Rare and unusual violation of Betteridge's Law spotted in wild
September 27, 2022 9:02 AM   Subscribe

 
"I will say it until I'm blue in the face: Good HR is good PR, and people talk," said Venditti, who pointed out the interview process is the first interaction a potential employee has with a company.

QFT
posted by chavenet at 9:18 AM on September 27, 2022 [21 favorites]


Use people's time, pay for people's time. Simple.
posted by praemunire at 9:25 AM on September 27, 2022 [12 favorites]


A few years back, I had to prepare and submit a presentation that featured adaptive learning on photosynthesis, that included simple animation and loads of images, that I had to make. I had 24 hours to do this, all as an audition for a job interview. The company had an adaptive learning presentation product but they also did contract work making learning materials for college professors. A quick trip to the library to get a good book on photosynthesis and I got to work. I had it done and emailed to them. Next day I got a call to come in for the interview. That interview was a joke. 45 minutes with somebody who could barely answer a question. I did ask if they had a project on photosynthesis for one of their clients. Yes… I know of other people who had to do similar audition things for interviews. All agreed it was a way for companies to get other people to do their work for free. I was naive, but no more now.
posted by njohnson23 at 9:42 AM on September 27, 2022 [26 favorites]


In the dental field, we have typically, for decades, conducted "working interviews" for assistants and hygienists. We pay at or above our normal wages (since, no benefits) and provide an entire day's work for a qualified candidate. So much more can be learned by working side by side with someone than could ever be revealed in a sit-down format.
posted by OHenryPacey at 9:44 AM on September 27, 2022 [42 favorites]


I am somewhat ambivalent about paying people to attend a single job interview, but if you're going to require multiple rounds of interviews and/or make them do some kind of assignment then, yeah, it starts to make a lot of sense to pay them because you're now requiring actual work beyond just, "Your application checks all the boxes, let's meet to see if you would be a good fit."

Unpaid training would also be illegal (and actually is in many places).
posted by asnider at 9:44 AM on September 27, 2022 [16 favorites]


it sucks in tech. i prefer take home assignments to being tested on the spot (seriously, what the fuck?), but every time i've had one of these it's taken 10-20 hours to complete. and each time i was still working full time at my current job.
posted by AlbertCalavicci at 9:46 AM on September 27, 2022 [11 favorites]


All agreed it was a way for companies to get other people to do their work for free.

This happens a lot. I don't think it's super common, but definitely not unheard of, especially for things like internships which are often already unpaid!

I had an assignment like this is PR school. A required part of the program was a sales and marketing class (even though that is its own discipline). The final assignment was to work in groups to basically develop and pitch a marketing plan to a local radio station (public radio, so at least it wasn't just MEGA CORP RADIO). They basically got six different pitches for free and, if any of them were good enough, they could just take our work and use it without compensating us. Even though we were gaining an education and a credential, it still felt exploitative.
posted by asnider at 9:50 AM on September 27, 2022 [2 favorites]


As the Interviewer, can I also expect to be paid by the applicant who turns out to be, The Blithering Idiot; The Know It All Who Doesn't Know Enough or the Clearly Uninterested in Sticking Around?

Because I too am putting time and money into the interview process.
posted by ITravelMontana at 9:53 AM on September 27, 2022 [10 favorites]


Working in software where interviews are extremely elaborate I certainly get it but interviews are already expensive for companies because they have to have expensive employees do them. And I don’t think I even need to dive into the econ-brain incentives stuff when the article itself says that being more selective about interviews could be a cost-saver. I’d rather live in the world where interviews are more important than resumes than the other way around.

But admittedly being in that field also means that interviewing isn’t really a financial burden. It’s the time itself that I have in limited supply.
posted by atoxyl at 9:55 AM on September 27, 2022


ITM is your company not paying you to interview people? Since that is part of your job, presumably.

If your HR is sending you bad applicants then they need to improve their screening.

Anyway, I like this, and as competitive as things are in my field right now, why not.
posted by emjaybee at 10:06 AM on September 27, 2022 [43 favorites]


An interview should be a transaction and a contract should be a bargain [where both sides feel they've done well].

In my last place of work, HR considered their job was to secure new employees for the lowest possible cost. Which meant that folks anxious/keen/desperate to work there came through the hiring process a) feeling wrung out b) determined to do the bare minimum. HR wouldn't pay interviewees travel expenses; heck, they wouldn't even allow them a spot in the guest car-park. The Head of HR died literally and messily at his desk, which induced two of my senior colleagues to take early retirement, lest they have a similar exit. Which allowed them to be replaced by much cheaper, younger Effectives. Even dead, he was saving the Institute money.
posted by BobTheScientist at 10:08 AM on September 27, 2022 [7 favorites]


Came to say the same thing, emjaybee. You said it much better.
posted by evilDoug at 10:09 AM on September 27, 2022


I can see the point of this idea, but as someone who has interviewed hundreds of people over the years, there would be a serious drawback. As mentioned in the article, the number of candidates chosen to interview would be reduced; 4 rather than 8, for instance. This means only the strongest CVs or resumes would get a chance, cutting out the “interesting but less strong on paper”.
That means about a quarter of the people I ended up hiring would never have had a chance.
posted by librosegretti at 10:09 AM on September 27, 2022 [11 favorites]


One place I think this would help: interviews for the sake of saying you had interviews. I know I’ve had round upon round, only to find out they went with an internal candidate. The recruiter eventually learned that they simply had to interview multiple candidates as part of the process.

The whole job interview experience sucks. How often have you had to send a resume, then fill out an application with the same damn stuff? Have to talk to multiple people, while threading the line between not wanting to run down the place your leaving while explaining why you’re looking, feel out if this is going to be an ugly grind while not looking lazy, etc. I’ve given up PTO to interview and it leads nowhere (see above).

So, yes, employers need more skin in the game.
posted by MrGuilt at 10:10 AM on September 27, 2022 [6 favorites]


CBC, eh? Well, what do you expect from a country that has the government pay for health care!
posted by TedW at 10:20 AM on September 27, 2022 [2 favorites]


From the perspective of some more physical jobs, two previous jobs did working interviews using conditional letters of employment.
One was a sunrise shift that started at around 2 AM (shipping industry, highly physical). The night after I sent a resume in response to a craigslist ad, they brought me in for a quick orientation with a few other applicants (probably around 40 minutes). Then we signed offer letters stating that we'd be paid for the work we did that morning, and if we passed a TSA background check and drug screen, and earned the approval of leads/supervisors we'd be hired. By around 3 AM we were out on the warehouse floor working.

I know, somewhat different from doing 20hrs of unpaid creative work for a firm that retains the right to use your product without hiring you. BUT I have always appreciated that interview for being one of the few where I felt like I could actually SHOW the quality of my work before the company made a decision.
posted by shenkerism at 10:31 AM on September 27, 2022 [10 favorites]


This means only the strongest CVs or resumes would get a chance, cutting out the “interesting but less strong on paper”. That means about a quarter of the people I ended up hiring would never have had a chance.

Maybe this points to a deficiency in how you ask for or evaluate the information you receive on paper.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:42 AM on September 27, 2022 [20 favorites]


On a less snarky note than my previous comment, I wish we could do this in the medical field, and include some time actually working as per OHenryPacey's comment above. I agree that it is really hard to judge someone from an interview and you don't really know how things will work out until you actually work together, at which point it becomes apparent pretty rapidly (most of the time) whether or not they are a good fit. But in medicine there are all sorts of licensure and credentialing obstacles to doing that, and that is before convincing administration to actually pay interviewees for their work. Interesting concept though; it would definitely upend the dynamics of the interview process, and in a good way.
posted by TedW at 10:43 AM on September 27, 2022


The practice of submitting unpaid work as part of the interview process is horrible! I wonder if it would be possible to indicate on your submission that it is copyrighted by you (so that if they use it you could at least potentially get paid even if you had to sue to do so) or is giving them the rights part of the process as well?
posted by TedW at 10:47 AM on September 27, 2022 [2 favorites]


For as long as I've worked in tech, it has been shocking how little regard most companies have for interviewees' time.

I had an interview a few years back where they had a coding sample that when done in-person was 1.5 hours with a employee there as a resource, but they wanted me to do it ahead of time alone. So, I took that seriously, and limited myself to 1.5 hours, and I did a lot and I felt good about it. The response I got was basically "we expected more", with a strong hint that they thought I was going to spend like 8-10 hours on it. After I politely pointed this out, they became apologetic and wanted to maybe continue the process after all but I told them no thanks.

It's because of experiences like this that in most cases, I'd rather have a long day of interviews in-person than a bunch of asynchronous problems. If you want me to spend 4 hours on an interview task, I want you to have to commit an employee for that time period and incur some cost. I'm also not interested in competing with desperate people who are willing to put 40 hours into a single interview.
posted by a faithful sock at 10:57 AM on September 27, 2022 [14 favorites]




As the Interviewer, can I also expect to be paid by the applicant who turns out to be, The Blithering Idiot; The Know It All Who Doesn't Know Enough or the Clearly Uninterested in Sticking Around?

Are these people showing up on your office doorstep and forcing you to interview them?
posted by praemunire at 11:36 AM on September 27, 2022 [14 favorites]


Maybe this points to a deficiency in how you ask for or evaluate the information you receive on paper.

some fields are different from others obviously but I know of two people (bosses) who've recently confided to me that they've more or less given up on the hiring process as we currently know it. Mainly because over time they've come to realize that you just can't know who's best for certain jobs via what goes down in the interview process. Yes, you can determine that candidate-C is lying, knows nothing about the field in question. But in terms of being the right person for the team they're joining, with the right combination of work ethic, affability, integrity etc ... you only really know that once they've been around for a while.

So they have both in their way streamlined the hiring process big time and tend to trust their guts ... but even so, whoever gets hired starts very much on a trial basis. And yes, they (the bosses) like the results they're getting.
posted by philip-random at 11:49 AM on September 27, 2022 [4 favorites]


>> As the Interviewer, can I also expect to be paid by the applicant who turns out to be, The Blithering Idiot; The Know It All Who Doesn't Know Enough or the Clearly Uninterested in Sticking Around?

Are these people showing up on your office doorstep and forcing you to interview them?


I've had a similar problem, and the issue was that HR was incompetent at screening resumes. But you also had a narrow window to hire someone before you had to start from scratch and re-justify the open headcount to the execs, so your boss is twisting your arm to hire someone already. We begged HR to just let us see all the resumes, but they refused to do it.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 11:51 AM on September 27, 2022 [6 favorites]


Because I too am putting time and money into the interview process.

Okay, so you're either an employee or an employer.

If you're an employee, then frankly, no, you're not putting time and money into the interview process. Your company is putting money into the interview process, by compensating you for your time.

If you're an employer, then you'll get back that time and money many, many times over thanks to the labor of the person you hire, or else you'll gain valuable experience from the process for the next time you hire someone.
posted by Etrigan at 11:51 AM on September 27, 2022 [28 favorites]


For as long as I've worked in tech, it has been shocking how little regard most companies have for interviewees' time.

I frequently push back against people in my company that want to increase the complexity of interview tasks to more than 3 hours. I have some self-interest there, as the person who assesses the submissions and has to be available for questions during the assignment, but it's also a tragedy of the commons. Any one company can get a better sense of applicant quality by asking for more complex tests and more interviews, but the drain on applicant time increases dramatically as more and more companies do the same.

At least the tests are all toy problems. Asking an applicant to do anything resembling real work without pay (ought to be) a labor lawsuit waiting to happen.

Another labor law problem I see in tech is asking someone who has accepted a job to do unpaid training before they start.

Anyway, Tech Needs Unions.
posted by jedicus at 11:56 AM on September 27, 2022 [11 favorites]


Going to take a slightly different angle here and say this is how bureaucratic professions propagate themselves.

Hiring's a pain. The average manager want to hire the first passable candidate they meet and move on. They don't want to post a position--let alone fake interview three external candidates--when they already have a good internal employee they can reward with a position.

Company gets to a certain size and HR gets empowered. At some point it says "You can't do that!" You need more objective criteria to evaluate candidates. You need to search outside your circle of acquaintances. You need to demonstrate a commitment to diversity. You can't judge based on whether they like the same logic puzzles you like. They have studies that show hiring managers have bad gut instincts about who will work out.

This is all true, of course, but it does mean interviewing more people per position and putting more of a burden on each of them as you come up with "objective" measurements--competence assignments, personality tests, whatever the current fad is.

So then this HR professional looks around at the monster they've created, and do they ask "Have we done more harm than good? Should we scale back?" Of course not. They say "Wow, our part of process has gotten so complicated we need a bigger budget to run it. Also, I'm available to consult for applicants trying to navigate this process."



Seriously, the whole "interview 10 candidates for the hell of it" only happens with a bloated HR department, for whom interviewing candidates is a mark of productivity. The average department wants a couple interviews and a hire.

Anyway, who gets compensated is a pure power function. Neither companies nor applicants gain from an interview that doesn't fill a position, both put in time, so both sides could claim that they deserve to be compensated. Attractive employers and attractive candidates would come out ahead.
posted by mark k at 11:57 AM on September 27, 2022 [9 favorites]


As the Interviewer, can I also expect to be paid by the applicant who turns out to be, The Blithering Idiot; The Know It All Who Doesn't Know Enough or the Clearly Uninterested in Sticking Around?

Does your company currently require you to work for free, or to interview on your private time and private dime? Then fuckin' no.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:19 PM on September 27, 2022 [9 favorites]


it does mean interviewing more people per position and putting more of a burden on each of them as you come up with "objective" measurements--competence assignments, personality tests, whatever the current fad is.

A lot of these things are pretty silly, but they probably still mostly beat hiring your colleague's buddy or your cousin. I guess there's zero burden in the actual moment of not being interviewed because Joe Bro Dickus doesn't think girls can code, but lifelong there's a lot.

I, too, have interviewed people who were patently not qualified for the work, but I don't have a tendre for my employer's money, so if they want to spend it having me interview the not qualified...okay?
posted by praemunire at 12:20 PM on September 27, 2022 [4 favorites]


Oh, I'm not saying the "HR concerns" are irrelevant! The fact that managers are fundamentally lazy is an important element of my analysis here. It's just that when an HR person is saying that the hiring process is out of control, and describes processes driven by HR, some self-reflection may be called for.

but I don't have a tendre for my employer's money, so if they want to spend it having me interview the not qualified...okay?

My perspective was that this is a tale of how bureaucratic professionals self-propagate. In this context, it's important to note that my employer is not "HR." The fact that HR is able to make other productive employees waste time interviewing unqualified employees and stoke resentment among the applicants against the company is a pretty good sign that they are serving HR interests and not the company's.

I should say I personally had good relationships with my HR people when I was managing and loved the help they provided! Just splitting the reference checks with my HR partner was great. But it wasn't an HR driven process for most of my career.
posted by mark k at 12:36 PM on September 27, 2022 [3 favorites]


they probably still mostly beat hiring your colleague's buddy or your cousin

or the guy who worked for Big Company or went to Name School

There are a lot of horrible things about interviewing and I don’t know the happy medium - especially since the pseudo-objective processes certainly don’t actually eliminate those biases - but still I’m generally more comfortable with getting my shot to impress in an interview context than not getting it at all.
posted by atoxyl at 12:36 PM on September 27, 2022 [1 favorite]


When I was last looking for work in the IT field - which, luckily, was a few years ago - I was occasionally contacted by corporate recruiters who wanted me to come in to their offices for an in-person interview before they would consider submitting my resume to potential employers. Um, no.
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 12:36 PM on September 27, 2022 [4 favorites]


Sadly, every proposal for paying applicants needs to factor in what will happen with bad faith actors. We are living in the fucking golden age of scams, and if you start paying a significant wage for doing an interview, somebody will have set up a sweatshop to game the system before you can count to 10. We already get weird stuff like "the person who showed up the first day of work is not the same person I interviewed over Zoom".
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 12:38 PM on September 27, 2022 [4 favorites]


As the Interviewer, can I also expect to be paid

Yes, of course! Is your employer not paying you a salary?
posted by splitpeasoup at 12:40 PM on September 27, 2022 [13 favorites]


It really depends on circumstances as well. I was just interviewing full time for a couple of months after being laid off so of course in that situation my interest is in getting a foot in the door with everybody and I can handle the tradeoff being a significant time commitment. Obviously if you already have a job but are looking for a new one it’s different.
posted by atoxyl at 12:42 PM on September 27, 2022 [1 favorite]


We are living in the fucking golden age of scams, and if you start paying a significant wage for doing an interview, somebody will have set up a sweatshop to game the system before you can count to 10.

I agree with the first half of your sentence, but since employers control who gets interviewed, what are you thinking of? I don't think anyone's currently proposing to compensate anyone who sends in a resume.
posted by praemunire at 12:48 PM on September 27, 2022 [2 favorites]


but since employers control who gets interviewed, what are you thinking of?

It's not that hard to get a fake resume past a recruiter. It's not even that hard to get a ringer to feed you answers while you do a Zoom interview.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 12:54 PM on September 27, 2022


I've been burned a few times on the 'complete a project for us' thing to the point that I have sometimes withdrawn from the process when I found out that expectation. A few years ago, I spent a day of my vacation completing a workshop for a final interview, took a day off work because they wanted to schedule the four-hour interview right smack dab in the middle of the day, and then they never even had the decency to send me an email to say they weren't hiring me.

Early on when I was just out of college, I had an interview go pretty badly but at the end of it she asked me to create a lesson plan and send it to her, which I did because I was hopelessly naive. Never heard back from her, of course.

However, I'm also someone who probably presents better on sample work than I do in an interview, so I understand the appeal of the interview work project. I much prefer when they ask for a work sample that I've already done. I do think that being paid for my time if they were asking me to create something would go a long way-- and also convince me that I'm a serious candidate.
posted by geegollygosh at 1:13 PM on September 27, 2022 [1 favorite]


I had an interview a few years back where they had a coding sample that when done in-person was 1.5 hours with a employee there as a resource

I just blew off a company yesterday because they wanted over an hour of tests before even looking at my resume's 30 years of relevant experience.

3-minute Personality Assessment (Predictive Index): 5 minutes
Advanced Logic (Advanced Problem Solving): 20 questions in 45 minutes
Logic (Problem Solving): 20 questions in 25 minutes

I told them I was insulted and gave them my hourly B2B consulting rate. They expressed sorrow and invited me back if I changed my mind. That won't be happening.

Their name is BairesDev.
posted by mikelieman at 1:54 PM on September 27, 2022 [9 favorites]


I've been burned a few times on the 'complete a project for us' thing to the point that I have sometimes withdrawn from the process when I found out that expectation.

I just had a recruiter get in touch with me about a job for which the interview process was an initial interview, a take-home project, and then another interview. I don't usually do take-homes (and my LinkedIn has a note to that effect that also includes timed coding tests, whiteboard interviews, pair programming, etc.), but I was intrigued enough by the company to give it a shot.

The recruiter said the take-home would be a simple command-line API thing that would take me 3-4 hours. When the requirements came in, it still said it would take that long, but it was a small-scale, but full-blown, web application that required several different UI views, a backing database, and several other things. I spent about twelve hours on it, swearing all the way and wondering why it was taking me so long when they estimated a third of that time for it. I'm a little rusty, but not that rusty.

So I submitted the work, and they seemed to like it enough (they scored me 80% on their internal metric thing). Then the kicker: they'd sent me the wrong test. The one they sent me, as it happens, had also been done by the guy who scored the one I did. It took him sixteen hours.

I've got one more interview to go, but I'm not quite as impressed with them as I was...and I think I need to move that "I don't do these" bit to the top of my LinkedIn bio.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:11 PM on September 27, 2022 [10 favorites]


Retired from software development. I don't miss the interview gauntlet one bit. About the worst test I ever had was where they plunked me in front of a workstation in an isolated room, loaded the assignment application, and I had a couple of hours to complete the coding assignments. I'm sorry, I'm not valuable because I can perform like a trained seal with arbitrarily limited resources; I'm valuable because I can find and exploit resources to deliver the best solutions. I should have simply refused and walked. Maybe that was actually the right response... Hmmm.

Should interviewees get paid for time spent in the process? No. Should companies get more serious about training and developing their own junior people and promoting from within? Maybe?
posted by Artful Codger at 2:24 PM on September 27, 2022 [2 favorites]


It's not that hard to get a fake resume past a recruiter. It's not even that hard to get a ringer to feed you answers while you do a Zoom interview.

...for instance, this blog post that coincidentally popped up in my feed today: Someone is pretending to be me.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 3:04 PM on September 27, 2022 [1 favorite]


On a related note, you're supposed to get paid for your time (i.e. your regular paycheck, not deducting time for "sick" or vacation) if you are interviewing at my giant organization at another office. However, that involves telling your current employer that you're interviewing elsewhere, and um, you may not want to be letting them know that you are so much?
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:10 PM on September 27, 2022 [1 favorite]


It's worth noting that the most famous ops psych survey paper on the subject of interviewing shows two useful tools in candidate selection*:

1. IQ tests "general mental ability"
2. Work sample tests

"Structured interviews" are a third place finisher, and unstructured interviews (ie every interview I've ever sat in) are far, far down the list. Even better, work sample tests are one of the tests less correlated with IQ. So if you already do IQ testing, you're not wasting time by also asking for a work sample. Alternatively, if you feel IQ testing is discriminatory, the lack of correlation suggests work sample tests might not be subject to the same bias but is still predictive of outcomes.

Which is all to say: how do the coders against whiteboarding, take home projects or those sit in a room with a laptop test want to be evaluated instead?

*The paper is entirely silent on whether to pay people for interviews.
posted by pwnguin at 3:20 PM on September 27, 2022 [2 favorites]


Which is all to say: how do the coders against whiteboarding, take home projects or those sit in a room with a laptop test want to be evaluated instead?

I really feel like interviews and the tests and much of the selection process are predictive of nothing, with the possible exception of how well one gets along with gels with etc. the hiring panel. And of course getting along with the hiring panel is a hugely biased thing in so many ways.

So what do I propose instead? Send in your resume. Send in your portfolio. A cover letter, fine. Then let them (HR, hiring manager, hiring panel, whoever) either pick out all the applications that are qualified-enough OR pick the top X (3? 5? 10?) applications, and then literally randomly select from among those applicants. Contact your applicant with an offer letter.

I'm absolutely not convinced that putting job applicants through all this is actually producing better hires. And you know what risk-averse companies will do instead? They'll start paying good people better and developing and promoting internal talent (known quantities), which can maybe bring back the concept of a career ladder.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 3:26 PM on September 27, 2022 [8 favorites]


Then let them (HR, hiring manager, hiring panel, whoever) either pick out all the applications that are qualified-enough OR pick the top X (3? 5? 10?) applications, and then literally randomly select from among those applicants.

I've been thinking about this, too. I think this would work for the vast majority of jobs. Some exceptions, e.g., for nonprofits with actual missions. But I doubt outcomes would be worse.
posted by praemunire at 3:34 PM on September 27, 2022


If nothing else this would curb third, fourth, fifth and sixth interviews, as well as multi-hour marathons where you have to glad-hand a series of bored functionaries you'll never talk to again even if they hire you
posted by Vulgar Euphemism at 4:48 PM on September 27, 2022 [2 favorites]


I have hired a couple of people over the last two years. My approach - come and work with us for a week, and if you like the work, we will do a 6 month probation, at the end of which the EMPLOYEE has the choice to continue.

I know by the end of the week, whether that person will be a good fit and worth paying well. After that, it's my job to make sure that they earn their wages with productive work.

If they don't want to be here or unsure, 6 months' wages should give them enough of a cushion to look elsewhere, and I have had 6 months of good work.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 4:53 PM on September 27, 2022 [12 favorites]


The quality of people our organization hired increased dramatically once I updated our outdated interview process, which was previously just the stock standard structured behavioral interview. I added a work sample / IQ component which was done live in a 25 minute segment of the interview. There was a dramatic difference in clarity of thought and problem solving ability in the 10% of people who could do it, and the 90% who foundered and had no idea how to approach the problems (and were subsequently rejected).

The other 25 minutes reserved for 5 behavioral type questions are considered equally important. They select for communication skills, which - when you're intending to hire someone who you will later promote into senior management - is probably even more critical than technical skills. About half the people we talk to, shockingly lack the ability to listen to a question, process an answer and respond coherently with an engaging response or anecdote.

I mean, I would have thought this is a fairly basic ability you need when going on date with someone, never mind an interview.

It's all supply and demand, while the jobs are fairly desirable (lowest earner in my team is $110k plus a company car and 32 days annual leave) but good candidates are extremely rare. So in the end I am the one having anxiety before the interview trying to portray the company and working conditions and culture in the most desirable light possible, but also speaking candidly about pay and promotion in the hopes that the honesty earns me points. Because the worst thing that can happen is that we find a good candidate and they reject us for a different job that seemed more attractive... and that's been happening a lot recently. I interviewed one that that seemed to tick the boxes, the next morning I said we want him and he had already accepted a job with a competitor!

But yes I'm a fan of a single interview, no more than 50 minutes long, anything more is a waste of time for both parties... you just have to be brutally quick in evaluating exactly the skills and qualities you want.
posted by xdvesper at 5:05 PM on September 27, 2022 [7 favorites]


I suspect the concern (as always) is that someone could game the system by just interviewing over and over and over without actually intending to get the job(s).
posted by goddess_eris at 6:10 PM on September 27, 2022



It's worth noting that the most famous ops psych survey paper on the subject of interviewing shows two useful tools in candidate selection*:

1. IQ tests "general mental ability"
2. Work sample tests


Erm. I don't know much about the domain, so I'll take you at your word that this is actually the most influential paper on interview protocols. If it is, though, I have some concerns. This paper was published in 1998, and the ensuing 25 years have shown us that "GMA" is a completely fictitious idea, predicated on thinly-veiled eugenicist ideals. Thus, everyone trying to optimize for "IQ" is actually trying to hire an entirely-white group from the candidate pool. From this, we can draw one of two conclusions:

1. All interviewing processes are blatantly, appallingly racist
2. There is no actual scientific backing to any interviewing methodologies

Neither bodes well.
posted by Mayor West at 6:39 PM on September 27, 2022 [15 favorites]


If you're in tech you're probably already getting paid for the interview, by your current employer who thinks you're at the dentist. Let's not get greedy here!
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 8:02 PM on September 27, 2022 [8 favorites]


And you know what risk-averse companies will do instead? They'll start paying good people better and developing and promoting internal talent (known quantities), which can maybe bring back the concept of a career ladder.

Huh, I was going to guess “they’ll start just going with the guy who used to work at Amazon/Uber/etc.”
posted by atoxyl at 9:25 PM on September 27, 2022 [2 favorites]


Again there are tons of problems with tech interviewing but I’d really like to see the evidence that resumes predict anything. And in a lot of ways I think they are less egalitarian. If we’re going in this direction anyway perhaps we should just hire people completely at random and give them a trial period.
posted by atoxyl at 9:29 PM on September 27, 2022


So what do I propose instead? Send in your resume. Send in your portfolio. A cover letter, fine. Then let them (HR, hiring manager, hiring panel, whoever) either pick out all the applications that are qualified-enough OR pick the top X (3? 5? 10?) applications, and then

Do a short one-hour interview that isn't so much a test like whiteboarding problems, but a conversation about field-related things. You can't predict the future and know that someone will be a good hire no matter how many hours you interview them. They're on their best behavior and trying to impress you today. They've studied and practiced all the correct answers. Will they be like that every day? Maybe, maybe not.

All you can do is screen out the obvious no's. The guy who can't stop swearing constantly for even one hour. The guy who has clearly never heard of the very common thing you're trying to talk about. The guy who gets upset by encountering a woman in authority. (seen all of these) But that's why you have to do in-person interviews.

Beyond that, you just have to have the guts to let the ones who don't work out go, making room for another try. As opposed to what most companies do, just live with it making both parties miserable.
posted by ctmf at 10:01 PM on September 27, 2022 [2 favorites]


About half the people we talk to, shockingly lack the ability to listen to a question, process an answer and respond coherently with an engaging response or anecdote.

I mean, I would have thought this is a fairly basic ability you need when going on date with someone, never mind an interview.


Not all of us are neurotypical.
posted by nosewings at 10:48 PM on September 27, 2022 [12 favorites]


Do a short one-hour interview that isn't so much a test like whiteboarding problems, but a conversation about field-related things.

This. All the best jobs I've had have been obtained after interviews where people just talked to me. I mean, look--I've been doing what I do for a living for [REDACTED] years, and if you can't tell whether or not I can do your job after an hour or so of talking to me, it's probably not going to be a good fit for either of us.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:21 AM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


I suspect the concern (as always) is that someone could game the system by just interviewing over and over and over without actually intending to get the job(s).

That seems like a not very attractive way to game the system to me. I mean, presumably the proposed payscale is commensurate with hourly work done in the field and level being applied for, so going in for a bunch of interviews and not taking any job seems like a great way to have an extremely unreliable income stream and have to travel all over the place and fill out applications and juggle a complicated calendar to get it rather than taking a job and getting that money on the regular without all the hustle.

And, yes, there are people who like doing just that, but they are a minority, and of the people who think they like that, probably upwards of 90% realize they don't at all after trying it for a few weeks.
posted by jackbishop at 3:32 AM on September 28, 2022 [5 favorites]


Feels like I'm reading /r/recruitinghell
posted by DreamerFi at 4:12 AM on September 28, 2022 [2 favorites]


(A followup to my previous post: is a quick one-and-done buck for showing up for nonmanual labor what you want? I have two words for you: focus groups. Go somewhere to hang out with a bunch of people in a similar situation, eat pizza, listen to advertising slogans and talk about why you hate 'em. Then they give you $50 and you never have to deal with them again. Just as good as going to an interview for the money, except they feed you and they don't care that you're full of shit and don't actually know C#.)
posted by jackbishop at 7:44 AM on September 28, 2022


focus groups

Plus you might get to be on Impractical Jokers, which is really the best possible outcome. Probably better than getting that C# job.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:08 AM on September 28, 2022 [2 favorites]


Which is all to say: how do the coders against whiteboarding, take home projects or those sit in a room with a laptop test want to be evaluated instead?

Not everything has to be all or nothing. Take home assignments can have value, but all the ones I've seen are completely unrealistic with respect to the time they expect people to put in. I've helped hirers write these assignments, and people's tendency is just to throw in a whole bunch of elements without consideration for how much time it'll cost the candidate to do a decent job. Assignments should be short - absolutely not more than a *realistic* hour's worth of work, but designed to get a look at a few key skills. Then often the in-person interview can build on the assignment, ask questions about the candidate's approach, have the candidate make some tweaks in person, see how they react to feedback or changed specs, what they're like to bounce ideas off of, etc.

Also, in-person interviews should be scheduled such that the candidate doesn't need to take off more than one day from work at most. Where I live it's common for companies to string out their in-person interview rounds - you go do an initial interview with a team lead, then if they like you they'll invite you back for an HR interview, then if you pass that you get to come back for an interview with some higher-ups, and so on, which is insane and makes you have to repeatedly take time off work and spend way too much time and money on travel.

Basically, employers need to respect candidates' time. They also need to understand the real-life effects of a time-intensive process. Some people have tons of time to throw at these things - and in many cases, frankly, money, for interview prep, assistance with assignments, transportation, interview clothes, and so on. Some people don't have those kinds of resources. Maybe you work full time, maybe you work full time and are taking care of a family, maybe you have health issues that mean you can do a full day's worth of work but fitting in take-home assignments on top of that is a significant difficulty, maybe you're so exhausted at the end of a workday that the quality of your assignment is not going to be as high. Too often it's women and people on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum who have the least leisure time and resources to throw at this stuff. If you care at all about diversity - not to mention talent - you want your interview process to rule people out because of lack of skill, not lack of time or money to jump through your hoops.

If some amount of money is what's needed to get employers to respect the value of candidates' time, then fine. If regulation or unionization would work instead, fine. However it's done, the end result needs to be that candidates' time is recognized and respected.
posted by trig at 8:20 AM on September 28, 2022 [7 favorites]


in-person interviews should be scheduled such that the candidate doesn't need to take off more than one day from work at most

Interestingly, this is (or at least was, I haven't had to deal with this process in a while, thank God) what tippy-top law firms used to do when interviewing law students, after a half-hour screener at the school. You got the offer (or didn't) at the end of the day. Now there's usually an intervening summer job at the firm that gives them a chance to hit the eject button on people who are actually wildly unsuitable, but if you give people the incentives, they can make timely decisions.
posted by praemunire at 8:35 AM on September 28, 2022


Interestingly, this is (or at least was, I haven't had to deal with this process in a while, thank God) what tippy-top law firms used to do when interviewing law students, after a half-hour screener at the school. You got the offer (or didn't) at the end of the day. Now there's usually an intervening summer job at the firm that gives them a chance to hit the eject button on people who are actually wildly unsuitable, but if you give people the incentives, they can make timely decisions.

Yeah, not the end of the day, but there's a race to sweep up the best law students before the second year of law school begins. We do the full day of screening interviews (one day each at a handful of local schools), then callbacks where they get to meet with 4 or so other people at the firm. They get hired for an 8-12 week summer job between the second and third years of law school, and then all but the worst will have a formal offer for post-graduation employment on the day the summer program ends.

For me, the interviews are entirely about personality and vibes. First-year law students know nothing of substance, and most of the job of being a lawyer is learned while doing. So I want to know if someone is an interesting person that I actually want to work with. Are they engaging? Curious? Enthusiastic? Do they do something weird and quirky in their spare time? That tells me more than the resume.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 9:08 AM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


For me, the interviews are entirely about personality and vibes. First-year law students know nothing of substance, and most of the job of being a lawyer is learned while doing. So I want to know if someone is an interesting person that I actually want to work with. Are they engaging? Curious? Enthusiastic? Do they do something weird and quirky in their spare time? That tells me more than the resume.

Right...do the people doing the hiring gel with this person. This is exactly where all the bias (both unconscious and..."statistical" for lack of a better term) kick in. This is exactly what you DON'T want being the basis of any hiring decision. Just put the qualified names in a hat and pick one. Having quirky hobbies is not a characteristic evenly distributed across demographic groups.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 9:27 AM on September 28, 2022 [9 favorites]


For me, the interviews are entirely about personality and vibes. First-year law students know nothing of substance, and most of the job of being a lawyer is learned while doing. So I want to know if someone is an interesting person that I actually want to work with.

Yeah...not to pick on you personally, I'm sure you're an open-minded guy, but I'm a pretty decent lawyer who did a pretty good job in her Biglaw gigs, but I was also a normal-looking woman, on her 1.5th career, with a direct personality, and not of the traditional SES for Biglaw, and there are plenty of lawyer-bros I would not vibe with in an interview. An interesting and highly competent woman lacking upper-middle-class style is not necessarily a great conversational match for the overcompensating generic beta males in their late 20s/early 30s who tend to populate the Biglaw junior and midlevel associate ranks. I'm lucky I was interviewing in a prosperous time.
posted by praemunire at 10:20 AM on September 28, 2022 [2 favorites]


Right...do the people doing the hiring gel with this person. This is exactly where all the bias (both unconscious and..."statistical" for lack of a better term) kick in. This is exactly what you DON'T want being the basis of any hiring decision. Just put the qualified names in a hat and pick one. Having quirky hobbies is not a characteristic evenly distributed across demographic groups.

YMMV I suppose, but in my case, I (a white guy) interviewed 20 people at one of the all-day law school interview sessions, and of the 6 people I recommended for call-backs, only one was a white man. Between everyone, we ultimately interviewed about 50 people, and the three who were hired are an African-American man, a South Asian man, and a Latina woman. (As far as quirky hobbies, the South Asian guy is a jazz bass player.) So with the proper emphasis on DEI, you can potentially circumvent the demographic issues. We weren't purposely seeking out diverse candidates, but we were keeping diversity in our heads as one of the factors when deciding who to send to the next round. I recognize that not everyone will do that.

Putting the qualified names in a hat and picking one would be terrible in the legal business, because so much relies on soft skills that can only be gleaned from interaction.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 10:55 AM on September 28, 2022


Yeah...not to pick on you personally, I'm sure you're an open-minded guy, but I'm a pretty decent lawyer who did a pretty good job in her Biglaw gigs, but I was also a normal-looking woman, on her 1.5th career, with a direct personality, and not of the traditional SES for Biglaw, and there are plenty of lawyer-bros I would not vibe with in an interview. An interesting and highly competent woman lacking upper-middle-class style is not necessarily a great conversational match for the overcompensating generic beta males in their late 20s/early 30s who tend to populate the Biglaw junior and midlevel associate ranks. I'm lucky I was interviewing in a prosperous time.

100% valid, and one of the main reasons why I and many of my coworkers purposely sought an environment with few lawyer-bros. We're all pretty weird.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 10:57 AM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


Also, in case I'm not clear, I don't mean "personality and vibes" in the sense of "do I want to have a beer with this person and talk football" but rather "does this person have an engaging personality that will allow them to thrive in a relatively stressful environment and communicate effectively with courts and opposing lawyers without losing their minds." The quirky hobby thing is because, if you don't have something you enjoy outside of being a lawyer, you're going to burn out pretty fast.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 10:59 AM on September 28, 2022


Erm. I don't know much about the domain, so I'll take you at your word that this is actually the most influential paper on interview protocols.

Well, I said famous, as in cited by over six thousand other papers. Yes, it's old. I would happily cite a newer survey paper if I knew of one. But survey papers are designed to summarize a vast body of research, rather than new research, so IDK how that gets funded. It's a problem!

the ensuing 25 years have shown us that "GMA" is a completely fictitious idea

It was already known at the time of publication that IQ and the SAT had disparate impact, I don't think anyone disputes that. It's probably why the paper uses the term GMA and not IQ. And why pretty much nobody does IQ testing in interviews despite their demonstrated correlation with desirable outcomes. But thats different than "GMA only measures racism." And it's not the only selection tool studied.

As an example, researchers have looked at phrenology as a selection tool. Not because they thought it was predictive, but because they believed it wasn't. The question you have to ask is: if outcomes are the result of racism, then phrenology should show the same bias. Thankfully, it doesn't. So my take is that GMA measures a mix of causal factors, and finding tools as good of better than it, with less racism baked in is an important research goal!

There is no actual scientific backing to any interviewing methodologies

On the GMA front, my read is that its not nearly as settled as you want it to be. More recent research has looked at GMA specifically as predictive of outcomes. Here's a meta-analysis on GMA from 2019, focused on this exact topic:
GMA is a consistent and valid predictor of five specific occupational criteria, including, supervisory ratings of overall job performance, production records, work samples tests, instructor ratings, and grades. In general, the validity magnitude of GMA was remarkably larger for the training criteria than for the performance criteria.
Science doesn't always require understanding. We learned how to cure scurvy with citrus fruit centuries before we knew what Vitamin C was. The "multiple intelligences" hypothesis is probably true but is also probably way, way, way more granular than Gardner's hypothetical 8. It seems probable that GMA tests measure the lifetime's worth of racism applied for and against a candidate by society, but does measure something real and stable. And like, reducing the gap on high school math test scores or whatever other proxy might be a useful metric for measuring racial progress in America?

For interviews specifically, what the body of research shows, is that work sample tests are nearly as predictive as GMA testing. GMA is kind of thee bogeyman, every tool in the results table features a correlation metric with GMA -- to show that there are alternatives. My take away from the survey paper was mostly that you can skip GMA tests and their baggage if you use work sample tests and structured interviews. Which makes it baffling why so many people want anything but that. In retrospect, maybe I shouldn't be too surprised.

Bringing it back to actual industry application: most of you are doing what feels good and not what makes your team more effective. Benchmark your work sample tests, structure your interviews!
posted by pwnguin at 12:08 PM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


The abilities to “thrive in a stressful environment and communicate effectively with courts and opposing lawyers” are skills, not personality traits. One is more likely to be successful at hiring people with these skills if one recognizes - and compensates - them as such.
posted by eviemath at 1:13 PM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


The abilities to “thrive in a stressful environment and communicate effectively with courts and opposing lawyers” are skills, not personality traits. One is more likely to be successful at hiring people with these skills if one recognizes - and compensates - them as such.

Potato, potahto. Really, we call them "soft skills." I think of them as personality traits because I think they're more difficult (although not impossible) to teach than technical/intellectual skills.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 2:20 PM on September 28, 2022


Yeah, that’s a really huge, non-semantic difference(*). And such skills are absolutely teachable.

(* See also: the emotional labor thread)
posted by eviemath at 3:15 PM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


And such skills are absolutely teachable.

So is everything you learn in a medical degree or law degree, but we still make those degrees a requirement before start working your first job in the field.

Those soft skills are specifically honed through taking responsibility, negotiating for outcomes, and cultivating empathy for other people. Effective communication is effective listening, first of all, and we find many people have never developed proper listening skills.
posted by xdvesper at 4:19 PM on September 28, 2022


Teachable as opposed to innate personality traits. Not talking about learning on the job versus coming with those skills already in place.
posted by eviemath at 7:14 PM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


> You got the offer (or didn't) at the end of the day

Ah, that would be delightful. In my most recent job hunt, one place went over five weeks between my interview and my rejection. Another job I interviewed at over three weeks ago hasn't gotten back to me yet. A third job took a week to get back to me (then replied to my "what's up?" e-mail with an acceptance, I like them too, let's hope we all live happily ever after).

I know Amazon and some other tech companies have a policy of getting back to interviewees within 24 hours; I wish everywhere did that.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:25 PM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


Ah, that would be delightful.

It really is. I was once rejected by a place while I was on the train home from the interview, but they took the time to write out an email saying that they liked me and thought I interviewed really well, but they went with someone whose skills were a closer fit for the job.

To this day, it's the nicest rejection I've ever gotten.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 4:23 AM on September 29, 2022 [2 favorites]


I know Amazon and some other tech companies have a policy of getting back to interviewees within 24 hours; I wish everywhere did that.

We might interview up to 3 candidates. Ideally we get everyone in the same week but it could easily take a month to find a time that works for everyone just on scheduling. We try to be reasonably transparent about this.
posted by mark k at 6:58 AM on September 29, 2022


Teachable as opposed to innate personality traits. Not talking about learning on the job versus coming with those skills already in place.

Oh, I see the distinction. Yeah, I guess some of that is innate, but also personalities shift over time. I'm not necessarily looking for someone who has all that on day one, but someone who I can see has the ability to develop into that kind of person. So you're probably right that skills (soft or otherwise) is a more accurate term.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 8:15 AM on September 29, 2022


Talking about such skills as skills, not as personality, makes a huge difference. Skills are something that people can be recognized as having worked to attain, and thus be owed compensation for. When people mischaracterize something like communication skills (or, in a more obvious setting, the skills and knowledge required to create a nurturing and supportive educational or care environment) as personality traits, it’s also easy to get into gender (or racist) essentialism and (a) fail to adequately acknowledge and reward skill because it is assumed that anyone in such-and-such demographic just naturally does that, and (b) make allowances for those in a higher status demographic to be able to get ahead in their careers without developing the requisite skills (eg. how white men tend to get a pass on so many communication and organizational skills that everyone else is required to be extra good at in order to attain similar levels of career success).
posted by eviemath at 9:02 AM on September 29, 2022 [4 favorites]


> Talking about such skills as skills, not as personality, makes a huge difference.

All the cultural and biased test issues aside, we still recognize the thing we call "intelligence" and that it's to a large extent innate. Likewise, we now acknowledge "emotional intelligence" - an umbrella term for what's behind many of the soft people skills mentioned above.

I'm all for doing all we can to bring out and improve people's abilities in both those areas, and I believe that much is possible... but these are pretty much baked-in by the time a young adult is interviewing for work. To a prospective employer, the initial manifestation of emotional intelligence is... personality. Hard to describe it otherwise.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:32 AM on September 30, 2022


I'm all for doing all we can to bring out and improve people's abilities in both those areas, and I believe that much is possible... but these are pretty much baked-in by the time a young adult is interviewing for work.

IDK, I'm a very different person now than I was when I was 22, thank god. If we don't allow for growth and change, what's the point? My "soft skills" have grown considerably in the time between then and now.
posted by cooker girl at 11:16 AM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]


Yeah, “intelligence” is very much not fixed, from what I’ve read of the education research end of cognitive science as part of my professional development as an educator.
posted by eviemath at 11:33 AM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]


> If we don't allow for growth and change, what's the point?

My fault for wording that suggested that IQ or EQ were fixed for life by young adulthood. It's not what I meant. My apologies.
posted by Artful Codger at 1:42 PM on September 30, 2022


We seem to have incommensurate definitions of “innate”.

See also: my point above about the risk of applying gender or racial essentialism and ending up with systemic inequities with such a framing.
posted by eviemath at 3:52 PM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]


Just as a follow-up:

So the recruiter called today to say they're offering me the job...but below the minimum threshold I'd already set. (I've been looking for at least 1.3X, where X is my current salary, and they're offering something like 1.19X.)

Apparently this is based on the take-home test they sent me, which a.) was the wrong test in the first place, and b.) sent to me during the absolute busiest time of year at my current job, so it had to take second place to actual paying work. Never mind that I did it more quickly than the guy who graded me, or that I have something like three decades of experience. Nope, I'm being low-balled based on arbitrary grading criteria, and there's no wiggle room.

So I'll be passing on this one. It's a shame....but I know what I'm worth, and it's more than that.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:30 PM on October 3, 2022 [5 favorites]


So I'll be passing on this one. It's a shame....but I know what I'm worth, and it's more than that.

Don't give HR permission to write you off at the staff level. Counter with "1.5X and it's a deal" - make them be the ones to leave the table. It might seem silly and might not work, but never underestimate the power of managers not wanting to be the reason. "I was unwilling to pay what he was asking, so I withdrew" is not the same as "Mr. B. E. withdrew"
posted by ctmf at 3:19 PM on October 3, 2022 [5 favorites]


Update update: I talked to the recruiter, and he wasn't really keen on being countered.

Him: "Oh, but they'll be teaching you all these new skills, and in a year's time they'll have you up to the salary you want..."

Me: "Yeah, but that's the minimum figure I asked for in a year's time. I'd be happier at £X."

Him: "Ooh, that's a big bump."

Me: "Yes, it is. Look at the market, though, and consider I'm currently in the public sector and thus way underpaid. I'm worth it."

He said he'll get back to me if they change their minds, but I'm not holding my breath.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 8:42 AM on October 4, 2022 [2 favorites]


Recruiters make money when they place applicants. I would be cautiously optimistic.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:34 AM on October 5, 2022


Freelance recruiters do. HR recruiters do not.
posted by mark k at 7:53 AM on October 5, 2022


Update Part 3 in 3D--This Time It's Personal:

They've come back and aren't budging on the salary, apparently because that would cause some internal difficulties (for which I read everyone else would want more money)...but they've offered a signing bonus.

However, it's in twelve months' time. Which, given my contractual notice period, is more like fifteen months' time. And it's not a great bonus. It'd be less than 10% of the new salary. I think I'm going to say no again and see what happens, although at this point I think it's a no regardless because now they are pissing me off.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 8:32 AM on October 5, 2022 [3 favorites]


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