Ask HN: (how) do you early reject candidates during onsite interviews?

15 points by epanastasi 13 years ago | 17 comments

I've known two people who were told "we can't find your final interviewer" while doing on-site interviews at Twitter. They were then escorted out and told they'll be in contact soon to follow up. At which point they were rejected. The first time, I thought.. "that's kinda strange", but the second time I heard about it I said to myself - "oh, is that their early reject policy??" I was wondering if anyone have a similar experience?

I know how difficult it is to walk a candidate out early; I've had to do it myself before. I'm curious to know from the rest of HN:

Does your company have an official process for ending onsite interviews early, and under what circumstances (if any) is that okay?

patio11 13 years ago |

I'd be strongly inclined, especially in the current hiring environment, to do whatever else was on the schedule anyway -- finish the interviews, take the candidate to lunch, sell them on the desirability of working at your company, whatever, even if I received obvious signals that it was not a mutual fit.

The rationale is partially "Even if this particular candidate does not end up working for our organization, our treatment of them will be repeated to their friends, who -- since birds of a feather flock together -- likely include other people who we may be interested in hiring."

(And partially it is just that I cannot contort my mind into believing that any serious professional could think that "Our multinational telecommunications company lost your interviwer. Whoops! Happens all the time -- door's on the left, security will see you out" is acceptable outside a Dilbert strip.)

seiji 13 years ago | |

any serious professional

Have you met these bay area social media people?

I applied at twitter a few years ago (a direct referral from ev). The first technical phone interviewer tweeted part of my resume along with a sarcastic comment before the call. He then proceeded to not be very friendly on the phone screen (and called 15 minutes late). A few days later, the second phone interviewer asked half the same questions as the first interviewer.

The recruiting staff was excellent, and the people I met on-site for interviews were great.

"Professional" to the engineering staff seems to mean "I'll do whatever makes me feel good as quickly as possible."

toomuchcoffee 13 years ago | |

our treatment of them will be repeated to their friends, who...

Conversely: the message behind the incredibly popular "bum's rush" technique of flushing sub-optimal candidates seems to be "aww, you sucked so bad, most likely your friends all suck, too -- so we might as well deter them from applying, also."

toomuchcoffee 13 years ago |

"we can't find your final interviewer"

This is clearly disingenuous, and accomplishes nothing other than to to convey a palpable sense of contempt and disregard for the candidate. It's an insult to their intelligence, basically.

typpo 13 years ago | |

This is not an unusual practice. For example, Microsoft has been known for sending people home early for quite some time. In some cases they'll tell you the next guy is out of work today (which is disingenuous), in other cases they'll tell you that you're done and send you home.

Not giving candidates a set schedule of interviews beforehand prevents these awkward lies and interactions. This may be an acceptable level of honesty because rejecting someone on the spot can be very difficult, both for the interviewer and the candidate.

specialist 13 years ago |

It's been a long time (late '90s) since I've seen a formalized (documented) interview process. It helped immensely. We basically treated recruiting like a sales funnel, had a ranking/scoring system, had self-selecting teams, etc.

Since then, seems like everyone's just making it up as they go. Hiring, evals, reqs, QA/test, whatever. The pinnacle of methodology may have sucked, but at least we all pretended to try.

When I interview candidates now, when it's a "no", I chop it off asap. I give precise reasons why, as nicely as possible. It's fair, honest, constructive, and is how I would want to be treat. I also believe in the Roman Evaluation Method, where anything less than a yes by everyone is a no.

Alas, I'm a solo act in a large organization. eg, Another interviewer, even after it's a clear "No" (we compare notes via IM), let's things drag on, always doing the "do you have any questions for us?" bit, and then wraps up with a "our people will contact you..."

andrewcooke 13 years ago | |

if i were the candidate, i think i'd prefer this. it saves my time and it sounds like you are reasonably courteous and give some kind of feedback, which is more than i would get otherwise.

in the past, when i've been the interviewer, i've "kept going to the end". i've not interviewed people recently, but if that changes in the future i will try this approach.

(vaguely related - thinking back, at least twice, as the candidate, i've volunteered myself as not suitable for the job. one resulted in an early exit; the other limped awkwardly on.)

codegeek 13 years ago |

Whenever we participate in on-site interviews, candidates have been vetted enough through phone interviews that you should hardly have to face a very bad candidate that you want to reject right away on-site. However, even if that is the case, the perception of a bad candidate could vary from interviewer to interviewer. If I was personally called for an on-site interview and rejected early just on the basis of couple of interviewers, I would be upset at that moment but probably be glad later. Interviewing should be collaborative and if you have scheduled a candidate to come on-site, the least you can do is to give him/her the chance to speak to everyone who is supposed to interview and then decide. Otherwise, it reflects bad on your culture. Just my personal opinion.

jfb 13 years ago | |

This. A few times at Apple a real disaster would make it through the phone screen, and there would be a panic about what to do. Usually we just went through with it, but it always seemed to me to be more respectful to the candidate and the interviewing team to just pull the chute as soon as it was obvious.

The real answer of course was to fix the phone screens, but that requires actual energy be put into thinking hard about the hiring process, and the hiring process is deeply, fundamentally unsexy.

toomuchcoffee 13 years ago | | |

Also, many of these "disaster" cases may simply be suffering from an unfortunate, but all too human cases of stage fright, especially if it's their first F2F at a big company like Apple. Some people just freeze up involuntarily, and trip all over their tongues when being grilled by people they look up to and respect. They're human beings, not quiz-answering machines, after all.

Not that we need to slow down and make some kind of special accommodation when this happens -- because indeed, such episodes may fairly be viewed as signs of a lack of experience and confidence.

But it still surprises me how often people fail to see the basic humanity at play in these situations: instead of thinking "poor guy, he seemed really nervous", all that comes to mind is "What a loser! He couldn't solve that Euler problem with me staring and grinning impatiently at him the whole time. How did he ever make it through the phone screen?"

toomuchcoffee 13 years ago | | |

Of course you can always abort the on-site interview early. You don't even have to give a reason, necessarily.

But there's no point to giving a transparently dishonest, "the dog at my homework"-style response, like was apparently done at Twitter in the two occasions cited above.

eshvk 13 years ago |

I remember interviewing at a start up where I was repeatedly clearly told through the interview process that if at any point they found me lacking, they would cut short the process. Although, I enjoyed their process (purely from a technical perspective), I definitely had the impression that they were a bunch of dicks and would definitely not recommend them to friends. Having said that, I think theirs was a much more rational policy than telling the candidate they can't find the interviewer which borders on the incredulous.

OllieJones 13 years ago |

Who's the most important person in your software development shop on any given day? The one you're interviewing. This person is, hopefully, your future.

What's the most important part of your job if you're a software developer in a pre-revenue startup? Hiring people who are smarter than you.

If you don't believe that, do your colleagues and investors a favor and quit.

I'm serious.

davidmr 13 years ago |

As I learned to do phone screens, some people made it past me into an onsite interview that really wouldn't have come close to getting a job. After meeting two or three of us, we just told our internal recruiters that they weren't suitable and would just be a waste of everyone's time to hold their interview schedule. The recruiters just come in and end the interview, being relatively noncommittal. It's still after at least three interviews, so it's not like they're being chucked out on their ear after a few minutes.

I felt pretty terrible about it since it was 100% my fault that they wasted their time by coming in, but time is too valuable to throw good after bad...

unreal37 13 years ago |

I never had much problem ending an interview early. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen that after about 10 minutes I know this person had 0% chance of getting hired. They just don't have the technical skills I am looking for, let alone the other skills my bosses would need. I usually talk with them til the 20/25 minute mark and thank them for coming and show them to the door.

They don't need to know that there were other interviewers lined up after. And the others are thankful the "guaranteed no's" don't get to them.