One Company's Week-Long Interview Process 362
jfruh writes "What's the longest tech interview you've had to sit through — two hours? Eight? Ruby on Rails devs who want to work for Hashrocket need to travel to Florida and do pair-programming on real projects for a week before they can be hired. The upside is that you'll be put up in a beachfront condo for the week with your significant other; the downside is that you'll be doing real work for a week for little or no pay and no guarantee of a job slot."
Perhaps not such a bad idea (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been through (and passed) a 2-day assessment centre before, when applying for my first "proper" job. That included exercises designed to simulate the work I'd be doing on appointment - but there's always going to be a degree of artificiality around exercises like that.
It's hugely important to get recruitment right, as a wrong call can have consequences that last months or years. We've all seen cases of the alleged saviour of the universe who gets recruited, only to turn out to be a mediocre employee who trundles along just above the point at which it's worth getting rid of him. Set against that, a week long scrutiny process like this has some merits.
The obvious downside is that by definition, it's pretty much limiting the pool of applicants to those not already in employment. People already working full time will likely struggle to vanish for a full week, particularly if they have family committments that place demands on their vacation time.
They've Been Doing This For Years (Score:5, Interesting)
The ironic thing -- or funny, I suppose, depending on your point of view -- is that Hashrocket did not hire him. He's one of the best programmers I know (I know a lot), and he was also quite familiar with their development process. He taught it in college.
I think it's a pretty good bet that Hashrocket made a mistake in his case. He went on to work for other prestigious companies.
Re:This is too much (Score:5, Interesting)
The only people that would be able to apply are people who are unemployed.
"I can't believe I wasted 10% of my annual vacation days on this stinking interview" Been there done that.
Re:Probably illegal. (Score:5, Interesting)
1 week beachfront condo rental is compensation. As long as that is over minimum wage (~$300/wk at $7.35/hr), then it's probably legal.
Re:Sounds like a good idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Unless the company pays way above market rates, why would I go through this? I can understand if you're fresh out of college trying to prove yourself, but otherwise, I would skip it.
It's not like it's a prestigious company.
Re:The real downside. (Score:5, Interesting)
To be honest I know a lot of good developers that primarily use scripting languages (Ruby, PHP, Python, etc) for their day jobs. They know they aren't the best languages ever developed, but they have fun writing stuff in them and get paid a good amount, because of their skill level. They could tell you exactly how the language works internally as well if you ask them. Not all of the people who write in scripting languages are bad.
Paid contract? (Score:5, Interesting)
I had an interview for an out of city employer. It resulted in me being given a PAID two week contract to see if I'm worth hiring. I forget what it was I made, but I was paid $2000.
that $2000 was part of my moving expenses if I was hired, and if I was not, I still got $2000, because I signed a contract stating if I finished the work on time, I get $2000.
This seemed like a good way to do things and benefits both the company and myself. I get money, company gets proof I can not only code, but be professional (meetings on time, meeting deadlines, etc).
Re:We don't have an HR department (Score:5, Interesting)
This is obviously of benefit to the employer, but also to the prospective employee.
Not really, if you're a weak candidate you might get "lucky", if you're a strong candidate your true value will probably show faster by simply going to more interviews - in fact some of them may overvalue you as well. It's not nearly as bad for you to be passed up for a job that you "should have" gotten as an employer stuck with a lemon hire. The only reason I'd go with this is because I was really desperate that there was this job or no job or that I really, really wanted to work for this company. Since the latter is not the case, I suspect it's a lot of the former and those are not the good candidates. And that doesn't include the possibility of a scam, that they're only using you for free labor with no intent to hire.
Re:This is too much (Score:4, Interesting)
I wish I knew anybody who had any success at using open source projects while unemployed to "count as being employed"
It doesn't, but it might help you lose a little "I sat on my lazy bum ass all day" stigma. Showing that you actually like to code and don't do it just because you get a pay check would be a huge plus in my book.
Re:This is too much (Score:4, Interesting)
If you got 2 weeks... a single day off for an interview would be 10%.
Exactly. WRT to AC dropping "five whole hours" on an interview... I interviewed at a rather dilbertian F50 megacorp and it was about 8 hours aka 10% of my annual vacation. Ugh. Never should have wasted my time. They did take me out to lunch at a family dining establishment (Applebees level), which was nice of them.
Then again I usually take the whole day off for an interview even when its only about 5 minutes. I remember getting bait and switched about 20 years ago at a Major Cellphone Network Provider where I applied to be a RF cellsite engineer or whatever the exact terminology and somehow got shuffled around into call center monkey at about 1/4 my pay at the time. Basically HR worded the want ad to make me think they wanted someone to design, maybe project manage cell tower site installation/upgrades, which was more or less beneath my ability at the time, but what they actually wanted was a call center monkey to stick pins into a cork board map when angry customers were transferred to my extension complaining of dropped calls and then theoretically I'd "do something" with areas having lots of pins on the map, well, actually I'd just take calls but maybe I could work my way up to hand generating TPS reports or whatever. It was a call center job but the "engineering" dept job title meant unpaid overtime for them, what a great deal! Two hours of drive time round trip for 5 minutes of WTF, see ya.
Another WTF am I here for, was I had just completed a COBOL class at school (ahh, the 90s) and I had some experience setting up SDLC mainframe links over frame relay, I knew how to pull and terminate fiber, I had more or less worked as a network admin at a financial mainframe operation, etc. So there's an ad in the paper for what looks kinda like a sysprog or maybe devprog or maybe like an onsite local IBM CE except employed by the client. I get there and it turns out they have outsourced the computer operator positions but they need a local monkey to take care of physical paper handling at the line printers and would I like to work there for about $7/hr? WTF are you kidding me? bye bye.
I've learned over the years that before you go onsite if the nice HR lady can't explain the job duties that means there is no point in showing up for the interview.
"Worlds most F'd up interviews" would make an entertaining /. discussion.