Is there really a reason why software jobs can't hire in a blue-collar fashion where there's a background/experience + sanity check and a subsequent trial period? Even looking beyond that, is there any similar profession where interviews like these take place?
I'm starting to think this may be in part be related to the phenomenon of bullshit jobs. Basically that people in administrative roles need to have something to do, and as such, the interviews themselves have over time expanded to as much as multiple days.
Clearly interviews are flawed. But I've worked with warm bodies hired through h1b-abuse programs and no matter how much they claim to know about something, a lot of them are just bullshiters. I would never want to work at a place where people with their level of skills could join the regular teams as peers.
I see whiteboarding simply as a logical statistical filtering mechanism. Do they filter out people that are lazy or have difficult personalities? No. But at the difficulty level of places like Google they filter out people who are really bad at programming (which there are a lot of) every single time. They also happen to filter out people who are good at programming too, but enough pass the whiteboarding that the organization can hire to meet their needs, so they don't care that maybe applicant X didn't pass. High false negative rate, low false positive rate
Clearly there's room for pragmatism for such as interns, newly graduated, relocations etc.
Honestly, I think they're primarily filtering out based on themselves as the target image.
Also, I see no reason not to combine both a background check and a technical interview. You have no way of knowing what someone's actual contributions to a previous software project are, even with a background check; maybe they were about as productive as an observer even if they understood the project at a high enough level to explain it.
Based on some conversations with friends it sounds like Big 4 consulting is similar. The behavioral questions are the same, and instead of coding they have "case questions".
>No consulting interview would be complete without case interview questions that test a candidate's ability to think strategically about problems...make it a conversation, and explain every step of your thinking/process along the way. Again: showing that you can arrive at a solution after thoughtful questioning and analysis is far more important in these questions than being able to throw out a brilliant new strategy on the fly, so focus on the process, and allow it to lead you to a solution.
[1] http://www.vault.com/blog/interviewing/26-interview-question...
Is it different outside of western Europe in terms of trial periods? We (afaik) always have a trial period: in the Netherlands it's typically 1-2 months, in Germany it's typically 3-6 months; either way, there is always a period where both parties can fire the other with zero to two weeks notice. It is not the norm to be fired in that time, but it happens (from my limited anecdotal evidence, I'd estimate one in 10-30 hires, and most of the time both parties agree it's not a good fit).
Anyway, almost all jobs where I live comes with a trial period of max 6 months, albeit negotiable. So it seems to work.
About trial periods, there are places that do those, and a lot of people hate it. There is a lot of risk involved in leaving a permanent gig to "try out" for another one. If they let you go at the end of the trial period then you're out on your ass. I personally would never do this if I were already employed- there's nothing in it for me but downside.
But more broadly, lots of places try these different avenues for hiring and inevitably some large portion of potential employees hate it.
Try doing take-home tests? Well, those are biased toward people with more free time, so obviously you're discriminating against people who have children. Interviews using Coderpad? Now you're discriminating against people who get anxious in the moment and need more time to think.
This is not easy or simple.
Assuming that you're American, what do you even mean by the risk of a trial? Aren't you guys on a permanent trial period with your labour laws?
