Comment by overfeed
12 hours ago
> I'm not even looking very hard but have had 4 interviews in the last month.
How many offers did you receive? Companies have also adopted your strategy: interviewing candidates "to see what's out there" - there's a job I interviewed for that's still open after 10 months.
> Companies have also adopted your strategy: interviewing candidates "to see what's out there" - there's a job I've interviewed for that's still open after 10 months
When I was doing a lot of hiring we wouldn't take the job posting down until we were done hiring people with that title.
It made a couple people furious because they assumed we were going to take the job posting down when we hired someone and then re-post a new listing for the next person.
One guy was even stalking LinkedIn to try to identify who was hired, without realizing that many engineers don't update their LinkedIn. Got some angry e-mails. There are some scary applicants out there.
Some times a specific job opening needs to stay open for a long time to hire the right person, though. I can recall some specific job listings we had open for years because none of the people we interviewed really had the specific experience we needed (though many falsely claimed it in their applications, right until we began asking questions)
> some specific job listings we had open for years
If you need to wait YEARS to hire someone with some specific experience, I can guarantee that you really didn't need that person. You're doing this just to check some specific artificial goal that has little to do with the business.
>If you need to wait YEARS to hire someone with some specific experience, I can guarantee that you really didn't need that person. You're doing this just to check some specific artificial goal that has little to do with the business.
There's a difference between "critically needing" and "would benefit from."
If you can find the specialist who's done what you're doing before at higher scale and help you avoid a lot of pain, it's awesome. If not, you keep on keeping on. But as long as you don't start spending too much on the search for that candidate, it's best to keep the door open.
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> If you need to wait YEARS to hire someone with some specific experience, I can guarantee that you really didn't need that person.
I've worked in specialized fields where it takes YEARS for the right candidate to even start looking for jobs. You need to have the job listings up and ready.
This was extremely true when we were working on things that could not be done remote (literal physical devices that had to be worked on with special equipment in office).
Engineers aren't interchangeable cogs.
> I can guarantee that you really didn't need that person.
So what? There are many roles where we don't "need" someone, but if the right person is out there looking for a job we want to be ready to hire them.
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> If you need to wait YEARS ...
Imagine working on voyager II .. or some old-ass banking software that still runs RPG (look it up, I'll wait), or trying to hire someone to do numerical analysis for the genesis of a format that supercedes IEEE float .. or .. whatever.
There are many applications for extremely specific skillsets out there. Suggesting otherwise is, in my opinion, clearly unwise
Exactly. Hire someone 80-90% there and invest in their training FFS.
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> When I was doing a lot of hiring we wouldn't take the job posting down until we were done hiring people with that title
It's a small engineering org, allegedly head-hunting one principal engineer for the whole org, so it's a single opening. 10 months later they are still hunting for their special snowflake.
> I can recall some specific job listings we had open for years because none of the people we interviewed really had the specific experience we needed
This is exactly what I mean. If you can go for years without filling a role, it's non-essential , and are in effect, "seeing what's out there". More and more companies are getting very picky on mundane roles, such as insisting on past experience in specific industries: "Oh, your extensive experience in low-latency comms is in telecoms? We prefer someone who's worked in TV broadcast, using these niche standards specifically, even though your knowledge is directly transferable. We don't want to waste 5 days on training"
You expect more nonessential roles and slower hiring in a slower growing economy, especially if companies only hire for full-time roles.
For example, your company might need a full-time network admin once its network grows to a certain size and complexity. You won’t hit that level for three years but you’d hire the perfect person now if you found them even though they might be spending a lot of idle time scrolling Hacker News for the first year or two. At 5x the growth rate, you’d need that person within less than a year, and you might be less picky about whether they are coming from a TV or telecom shop.
Honest question. Were these super specialized roles with such specific skill requirements that it took such a long time to find the right person? Looking back, do you think the team would have been better off hiring someone who came close enough, and supporting them to learn on the job?
> Looking back, do you think the team would have been better off hiring someone who came close enough, and supporting them to learn on the job?
More specialized.
If we wanted to train someone, we'd start with an internal candidate who was familiar with the other parts of the job and then train them on this one thing.
Hiring an outsider who doesn't know the subject matter and then teaching them is less efficient and more risky. It was better to have someone in the team learn the new subject as an incremental step and then backfill the simpler work they were doing.
Some academic departments do this... put a job ad every year in case there's a superstar.
I assume that this means you're sending out rejections that include a mention of "we've hired someone else for this role".
If your hiring model is hiring multiple people through one posting, then you will probably get a lot fewer angry ex-candidates being weird (because they think you've lied to them since the posting is still up) by just sending out rejections that don't say that and just get the "we're no longer interested in you for this role" message across.
Nicer/more corporate language for both, of course.
> I assume that this means you're sending out rejections that include a mention of "we've hired someone else for this role".
No, this isn't possible unless you delay rejections letters until you hire someone.
We send letters as soon as the decision is made not to continue with that candidate.
Honestly it would be cruel to string them along any longer.
From applying places recently I'd much rather get these fast. One company sent me them, the rest either reached out or I never heard from them.
What a time to be alive: Companies post roles that don't exist to interview candidates who don't plan to switch.
and waste everyone time
> How many offers did you receive? Companies have also adopted your strategy: interviewing candidates "to see what's out there" - there's a job I interviewed for that's still open after 10 months.
On the hiring side, at least in tech: interviewing really sucks. It's a big time investment from multiple people (HR, technical interviewers, managers, etc).
I'm not saying it's impossible that companies are interviewing for fun, but it seems really unlikely to me anyone would want to do interviews without seriously intending to hire someone.
> On the hiring side, at least in tech: interviewing really sucks.
I know it sucks, I've sat on the other side if the interviewing desk many times, and the charade wastes everyone's time - the candidates most of all because no one values that.
> I'm not saying it's impossible that companies are interviewing for fun, but it seems really unlikely to me anyone would want to do interviews without seriously intending to hire someone.
It sounds like you've never had to deal with the BS that is headcount politics, which happens more at larger organizations due to more onerous processes. Upper management (director, VP) can play all sorts of games to protect a headcount buffer[1], and everyone down the chain has to waste their time pretending to be hiring just because the division heads want to "maximize strategic flexibility" or however they phrase it.
1. Which is reasonable, IMO. Large companies are not nimble when reacting to hiring needs. The core challenge are the conflicting goals thrust on senior leadership reporting to the C-Suite: avoiding labor shocks, and maximizing profitably -- the former requires redundancy, but the latter, leanness.
It sucks from both sides.
I am on the interviewing and screening side and understand what you're saying. I also empathize with the people I routinely reject who don't understand why they were rejected. It's hard to see why you might not be a right fit for a role.
> it seems really unlikely to me anyone would want to do interviews without seriously intending to hire someone.
I keep seeing this accusation thrown around and like you, I have a hard time seeing this. On the flip side, looking at it from the eyes of many disenchanted candidates, I can see how a theory like this is appealing and self-reinforcing.
Be careful to make judgement calls like this.
I've been running the same job ad for 2 years now, as a recruiter for a big Canadian bank. I've been laughed at for having ridiculously unrealistic standards. I've been accused of running ghost ads.
I'm in the process of hiring the 13th person using this same job ad for new and existing teams that need a very particular type of engineer.
I have to agree, getting tech interviews isn't a great gauge of the job market.
I recently did an interview and a complaint I hear from the interviewer and our own company, people (your competition) reading from AI output.
As a candidate I don't mind doing a few highly speculative interviews. After not interviewing for a while it is good practice.