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Comment by selestify | Hacker News Reader

Who has time to spend a few weeks off from their full time job just to interview?

Hey, i have had a couple of recruiters who have approached with this idea. Basically, the recruiter says, okay i give you a week or two for this task to be complete ( the call is basically 30 mins or so explaining the problem and getting to know the basics about me ) and then post the time alloted, a sync up to see how you have solved it and to explain the design or solution or something like that. Only a couple of times have i had this experience. There is no additional overhead on the recruiter apart from reviewing it post the time alloted.

It felt better, because the interview was more like a typical work like situation. In work too, we are assigned tasks, and we update the progress.

Maybe its a bit idealistic, but then we all like to dream about utopia, don't we :)

I still wouldn’t do it. Why should I, when I can do the entire interview process with another company with only a day’s worth of time expenditure on my end? If the task itself takes more than an hour or so, I can get to an onsite interview with far less effort than that by doing a recruiter chat and a phone screen.

Sounds fair enough :) Agreed. I have just proposed one of the alternatives which i could imagine / think of from the top of my mind. The problem isn't solved yet - or rather solved well yet. We could always brainstorm on a better alternative. :)

Here's the problem: you're dealing with a multiple prisoners' dilemma situation here. Theoretically, the best solution for all (candidates and companies) is to have a thorough, standardized, and real-world based interview process. If every company cooperated, then you could have that. But, when there are companies out there that will bring candidates onsite for ~5 hours after a little more than an hour's time commitment, that means I could theoretically do 5 of those interviews in a week. No other company is going to start demanding multiple days of an interviewee's time given that every other company's process takes ~1 day of active participation by the candidate. So, you need to limit your "thorough, standardized, and real-world" process to taking no more than a day.

Here's a process that might work, that I actually would participate in:

1. ~20 minute recruiter chat to establish basic levels of fit/compatibility.

2. ~45-60 minute phone screen.

3. Onsite consisting of 1 hour behavioral/cultural interview, and 3-4 hour programming task, preferably based on a real problem or task that arose in the company's code base, suitably extracted, simplified, and scrubbed of proprietary information. Internet resources are allowed, as is asking any questions of the interviewer, without penalty.

You could bring me in at 11 AM, do the behavioral interview, take me to lunch, then have the afternoon to do the programming task, and have me out by 4.

Yeah, was thinking along these lines during this discussion. Sounds like a good idea and something that everyone would be fine too. The idea being that the interviewing pattern should shift from hard theoretical questions to practical problems that needs to be solved as you have suggested above :

"3-4 hour programming task, preferably based on a real problem or task that arose in the company's code base, suitably extracted, simplified, and scrubbed of proprietary information. Internet resources are allowed, as is asking any questions of the interviewer, without penalty."

I agree with the sentiment, but I noticed recently that TaxJar (I considered applying there at one point) mandates a trial period along these lines. From https://life.taxjar.com/distributed-team-hiring-process/, "... We hope a candidate is able to spend somewhere between 80 and 160 hours working with TaxJar during their trial. ..."

Presumably there are some people who are willing to do a trial, either concurrent with their existing employment, or on the chance that they will be hired after the trial.

This is good to know, typically it should be in concurrent with the existing employment. If we plan to switch companies, we commit time apart from existing office work for interview prep anyway. This interview prep time is what we would end up committing to work on their tasks etc. I think working on a project or task from the prospective employer would be much fun than preparing / memorizing interview questions etc. What do you think ?

Most companies won’t allow such a thing, especially if the other company is a competitor. In any case, doing so would likely require me to take 1-4 weeks off from my regular job. Again, why would I want to blow all my vacation time working, just for the possibility of another job?

Okay my experience was, i didn't have to take leaves from my regular work. I had to simply dedicate a couple of hours post office time, to work on the task (the couple of weeks was given owing to time constraints due to my regular work). Post office hours, i would have to anyway commit to interview prep if i had decided to switch anyway is what i meant to say.

In any case, this is not the only method or approach that is the better alternative :) Maybe it will work for some and not for others. But evaluating alternatives is a good exercise. Currently we are stuck with this method because we do not have a better solution to the hiring problem.

TaxJar sounds insane. So after I go through up to 4 weeks of poorly paid work (while working my existing full-time job and raising a family), I get to participate in their hazing rituals!

https://life.taxjar.com/taxjar-traditions/

Try flipping it and looking at it from their vantage point - probably they are aware that not many would take this up, which would leave only the kind of people they want to work with showing up to their doors ? Maybe it's a clever hack to filter people out ?

Thinking more about TaxJar...I wonder if they are at any risk of employees of an existing firm doing work for TaxJar on the current company's time and equipment, which would in many cases make the TaxJar code the intellectual property of the former company.

This company sounds terrible. You have to be hazed by all the other brogrammers at the end after doing 80-160 hrs of unpaid work, ridiculous:

https://life.taxjar.com/taxjar-traditions/

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