One company wanted approached to interview me for the position of a "scientist". Their initial step of the interview process was to spend 4-6h on some "challenge" they designed. I told them, I can't spend 4h of my time on the 1st step where I have no clue what my hiring manager even does! I made a counter to their proposal as all my research projects are publicly available. My counter was similar to your proposition. I asked them to pick any of my research projects and talk about it, I told them I just need a 5 minute heads up. Of course, they didn't take me up on it because they required "commitment from the candidate". I chuckled on the irony in that last phrase. Interview is a 2-way process and it seems a lot of people have bought into some of the kool aid.
back
4 comments
I can share with you one hiring insight I have that goes against your sentiment. I've been hiring for hedge fund research roles for the last three years interviewing ~30 candidates over that period.
What I've learned is that it is a very weak signal to talk to candidate about "their research" unless it's immediately and directly applicable to what we were doing as a company, so that we can talk about it as equal experts, which never really happened in our case. Previous research done by candidate was, like research almost always is in a narrow and specialize niche. Every candidate I was talking to was very good with talking about their research and from my perspective at the time of the interview it was impossible to validate and evaluate their claims. That conversation could convey the character of the candidate but I couldn't evaluate their ability to do new research.
Instead, presenting candidates with the same problem, that in our case took around 3 hours to solve, in our case proved a good way to compare candidates a bit more objectively and test how they approach solving problems they haven't seen before which is more applicable to what they'll be doing on the job.
The downside of that process is that during three hours you can only test so much, but hiring is a really hard thing to do right and we didn't want to take more of candidates time as we did value it highly and found that to be the sweet spot for us.
The upside of asking candidates about their research is it does a good job of verifying what their contribution is in often highly collaborative environments. Too often I've seen candidates who've worked on super exciting stuff, but not actually been the key contributor. This is way more common in junior roles though.
> That conversation could convey the character of the candidate but I couldn't evaluate their ability to do new research.
It all depends on the questions asked to the candidate. You don't ask them about their research which is publicly available in any case. You ask them questions that let them reveal their thought process about their research. Now, it's up to the interviewer to come up with good questions to make this happen. The interviewer has to be well prepared and think about questions. You don't need to be an expert to ask good questions.
I'd like to reiterate that this applies to research/scientific position where pushing the boundaries is a crucial aspect of the job. In case you are looking for a very specific skillset, things may be different.
>>I told them, I can't spend 4h of my time on the 1st step where I have no clue what my hiring manager even does!
You had a lucky escape. I had the same from a company. Which was arguably a 2 full nights worth work if done right.
I took the challenge. Did it, it passed their functional test suite which they provided. Unit test cases, git repo, documentation etc etc all in place.
They came back saying it was not enough. So it's not like if you do the take home project, they let you in.
Also its a tad little irritating to make people work for so long, make them do everything. And even then with perfectly working solution turn them down.
I had one which took a similar effort, passed all their unit tests, then they went into radio silence and after trying to understand what was going on, the only feedback I got was "we were expecting something else".
Further inquires about what was wrong, given that it was working as per specification got zero answers.
For a long time I worked for a company that used a coding test as the first stage of the selection process. We advised candidates not to spend more than about 90 minutes on it, although I'm sure spent more. There was also no time pressure: we had some people take weeks to return the completed test due to exams, holidays, family commitments, or whatever, and it was no big deal.
Anyway, this all seemed perfectly reasonable until I went for a job I'd been approached about by an agency with a similar test at the beginning of the application process. They'd asked me to build a simple calculator and said it should take no more than 2 hours.
No big deal, but it was the weekend before I had 2 hours free where I could do it due to other commitments. Pushy recruiter didn't understand this but, whatever[1]. Should have been a red flag straight away.
Anyway, I put together a working solution with comprehensive tests, send it off to the recruiter and on Monday hear... nothing. That's right: nothing. Gave it a few days, got in touch with the recruiter and still nothing. No, "sorry, it wasn't good enough." No feedback on what might have been wrong with it. Nothing.
I was absolutely incensed. The whole incident gave me a different perspective on pre-interview tests, to the point where I'm no longer really interested in doing them for "unknown" companies. I made an exception to work with an organisation where I had several friends, so was confident that even if I didn't pass I'd get some decent feedback on why.
The most significant effect, however, has been on my own approach to recruitment. At the moment we don't, and I have no plans to introduce, programming homework as a pre-screener. Rather we take a much more personalised approach. We're also in the situation where we get few enough applicants that we can afford to talk to all of them, although this won't scale and will have to change.
Still, it's hopefully uncontroversial that before you invest the 5-6 hours (across 2 people) required for a 2 hour technical interview (in our case an exercise where we work together on a problem), you do need to some sort of pre-screener to weed out the people who really can't code: https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/. I wouldn't say this is 99 out of 100 programmers, nor anything like, but it's certainly the majority. We therefore do a half hour telescreen, which is a fairly informal chat about what the candidate has been working on, what we do, and then - of course - there's a very simple programming task at the end. This takes an investment of roughly 90 minutes on our side (again, 2 people). We're explain the format to candidates in the invitation, which gives them an opportunity to decide whether they want to go through with it or not.
Even if candidates don't pass, and it's usually on the technical task that they fall down, we give them feedback, including pointers to how they can improve their skill level.
(Apologies, this came out much longer than I intended.)
[1] There's some merit to the "well, do you want a new job or not?" mode of thought but not much. E.g., in my current role I advise candidates not to do our technical interview after a full day of work because they're not likely to perform at their best. Obviously not always possible, but it's about ensuring they set themselves up for success: if you dislike your current job enough to be looking for another one don't you want to make sure that when you get an interview you do everything you can to do well in that interview? This is obviously very different to expecting candidates to jump through hoops under time pressure just because "commitment".
Once I wanted to interview for a company that wanted me to implement a FULL chat client, including the full range of auxiliary features, for step one...
>Interview is a 2-way process and it seems a lot of people have bought into some of the kool aid.
What too many people choose to forget or ignore is employment itself (at least in CA) is a 2-way process. The employer is not doing you a favor by employing you, despite how many people have drank the kool-aid to the contrary. You and the company have entered into a mutually beneficial agreement. Unfortunately, many people don't have the means or desire to walk away when an employer veers into "you should be thankful we let you work here" territory.