Comment by lesam

4 hours ago

If you run an interview process where candidates who take 6-8 hours and claim to have taken 4 hours score highest, those are the candidates you will hire.

11 comments

lesam

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tptacek  4 hours ago

All these objections rely on removing agency from the professionals applying for jobs. You look at the work sample. You use your professional judgement. You decide if it's reasonable to execute it to what you think a professional standard would be in the time allotted. You make a decision.

This isn't a college application.

  • akerl_  4 hours ago

    I think you're answering a different objection than they're making. Their concern is that people will choose to spend 8 hours on your 4 hour problem but then tell you they only spent 4. Then you'll think they're a leet hacker because their solution is so awesome and they did it so fast.

  • lesam  4 hours ago

    Why would you design a hiring process that scores unprofessional people (by your own definition) higher than professional ones?

    • tptacek  4 hours ago

      Again: I am responsive to the concern that hiring processes can demand too much of candidates, and particularly to the idea that work-sample challenges are unreasonably demanding compared to interviews. That's why hiring processes I've designed over the last 10 years have all been budgeted against the time typically allotted to an interview loop. And then, to people who say "the challenges take more time than the budget, so I'm forced to spend more time", I say "if you believe that to be the case, don't do the work sample challenge".

      The rest of this I'm not interested in. For as long as we've been talking about hiring processes on HN, there have always been staunch defenders of interviews. Lots of people have spent time getting good at them, there are classes on it, there are books, there are drilling exercises. I don't anticipate talking those people out of their investment in interviewing.

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