How do you attract the candidates who are good enough to find engaging work while declining ‘audition projects’? Do ‘the best’ really audition to work on message board software?
Work as an independent contractor full-time for a single employer gets complicated in many countries. US isn’t too bad, just the self-employment tax to deal with. Canada disallows most deductions if you get classified as a ‘Personal Service’ business. Germany has some nasty small business taxes. I’ve been working with remote ‘contractors’ for a number of years and it would have been really good if the employer actually provided an accountant or real advice on how to setup and what taxes you would pay (before signing on)
I’m sure for the most part it would be the one sided (the new hire) if the employee was not up to snuff, so would be no loss to the company.
GRU, Russian intelligence agency, used to hire those who score more than 90 but less than 95 confidence rate of interviewers.
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Your example is a bit extreme in comparison to what i was referring, but i do accept your point.
on the contrary, I’ve seen wanted ads that asks for 19 Years of linux experience + 15 years of windows experience, (not concurrent)
and I’m like, I’m not even alive for that long…
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Also humorous are companies asking for, or prospective employees claiming, more years of experience than a technology has been around.
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Not long ago I had an interview with a big gaming company, for a position with one of their development centers in the Seattle area. They gave me a take home assignment where they asked me to automate testing for some public APIs. The request was really simple, but I was so glad to be given a chance to show them some original work, that I went over the top and designed a small scale framework that not only automated the task they asked, but provided a skeleton for future automation and expansion of the test suite by anyone who is familiar with REST API testing.
I ended up not moving forward because I got an amazing offer from an incredible startup in the NetSec space, a space I have been dying to break into since the start of my career, but the process was SO much more enjoyable than being asked to take a HackerRank quiz or code on the spot in coderpad.
I think this idea of saying “Do some original work for us, based on a problem we choose, in your preferred development environment” is a tremendously powerful interview tool that I wish more companies and hiring teams would pursue.
I did NOT mind spending two days on the project, because it was FUN. I know that some coders have issue with this and say its “working for free”, but I personally was delighted to have a chance to show them what I could do, in an environment that was more natural than the classic “code on a whiteboard under intense social pressure” interview tactic.
Just my $0.02.
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I believe that part of the problem is the demand for the very best. So many people only want seniors and aren’t interested in training anybody. For the shops that have nothing but seniors, wtf are you doing? These shops are at the base of the problem because they encourage the less experienced to fabricate their experience level, which then leads to ridiculous screening processes.
I’ve been thinking about this subject a lot, and I honestly think that we need to start paying these candidates for enduring the interview process if we’re going to continue being so picky with our search for Mr. Perfect.
There are also people that are really bad at interviewing others and cause stress levels to rise. The whole process is pretty fucked and a bad experience for the interviewee. High probability of rejection, being interviewed by awkward, perfectionist troglodytes, motivation to over-represent experience level, only to pass them up and waste hours of their time if they might be not perfect.
We really don’t pay enough of a penalty for subjecting candidates to this treatment.
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With at will employment, most employees are little more than contractors. Working for an American company and living in Europe, I still pay unemployment and health insurance, I just do it as a single proprietorship business registered in my home country.
Not to mention that people can learn.
I’d hire someone who wants to be better over someone who thinks that he can’t be better. Every. Single. Time.
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I’ve been to so many interviews through my life that I don’t even believe in “the system” anymore.
A couple times I honestly aced the technical interviews but ultimately been given the boot. I have a scientific background (Genomics/Biology) and I think that’s pretty much the reason why.
I’ve never been given any reason other than “we already filled the position, etc…”, but I’m pretty sure that it is because the guy at HR just wants a literal Computer Engineer degree, either that, or I’m (wrongly) registered somewhere as a criminal.
About four years into this I gave up, I want to think that it will be for the best and I will find my happy ending outside of the industry, but time will tell.
Anyway, I wanted to comment on this post because I’m starting to notice a trend within people of my age (25-30, not many of them but a growing number nonetheless) where people just grow disappointed of the job market and look for other alternatives of living (“freelancing”, be an uber driver, walk some dogs around, go take care of the farm your dad left you, etc…).
I know a guy, for real, that makes a big buck as an iOS developer, that didn’t knew what ssh is, but yeah magna cum laude of course and all that.
I think this is a serious issue that can cause a lot of damage to this field overall in 20-30 years, because, unconsciously there is a strong bias to select flashy but underperforming players. I know guys that have a 10+ page network administration resume, with dozens of certifications and courses attended every year, yet still have trouble explaining what a netmask is. This guy’s incompetence will never be noticeable because he’s got people that work for him and he can just forward the problems to them, and even if they fail as a team, nothing matters because a million dollar endeavor is peanuts for Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc…
You know what happens when you are not one of those big companies? Your startup dies, because you didn’t deliver for real and you didn’t deliver on time. Because turns out that resumes do not write code, and turns out also that bros do not write code. But then you just do a fancy post-mortem page and list any of the reasons that OP posted as the root cause for your failure.
And what happens to these guys after that? They are even wanted MORE, because now they have experience, “Remember pets.com? Remember Secret? Remember Color? I used to work there ;)” Ooooh this guy is more valuable because he obviously had learned from their past mistakes, he must have sooo much valuable information from that previous experience.
Mediocrity does not make a business thrive. I think the majority of the reasons listed by OP’s (that do not have an underlying cause related with funding, maybe) can be explained just by “our team didn’t delivered what we thought they would”. And yet they spent a lot of money and time “recruiting”, doing interviews, creating a “culture” (whatever that means, oh yeah it means we can play videogames during work hours and there’s a creepy guy that comes dressed as Sonic but we don’t say nothing to him and respect him because that is so progressive). The HR system is broken. Curriculums (and other cues they currently identify as valuable) must die as a way to screen people for being capable to fulfill a job.
Disclaimer: I do not hold a grudge against people who like to cosplay as Sonic the Hedgehog, it was a silly example.
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I remember when the iPad came out,
I bought one and was really excited, learned to program on it, and went on a interview for developers to create what was basically a clone of Flipboard.
They listed on their requirements 5 years of iOS(iPhone OS back then) experience, I just went anyway and the interviewer asked me why I was there because I only had like a year or so of experience, my literal answer was “because 5 years ago there wasn’t even an iPhone released” … blank stares … then didn’t got the job.
Later they failed, btw.
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Just a few posts ago you derided those who disagreed about your code of conduct. Are those people excluded from your supposed good hires? Your post (and responses to the user comments) really made me re-evaluate you in a significantly negatively way.
So much this. Yes.
Passion over expriance should be a key part in hiring someone.
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Maybe because most startup failed for multiple reasons at once
The short term contract idea is great if your idea of diversity only includes people who are so financially secure, they can quit whatever their full time gig is and do that, for a shot. Or you pay your contractors really really well.
If you’re looking for women and people of colour, or people with disabilities, or people from under privileged backgrounds, you’re probably stopping them from ever getting a shot.
This is the kind of thing that implicitly favours relatively young, single white guys who didn’t have to borrow to attend university.
I don’t know what the solution is, really, but I really think of you do believe that diversity will improve your product (and there’s a ton of research to back this up), you should be taking a chance on diverse hires, not hoping you find diverse hires whose life circumstances are exactly like the people everyone is predisposed to hire anyway.
I’ve seen and participated in this practice. Here are some of the flaws I’ve witnessed:
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Sometimes you are overworked and under staffed so instead of truly seeking out the best, which requires a thorough investigation, you hire those with the persona of being the best.
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Sometimes, very poor people in the organization influence the hiring practice. Their idea of hiring the best is very distorted. I’ve seen good candidates turned away because mediocre ones preferred by the boss won out.
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Organizations get more political as they grow and become hierarchical. As a result some of the truly great performers do not bother to invest in the interview process and implicitly facilitate mediocre hires.
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I really like the short term contract idea and actually think it could work for anyone who is able to do freelancing work on the Internet. I have no statistics, but I get the feeling that the people on freelancing sites are not financially secure, young, single white guys. Rather the opposite.
I have suggested the “micro term contract” idea to my current employer a few times, but then maybe just half a day or a full day, sitting side by side with someone in the team. Even that short time actually working together with someone will tell you a lot about a person.
We tried it once, when hiring an intern, and that worked out great.
I think the most important thing is to get the person you’re about to hire to relax by removing as much pressure as possible try to create an environment as similar to an ordinary day at work as possible.
This is of course hard to achive if you require a person to work a specific place on Earth, but could work well for remote teams.
I’m actually beginning to feel a little sick about hearing about “bad product market fit” and “no market need” as reasons for failure.
I think it’s often a case about “bad market match”, that is, the startup fails to find the people or companies that actually do need or could benefit from using what you are building or have built.
I don’t know how to resolve this, but one thought that occured to me was that maybe a layer is missing between the company and the user/customer. Some kind of “broker” who understands what is holding a user/customer back and who’s relatively up to date on what is possible to do with tech or already available. Then the broker tries to find a company who can supply this.
Today every company is trying to become an “all service” company with top of the notch tech people, top of the notch sales people, top of the notch marketing people, etc. to actively push what they have built to the market.
I don’t think this is very efficient and probably not even necessary. I might be naive, but I think it would be much nicer to let the initiative come from the customer (via his/her “broker”).
Perhaps a bit similar to a real estate broker? They talk to a lot of people and meet a lot of people who are looking for new homes. They ask people about their needs. Why they want/need a new home, where they would prefer to live and why, how much they are willing to spend, etc.
If the broker could share this information with the “tech community” perhaps the right type of products/services would be built?
Just a thought…
Three ideas:
- Don’t bet a company and peoples’ future on something if it is possible that you got the need or market or whatever wrong. So, that should eliminate most of the causes of startup failure: don’t start up.
- Eventually everyone will be a Contractor, so the whole idea of “hiring” will go away. As well, we can make use of people all over the world (for technical work) like Jeff said. Then it should basically be self-selection to work on a project.
- Very few people can be “the best” and they are not best at many things or for long. So my best advice is to join the real world. Cooperate and help each other, because sooner or later, everyone is going to fail.