fifteen years that tried to negotiate a higher salary and less PTO. The value of PTO is significant, and if industry pros are that hungry for cash then we should see more of them using their PTO to earn money (of course there are some who will).
In an ideal world, every candidate would have the free time to be able to vet their employer in this way also. Working for a company for a week should help prevent some 'bait and switch' tactics.
If you truly want to test your candidates' dedication and belief in your company before hiring, this is a good method to weed out people who might only be 99% committed. Of course, it eliminates some strong talent as well, and unfortunately I'd suspect that the talent it eliminates in most cases is senior level with families.
Anyway, the fact that it burns a week of vacation means it's going to exclude the passive job seekers, in practice. It's probably a good mechanism for filtering the unlucky/good unemployed from the generally undesirable, but the people who have jobs and might passively look around after ~3 years aren't going to bite.
Companies can be quite inconsiderate with others' time when the job market goes weak. In 2001 and 2008 when the job market was disastrous, there were some banks in NYC that had interview processes sprawling out over 4 full days, followed by a competitive reference check (not just a basic check).
Here's a gnarly ethical question, and just one that comes up. What if you bring someone in for a trial week, he performs well, and then a reference call comes in and it's negative? Do you lie to him and say he performed poorly during the trial week? Or do you tip him off about the bad reference, and risk a detrimental reliance suit (which will cost you 6 figures unless you give the bad reference's name, forcing you to choose between your own pocketbook and your source's interests)?
It's an interesting idea, but I can see it going in a really bad direction.
The cultural things I care about, personally, are the ones that affect how I work. I'm a huge fan of open allocation, as you might know from my other posts. I don't care much about making friends. I'll make a couple, if I'm lucky, and that will happen naturally; but I go to work to work, not to be "cool" or find drinking buddies.
Also, the chummy culture of the VC-darling hot startups is really superficial. These people act like they have deep friendships because it fills a void and makes the 90-hour weeks bearable, but as soon as a person leaves, he's spoken-of as if he were hanged unto death for some unspeakable crime. Just shows how much real friendship there is in the VC-funded world.