Ask HN: What is the worst part of interviewing?
I've done 15 interviews this past month. I have 3 offers, and 7 are still ongoing.
The worst part for me, is when you are rejected and aren't given a reason as to why. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Especially when it appears things are going well or you dedicate an entire day at their company doing an interview.
31 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadSetting aside any moral arguments, it does benefit the company's bottom line too - hiring talented people is an important thing for companies, so it deserves to have some attention paid to the flow from beginning to end.
My operating theory is that companies fail to provide prompt feedback not for any other reason other than apathy or a lack of attention to creating a good process, and not from some strategic deliberation around keeping options open. So failing to provide the feedback is a sign that the company is not putting the proper attention to the overall hiring process.
That's not what companies think.
And a candidate that thinks of applying to a position knows nothing about the company's willingness to give feedback.
How the hiring process functions is a factor in where I choose to apply. For example Google has a bad rep on this - supposedly it frequently takes months for them to make a decision. As a result I'd never consider applying there.
worse is when you are not even told you were rejected. i consider it a most profound disrespect, specially after all the time and effort you've put
Or invited to an on-site at a specific time, then no one answers you, and there's no actual interview when you get to their location?
Or passing the interview process, them telling X salary was OK, then when it comes to the actual offer, they offer X/2 salary?
I was referred to a company in SF. Received a phone screen from the recruiter and from the start it seemed like she was disinterested. Instead of just ending it early she said she will reach back and set up a technical phone interview with one of the engineers. I looked on glassdoor and it seems that the other candidates got the same experience I received.
If I was sourced through an internal referral and my resume still doesn't meet your company's expectations, please just go ahead and reject me. Don't waste my time. Salesforce and Uber rejected me after an internal referral and I respect 100% them for not wasting my time.
Or the place that refused to give me a written offer until I agreed verbally.
I'm thinking of writing a website that requires the employer to give feedback. Else the site will list the bad employers.
Or it requires the employer to pay upfront per candidate who applies, and they employer gets a full refund if they give full feedback.
If I were HR I'd be running away from this, because of liability, which is probably why employers don't give feedback at interviews. So the site will require candidates to sign away their rights of of suing the employer over the interview process.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13536957
What'd y'all think?
Do you see other ways of getting feedback?
Job hunting and car shopping are very similar. It's all about smiling during the sale, then if you don't buy rudeness takes over. They're already onto the next customer. It's business my friend... just get over it and move on, there are a lot of opportunities out there and the hiring process is extremely subjective. I got rejected at round one from tiny startups while working my but off and landing jobs at the best companies in our field. So, don't get married to a company. They're hurting themselves by acting like that...
- Thought process/multiple solutions/tradeoffs (at the expense of writing awesome code in time and talking about what I am really good at)
- Great code and correct syntax (at the expense of tradeoff discussions and talking about what I'm really good at)
- Talking about what I am really good at (at the expense of tradeoff discussions and beautiful code)
It's really hard to gauge what the interviewer expects. Sometimes, even when they say what they are looking for, it's not really true and they are deluding themselves. Eg: Claiming that they want to see how I think, but reality is, without an optimal solution with good code, they'll just reject me (despite having given multiple answers, tradeoffs etc.)
Super frustrating.
I like to ask them what they think their skill level is with something I'm familiar with, then throw a few questions at them to figure out where I feel like they are. This is especially important when I'm trying to get someone on-board with a skill set my team doesn't have but we really needs some help in.
I interviewed with a company recently where, after sending links to extensive amounts of open-source code, was asked to three different take-home-style tests of things like calculate the fewest number of steps to sort these things but you have to follow these arbitrary rules, then during the interview they also wanted to do some tests about implementing low level lanugauge/library type features while they're on the other end of a hangout going "ahh", "ooop", "ehhhh", "sssssshhh" every time you make a typo.
It's especially bad when you have to jump through hoops (coding challenges or whatever) and afterwards, despite the effort, end up with a similarly uninformed opinion of the candidate's ability.
If you think I'm going to reinvent mergesort as part of my job for this company you are utterly mistaken and do not even understand what job you're interviewing me for.