Any hiring managers here? I was hoping to get a discussion going about your current hiring process: https://serverless-stack.slack.com/archives/C02AL5WSEFK/p1648736605635759

as a developer myself and someone who has hired devs: take-home assignments and live coding challenges are far from great. live coding challenges put too much pressure on them, and take-home assignments are disrespectful of their time. go through a couple of rounds of interviews and if they feel right, hire them on a probationary basis, paying them full rate, with the understanding that after 1 week (or whatever you determine), it’ll be reviewed to see whether they’re hired. this gives them a chance to work on real stuff, and see how they mesh with the team. worst case, they’re not a good fit, you’ve spent $2400, they’ve done some work for you & got paid for it.

The only issue with using probationary period as a form of "interview" is that often, someone will be leaving a job to join you. Its a big risk for them to take if after a week it turns out they don't actually fit your requirements. While I agree, take home assignments are disrespectful of their time, for us its probably the least worst option.

Yeah, in that case I would do a brief test

I'm of the same mindset as Sam here. I've seen people get live assignments of eg. designing "Game of life" from scratch and I've been on the receiving end of a 4-5h long "take home" tasks. Neither felt great (especially the latter one with a <1yo) Hiring now I try to run a couple of tech rounds, starting with open topics and getting the feel of a person (how they tackle certain problems, do they ask questions themselves etc) and gradually increasing the difficulty. Allows both parties to get acquainted enough not to push the stress levels too high.

@Lukasz K whats the format of the tech rounds? What do they entail? (Our hiring process is definitely not great so would also love to see what other people are doing)

This is what we do. Ours is two weeks.

go through a couple of rounds of interviews and if they feel right, hire them on a probationary basis, paying them full rate, with the understanding that after 1 week (or whatever you determine), it'll be reviewed to see whether they're hired.

As a developer, I politely refuse most coding challenges. I’m happy to do some pairing on a problem, code walk throughs… whatever. But if I get a some question about how to do a sort or something, I just leave the interview process. I’m a Senior Front End engineer. I have easily 25 recruitment emails in my inbox each month. Want to talk code, I’m all in. Give me a meaningless puzzle and I’ll just decline your process. Currently the market favors the talent and not the company and I expect to be treated that way as a candidate. _Side note_: for the 3 jobs I’ve been interested in, one declined, one I declined, and another I expect to offer Monday and I’ll decline if they do

Ah yeah, pair programming is a great idea

It depends the level of the position. For Senior positions, generally, it easy easy to see the level of the person for the position by simply going trough discussions and global problem solving. For us what matters essentially is the corporate fit and to see the skills when it comes to explaining a problem to a team or to someone else. People that are selfaware of what we are doing and how to solve a problem are more difficult to find than someone that could solve a problem in front of you under pressure or during a homework. We had quite a few of false positives. Then there is the “vibe” of the person. If we don’t feel it, then we stop the process. Showing the salary from the get go really filters out a lot of people. We taught that showing the salary from the beginning would attract junior people trying to get a quick buck but actually it is quite the opposite. The hire the salary and the less junior candidates we have. When it comes to Junior positions - this is another story. We had code interviews that went awesome but the person was not really good within a team. Then we had homework that was crazy good but that person ends up being very bad when it goes out of “what they can do” with big difficulties in figuring out very basic things. We generally delegate that to the team that will work with the person and we make it clear from the beginning that there is a 3 months trial period in which we asses every month how the person is doing and as soon as we realise it won’t be a good fit, we stop the trial period and let them the remaining of the time to find a new position There is no formula at the end of the day and good devs are difficult to find. The hire the level the more difficult it is to find a good solution. At some point, not only the salary won’t matter anymore.

How many people do y'all involve in the interview process?

2-3 people max. Whatever you do, don't pass the candidate around to six different people or make them come back for more than 2 rounds of interviews. Apparently it's a trend these days to have someone go through 4+ rounds of interviews which is ridiculous

If a FAANG wants to do that I’m good because the pay is commensurate with the aggravation 🤣.

We have 3 interviews generally: 1. Team lead of the position - 30 - 45 mins - small talk, q/a on the CV / experience / previous positions (= the past) 2. CEO / HR - team fit interview - small talk around a coffee and speaking about the current situation of the company and the person (= present) 3. Team lead of the position - 1h+ were we dig in details about the tech, what we expect from the position, etc, etc

Thats actually a super interesting take. I suppose its probably harder for people to pass step 3 with you guys because they need to be super convincing, but it also probably means you have less bad hires.