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Comment by fiachamp | Hacker News Reader

We've found a good middle ground. Giving the candidate a few days to do a test project that involves fixing a bug on the production site. Its something they can do at night after work, gets them resolving a real-life problem, seeing how fast they figure out the codebase.

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Really good candidates will have multiple offers and given equal choices of companies, will choose those which make them not run through hoops.

In demand DevOps candidate here. I had multiple six figure offers from companies, and still picked the job that required a 4-6 hour project I completed over 2 weeks in the evenings (that I was paid for).

Provide the right work environment and perks, and people will "jump through hoops" if they think its worth it.

This.

At the end of the day, what job/pay/perks do you want?

If jobs require you to jump through some hoops, then they will be jumped through - within reason.

So if two companies gave similar perks but one required you to jump through hoops, which one do you think a majority would consider?

The job with the best team. Generally, the job where you have to jump through hoop will have a team who has jumped through those hoops as well. It's all about vetting.

Which is only meaningful if the vetting is for the sort of skills one actually uses day to day.

I don't know, if a company asks me to complete a simple test application, I might be more inclined to talk with them, because it means my interview (ostensibly) would be about the code I'd submitted. Which in turn is much more like what a day in the life of a developer would be like at their company (I write code, review with team lead, repeat, or somesuch).

I think really good candidates will enjoy working on relevant issues and not working on silly interview questions. If anything these "hoops" seem like exactly the filter you'd want. You want people who enjoy jumping through those hoops every day after all.

The key is to give this in liu of a 6 hour panel of interviews. So your project should be 4hrs max. And don't add in vague time waster 'bonus points' for doing more details.

Kind of sounds like a sleazy way to get free labour. Unless these are made-up bugs or you are paying these candidates.

Free consulting? No thanks. Paid gig? Well that'll make my taxes complicated. No thanks.

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