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Ask HN: Do you skip phone interviews for Google/FB/Tier-1 company engineers?

19 points by pradeep_m ↗ HN
I am assuming that phone screens/interviews are primarily to weed out obviously bad/not a good fit engineers. Also, I have heard that most startups/companies would skip phone interviews for an engineer from a Tier-1 company because they are likely to do well at an onsite interview (They are essentially pre-vetted by their previous company is the reason I have heard from hiring managers).

Are there caveats to this? Only skip phone interviews for engineers above a certain level? Phone interviews are primarily used for selling the candidate on the company/opportunity/role and not as much of a technical "interview"?

21 comments

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mooreds
I think it is good to have the same hiring process for every candidate, no matter where they are from. This will help you avoid unconscious bias.

Also, don't forget that even if an engineer is from a tier 1 company, they may not be a fit for your startup (based on technology, domain or something else) and a phone screen is the lowest cost way to determine that.

ng12
No. The only people who get a free pass are those who come with a glowing referral. No other metric is reliable -- I've seen people fail the phone screen from every "Big N" company. Google/FB/etc are just too big and hire too many people to draw a meaningful correlation.
freestockoption
I like to think that I am interviewing the person and not the company. And the person defines the engineer and not the company they work for.

I try to treat everyone the same, if nothing else, but to have a baseline. Of course, I'm biased, but more towards referrals.

This makes me wonder, do some people treat those coming from a tier-100000000 company differently? Are there companies that someone might work for that would have a negative effect on them?

mars4rp
it certainly does, I worked for the past 2 years for state of California, I needed the low pressure job to work on my startup. now that it is not taking off I started to apply, but I am not getting even a phone interview!!! so negative effect defiantly exist!
twunde
It's a lot easier to get your foot in the door when you're coming from a Google/FB/etc. In general, there's a presumption that you have been exposed and followed good practices and have a fairly strong technical background, although it's worth double-checking on some of those. More importantly, if you've worked for a company that I know follows bad practices or where other candidates I've interviewed have really flopped, you'll be tested a bit more than normal. There are really very few of the latter thankfully.
[dead] anon4728
Standardizing the process is crucial: due-diligence, questions, de-biasing, ranking and so on.
rl3
Tier 1 companies are huge. Slacking and incompetence alike can exist in their engineering departments, even if rare.

As such, deviating from normal hiring practices on account of a candidate's company is a bad idea.

Remember that Big Head was employed by Hooli.

nailer
Phone screen logarithmically.

- Ask a level 1 question

- Follow with a level 10 question of they get it right

- Follow with a level 1000 question you don't know the answer to if they get that right too.

If you learn something from them in their level 1000 answer that's a strong hire!

Also: there are bad programmers at Google, there probably are at FB too. There are some brilliant ones but don't take it for granted.

mrits
Wouldn't that be exponential and not logarithmic?
nailer
It would but it's too late for me to delete the comment! #facepalm
estomagordo
Dude,

You failed the level 1 question.

nailer
lol I did. Never HN when fatigued.
muzani
Phone interviews are best for filtering for culture and personality fit. I certainly wouldn't ask a coding question on the phone, because there's a lot of muscle memory involved in coding.

I would only do phone interviews on someone completely faceless, perhaps from a job site. About 80% of people have just fine personalities.

It's usually easier to tell a person's personality by stalking them on social media. You probably just want to avoid the overwhelmingly negative or egoistic people.

jomkr
Having Google on resume != worked at Google.
johnpython
We dont hire engineers from Google/Facebook/Apple, primarily because they are too expensive, but also due to culture fit.
mayank
If you think all Google/FB/Apple engineers represent a monoculture, you're leaving a lot of intellectually diverse talent on the table.

Source: former google/fb engineer, can assure you there's no one single "type" or culture.

nylonstrung
I'm guessing it's your culture that's the issue if it is uniformly incompatible with employees from 3 of the most successful tech companies of all time.
SmellTheGlove
Nope. I rarely skip phone interviews - I might do it if it's a referral from someone I know really well and the candidate is local or in-town, but over the past 5 years that is the only circumstance that I can remember skipping that step.

While I'm not and haven't worked in a "top tier" tech company, I've spent my entire career in other "top tier" companies in my industry, as well as with a highly regarded consulting firm. Those experiences have taught me that people I don't want to work with can come from or be anywhere. If I don't already know you, or trust someone else that really knows you, we're going to talk on the phone.

I'll do a cursory walk thorough your experience, since we'll focus on that if we move to on-site, but I'll spend 30-60 minutes talking to you. I'm looking for solid communication ability primarily, using stories about motivation, goals, how you work alone and with others, team experiences, etc. This part is always the candidate's to "lose" more than me actively trying to screen out - I'll bring you on site if we have a good conversation and I walk away with an understanding of your story and a mutual agreement that you're in the ballpark for the role.

Plus, as others have pointed out in the thread, it is good to have a consistent process for all candidates. Not just to avoid unconscious bias, but to have the right data points in the decision. I'm not doing you (or me) any favors by skipping the phone screen, if at the end I get down to two very technically strong candidates, but I also know that the one I phone screened has a solid ability to communicate over the phone (which is a good proxy for working across campuses and such). Then I have to decide if I go back and do a phone interview with you, which is awkward after the on-site or just hire the other person.

syllogism
Won't that mess up the calibration of your hiring process?

If you only apply the phone screen to the candidates you have no information about, you'll never know whether your phone screen is returning accurate information.