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Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

Man, this makes me happy to hear. I'm CTO at a small startup, so hiring is crucial. We've worked really hard to optimize the recruiting process to make it easy on candidates, but it's been hard to know how much it matters.

To filter out the total idiots, I ask people to give me a one-paragraph answer to one of 5 technical-ish questions. That lets me spend plenty of time on the people that do make it through. I try to reply to all applications personally within 24 hours. Interviews take scheduling priority over pretty much anything else. We meet right after interviewing someone and try to get them an answer either way within a day.

If folks have other things they like (or hate) about hiring processes, I'd love to hear about it. We really want to get this right.

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> I try to reply to all applications personally within 24 hours.

With that, you've addressed my biggest issue with the ordinary hiring process: Complete Lack of Feedback. When I was fresh (or nearly) out of college in 2003, the only responses I received were from the CMU Robotics Lab. And while they were "we're not interested" replies, they at least had a real signature on them. Nothing else I applied for produced even as much as an automated response - print, e-mail, phone, nothing. (My options and interests at the time were admitedly a bit too narrow, and geography worked harshly against me.)

Worse yet is when you interview somewhere and then never hear back. Thankfully that only happened once to me.

Otherwise it really depends on the group and the culture. It doesn't bother me when Megacorps use standardized tests or puzzles (large or popular groups need some sort of advanced filter), but I prefer the hiring process at smaller companies to be more personal.

>To filter out the total idiots, I ask people to give me a one-paragraph answer to one of 5 technical-ish questions.

from my recent job change (several offers). After supposedly reading my resume and after half an hour on the phone the company's staff recruiter asked me to write a paragraph on how i see my fit to the company. It became immediately obvious to me that there is no fit. Somehow that wasn't obvious for him. Next day he's calling and emailing - they really like to talk with me in-house and where is the paragraph? Couple days later - the same. Day after that - they really like to talk with me in-house. The paragraph somehow isn't mentioned anymore. Good luck guys. I hope you find the programmer(s) with a hobby for essay writing.

A paragraph isn't an essay. Even though essay writing isn't a crucial skill for programmers, clear and effective English writing often is, especially when you need to explain technical issues to non-technical people. Besides, good writing ability is often a pretty good indicator of general, well-rounded intelligence.

man, i'm not arguing about the importance of the essay writing skills (this is my weak one, and i know how important it is). My point is about when in the process you make candidates hopping through the hoops and the height and the number of the hoops. I don't have enough time to jump through all the hoops of all the employers that early in the process. It is like in marketing process - awareness, consideration, preference, action, loyalty - insisting and expecting action (buy) immediately at or instead of awareness.

Anyway, the process of filling a job vacancy is about mutual fit. Somebody, who'd like the process would obviously be a better fit to that company culture than me, so the filter does work.

Yeah, it sounds like they don't care about that, which is lame. And honestly, asking for a paragraph after you've talked with somebody seems weird.

In my case, it's basically a Turing test. I ask for it along with the resume link. It's just to weed out the obvious dolts. (Who, as somebody else mentioned, are unfortunately 90% of the applicants.) The questions I use are here: http://needfeed.com/about/jobs

I'm pretty sure that anybody would want to hire could toss off an answer to one of those in 5 minutes. Which, given that I'm going to spend 10 or 15 minutes reading their resume, their blog, and (hopefully) their open-source code, seems like a fair trade.

Actually, that debacle is one of the reasons why I decided that my next job would be at a startup. So yes, it definitely matters.

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