I did some free lance interviewing for one of these types of companies a few years ago. The theory is, get a bunch of well qualified senior technical types to conduct anonymous phone interviews and do a general technical screening.
In practice... it was very low paying, boring, and often irritating. There were some really unqualified people I had to interview and it was agonizing.
I don't see this model as working very well. I didn't work for the employer, so I couldn't really represent them or cut the applicant any slack. I could only ask them canned questions. I tried my best, but I have no idea whether the results were usable.
I wonder what kind of people these employers ended up getting, when they outsourced their interviewing process like this.
Thanks for the feedback! Interviewing is definitely not always pleasant. In general, the way I picture interviewers on this service is more of an opt-in thing ("oh, I have an extra hour tonight, I can definitely do an interview for $150") rather than a full-time freelancing commitment.
If you do have technical people in-house, I think outsourcing the initial screens is ok but I'd strongly recommend having in-house engineers doing the subsequent interviews. A service like this is best positioned for "first steps" - ie phone interviews.
You hit the nail on the head:) We have been tackling the same concept over at Honeit.com and see a lot of value in this space. Would love to swap stories if up for a coffee chat in the bay.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 22.2 ms ] threadIn practice... it was very low paying, boring, and often irritating. There were some really unqualified people I had to interview and it was agonizing.
I don't see this model as working very well. I didn't work for the employer, so I couldn't really represent them or cut the applicant any slack. I could only ask them canned questions. I tried my best, but I have no idea whether the results were usable.
I wonder what kind of people these employers ended up getting, when they outsourced their interviewing process like this.
If you do have technical people in-house, I think outsourcing the initial screens is ok but I'd strongly recommend having in-house engineers doing the subsequent interviews. A service like this is best positioned for "first steps" - ie phone interviews.
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