Are bay area companies trying to tire candidates into submission?

6 points by venuzr 10 years ago | 11 comments

Are companies trying to tire & hire engineers by forcing them to invest too much time on the recruiting process? Or is it something in the candidate's profile which could be giving them second thoughts.

I recently started a job hunt and there have been 3 companies which I talked to so far.

a) Early stage startup: Interview process: I counted at least 1 homework and presentation, along with 3 separate on-site visits to their office. I declined to pursue.

b) Late stage startup: Had phone screen + 4 hrs of on-site interviews. Was told as I was leaving that there would be another round of interviews. Wish I had known earlier.

c) Established company: After (a) and (b), I asked what was the process before starting. Was told it would be just phone screen and half a day of on-site interviews. Now after finishing that, they want to have 2 more interviews (phone/online) "to meet other team members".

Is this the new normal?

PS : I have several years of relevant experience in the industry and I recently moved to bay area

RogerL 10 years ago |

Yes, this is the new (ab)normal, unfortunately. No one has any evidence whatsoever that all these hoops have any relevance to on the job performance. All we can do is push back. Be clear with HR on what you expect from the interview (I need to interview the company just as much as the company needs to interview me - if you give me 5 minutes to ask questions "at the end" I will not accept your offer). Even then you will walk into ambushes.

I can tell you that being honest about your treatment after the interview will win you no friends - more likely attacks on your character. So pleasant.

Anyway, if you need a job you just have to suck it up. If you have a job, I recommend pointing this out repeatedly - that you are not a supplicant, that your own, tiny measure of them is this interview process, and that if it goes poorly you will not be accepting a job offer even if offered one.

Never saw anything like this on the East coast or in flyover country (1988-2012), yet somehow, just somehow, these companies manage to hire and retain talent just as well as the west coast companies. Everyone ignores that data point, but it is the elephant in the room.

brandonb 10 years ago |

I used to be on the hiring committee at Google, and sometimes we'd ask for extra interviews if the person was very strong, but feedback was mixed in a particular area. For example, if a candidate bombed one algorithms question but performed strongly on an algorithms question from a different interviewer, then we might want a third data point.

That happened for <10% of people -- it was really the exception case.

So I think b) and c) could be that process.

a) sounds like they were just disorganized -- which happens a lot with early stage startups. Takes founders time to learn how to hire well and I don't think any accelerators or VCs are providing interview training to their startups.

lingua_franca 10 years ago | |

I find the interview process at Google/Facebook extremely disturbing for senior devs like author of Homebrew. Nobody can remember how to manipulate binary trees/linked lists/(un)directed graphs after working on real world projects for several years. Why can't you just interview like the rest of the industry? I understand some deadwood might get in this way; just simply fire'em after several months on the job. Netflix is an excellent example in this regard.

alain94040 10 years ago |

Do you really want to join a company after only 3 hours of conversations? Which company you join will have a huge impact on your future. You should do your due diligence as much as the hiring company does. Do I really want to spend the next few years of my life working alongside those people?

When we were a small startup (10-20 people), we'd take candidates who we are making offers to for dinner. It's not quite an interview. It's not quite social. But it gives both sides a little bit extra information.

JSeymourATL 10 years ago | |

> Do you really want to join a company after only 3 hours of conversations?

Right on! The more conversations with individuals in the organization actually works in your favor. You'll be able to compare and contrast priorities, vision, work flows, etc... Getting team buy-in is an important consideration for managers.

If the time commitment is a real issue for you-- share that with them. See if they're amenable to a Skype/phone conversation instead.

zhte415 10 years ago |

The 'meet other team members' may be something they like to do, to get you to like them. Get an attachment to the potential employer. A convincer against other offers.

Multiple interviews are a red flag to me. They don't know what they want. Interview once and get very very deep. This requires a lot of introspective thinking knowing who you actually are, who your organisation is, and what's needed to be successful there. When that's done, a single interview is fine. Multiple interviews are a sign the organisation doesn't know what it is and lacks the substance for action.

As for duration: it could take as long as it takes. But all in one take, no reason for spacing out over multiple days.

brudgers 10 years ago |

The discussion trend around tech hiring seems to be toward careful selection of candidates for employment. This is explicit advice in the orbit of YC with the six months to make the first hire at AirBnB the case study. Not to mention Google is well known for their potentially long recruitment cycle.

It's natural to want a potential employer to be so blown away by the resume that they make an offer on the spot. In the Bay Area, that probably happens to Peter Norvig with a high probability and ordinary ninjas with a lower one.

Good luck.

alt_f4 10 years ago |

You should push back and let them know that you don't have an infinite amount of time to invest in their recruitment process.

For me, personally, a phone interview plus up to a day of on-site interviews would be the maximum I'd be willing to do. If I am asked to come back for more interviews, I will reject that.

MalcolmDiggs 10 years ago |

Lot's of interview seems normal. But the best companies I've interviewed at have figured out ways to condense the process into one day on-site. So you might go in and have 4 or 5 different interviews with different people back to back, but you only had to show up on-site once.

bsg75 10 years ago | |

Multiple offline stages might be acceptable, but it would be a red flag to me if they can't conduct the necessary in-person interviewing in a single day, unless they can communicate the process in advance.

Cases where they can't get everyone together at one time speaks to a lack of coordination.

aprdm 10 years ago |

I am really curious if that's normal in other industries as well. I never did code tests in any place I've worked for as a computer engineer.

A conversation was always enough.