Speed Dating for the Hiring Process: Software Talent in NYC | Hacker News Reader

Speed Dating for the Hiring Process: Software Talent in NYC

hirelite.com

24 pointsnathanh20 comments

Site seems to be in progress still - the "companies attending" list is empty (http://hirelite.com/companies) and so is the blog (http://blog.hirelite.com/).

Interesting concept though, looking forward to seeing which companies will be attending. Will you be updating the blog as new companies are added?

For now, who shows up on the "companies attending" list is manually populated (when a company signs up, they send me a job post that I put on that page). I'm in the process of getting job descriptions from the attendees.

The blog is currently empty because I haven't written anything :). I plan to get some content up there this weekend.

"I'm in the process of getting job descriptions from the attendees."

How many attendees have you received commitments from?

I went on an interview like this already, some of the recruiters in NYC are already doing this. I found it pretty impersonal and not very effective.

Can you think of any improvements to what you experienced? Or do you think the whole proposition is flawed?

If you only permit 20 candidates and 20 jobs, some of the attending candidates will be only be qualified to apply for a fraction of the jobs - perhaps even just one or two.

For example, if a Django front-end expert shows up and only 1 company is looking for a Django front-end expert, then that candidate only gets 1 interview and goes home.

Since most candidates have particular specializations that make them more or less qualified for particular jobs, it seems unlikely that every candidate will be applying for every job. I actually wish hiring companies cared less about skill specializations than they do but that's just how it is - the Django specialist is often not going to be taken seriously for the Websphere position even if he lies awake most nights dreaming about J2EE (fortunately, this particular example is quite rare).

So, if each attending candidate only qualifies for a single job, then there is a possibility that the entire event will be over in 5 minutes. As a candidate I would be fine with that, since it's one extra interview under my belt and - since I didn't pay to attend - I don't lose anything. As the host, you will go home with $6,000 - minus expenses for the space, unless you hooked up a free space through a personal connection, in which case you came out with a nice profit. However, from the perspective of the hiring company, everyone may not be so happy about the return on their time and money.

1. Good idea.

2. Will recruiters be involved?

- Recruiters are always going to try to be involved in events like this. I guarantee that recruiters will try to attend by either posing as candidates in order to meet real candidates or by actually paying the $300 fee to attend as a hiring company. Maybe that's a good thing for hirelite's bottom line but is it a good thing for the event overall? This event seems like a good opportunity to cut recruiters out of the process but there doesn't seem to be any plan here to deal with this unavoidable contingency.

3. It says candidates who want to attend have to pass a programming test to qualify for free admittance.

- Wouldn't the programming test need to be tailored to the job each candidate is applying for - in which case it wouldn't make sense to give a test until during or after the event?

4. Is St Patrick's Day in NYC good or bad timing for a job interview?

5. In real speed dating, the 1-minute date is often strictly enforced. It says the interview will last 5 minutes. Is that a strict 5 minutes?

1. Thanks!

2. Recruiters will not be involved. They are one of the main reasons I created this - to get job seekers and companies talking directly.

3. Currently, the programming test is pretty simple (less than 10 lines of code) and is meant to qualify people that show up. We don't want to put people with no programming ability in front of companies.

4. Thank you so much for catching that. The date is actually the 16th (typo before).

5. We enforce the 5 minute limit.

- How will you identify a recruiter? Often they pretend to be a hiring company. And are you committed enough to the idea of them not attending that you are willing to turn down their offers to pay the $300 attendance fee?

I'm glad you're a stickler about recruiters. I am too. I am 100% committed to not having recruiters at this event, even if it means turning down money. They will ruin the experience.

For this particular event, the attendees will be primarily companies I know who are hiring and companies that read HN. I'll be monitoring the companies that sign up and kicking out people that I think are recruiters. I have a good handle on who is hiring tech talent in NYC right now, so I know the companies that are likely to show up. If they're not on my mental list, I'll be suspicious.

"I have a good handle on who is hiring tech talent in NYC right now"

- Are you a recruiter?

I am not a recruiter. I'm a developer. I know who's hiring because I've been watching the job boards and attending events in NYC for the last few months.

- How will you enforce the 5-minute time limit?

Sometimes when people get into a groove and there's some chemistry - as in dating - it's hard to pull them apart. Are you going to use the same style of musical-chairs-style rotation that they use in speed dating where everyone has to physically move to the next location all at once?

That's a great point. We're going to enforce the 5 minute limit by physically rotating seats every 5 minutes. Do you know of another enforcement mechanism?

That's all you should need - it works pretty well from what I've seen in speed dating.

It says "Participate in 20 interviews, each 5 minutes long."

What if 300 candidates show up and only 10 hiring companies?

In that case, will candidates be paired with companies on a first-come, first-served basis or do you have some other plan?

For this event, there will only be 20 companies and 20 job seekers.

Is the programming test:

- online or offline?

- open book or closed book? (can the candidate use the internet?)

- timed or untimed?

The test is currently online, open book, and untimed (though it won't take long). If you start the signup process as a Software Engineer, you can see the test. I haven't posted the test blatantly in the open so people won't easily be able to Google an answer.

Under different conditions this would be an easy backdoor for a recruiter to sneak in for free as a candidate to quietly gather resumes at the event. But since you only permit 20 candidates and 20 jobs, the event is small enough that you should be able to recognize this if it happenes. Of course, whether you could do much about it is another issue, short of physically ejecting someone from the room.

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