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Discussion on: 10 Hiring Practices That Will Keep Me From Working for You

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joshuamil profile image
Joshua Miller • Edited

"I would recommend that everyone make their own list of interviewing red flags"

It would be impossible as an employer to conduct an interview that would be "fair" to all candidates if everyone made up their own list of "red flags" and held companies accountable to their unknown set of arbitrary rules.

A lot of the things you covered above are minor inconveniences at best rather than "red flags". Having multiple interviews happens because teams are busy, schedules are tight, and there's more to finding a good candidate than knowing whether or not they can code. There are loads of great engineers who are lousy co-workers. Small companies (and large ones too, really) need to be careful about hiring people who are going to be disruptive to their teams. Yeah, it's kind of annoying to have a few interviews, but it's even more annoying to not spend enough time up-front and make a decision that's wrong for either or both parties.

As for HR Screens, there are lots of reasons that those are really useful for companies. An astonishing number of people simply lie on their resumes. Instead of taking the technical team away from work to find that out, an up-front screen can catch things like that. If you're looking for someone who's good with clients, and they fumble through a phone screen with HR, then you haven't wasted your tech team's time. If you want to discuss salary up-front to ensure there's alignment, then an HR Screen is useful. You might be 100% on the up-and-up, and in that case, the screen seems worthless to you, but HR Screens filter out huge numbers of unqualified candidates. They are a reaction to the reality of the job market.

CEO's, CTO's, etc. have better things to focus on than individual hires. Hopefully, they're driving the 5-10+ year vision of a company and not micromanaging every hire. If you have to have a C-level executive present to answer a question from a prospective engineer then something's very broken. Imagine how much time leaders would spend just sitting in interviews, when would they actually lead their companies? Additionally, you say you don't want to do an on-site interview (which I am totally in agreement with) but then you want to require a C-level exec to be present. That's somewhat of a double standard.

A lot of these things I can get behind (whiteboards, group interviews, etc.) but some of this stuff is a bit over-the-top and very much targeted to a specific type of company of a very specific size. That's fine of course, it's your list and your career, and it seems to be working for you. It's just not great advice for others who are trying to land a job.

Hiring very much is a two-way street. Why come to that intersection carrying loads of obstacles?

It's ironic because this is the kind of list of demands that results in the need for HR Screens at a lot of companies. There's a box that says "Is this person super difficult to deal with?" and it gets checked "yes" before the engineers ever bother to take time out to speak with you.

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jacobherrington profile image
Jacob Herrington (he/him)

There's a box that says "Is this person super difficult to deal with?" and it gets checked "yes" before the engineers ever bother to take time out to speak with you.

I would never apply.

Thanks for sharing! 🤠