They seem to be forgetting that potential engineers are interviewing them just as much as they're interviewing the engineers -- and such a crazy up-front time commitment is a sure way to weed out the engineers who have better things to do with their time.
This may be scalable for the company, but it certainly isn't scalable for engineers looking for jobs at multiple companies.
"We are serious about who we hire, so we're careful about who we do hire. However, we realise you're interviewing us as much as we are you, so we're equally as serious about showing respect for your time. We really appreciate it, so we'll pay you $m/hour while you complete this tests. We think these three tests should take a competent engineer around n hours to complete, so we'll pay you a max of $m*n for completing the process.
Good luck!"
As the OP highlighted hiring is an expensive process (expensive engineers interviewing candidates, double whammy of them not working on product while interviewing), it could be a lot cheaper to just automate some of the process, but make it more humane by compensating the interviewee.
There is a definite balance to strike between the humanity and scalability aspects, but I think it's an interesting idea.
Unfortunately, it wreaked havoc with the candidate's schedule, especially if they had another job, and took too long to get to a pass/fail for them.
The current process let's the candidate work on a production problem, but at a time of their choosing and on their own schedule. It also gets feedback to them much sooner, within a half hour or 3 hours.
We've automated the technical skills part of it. Hiring at Instacart isn't a completely automated, no personal interaction, process.
In between the candidate applying and the technical challenges is usually a phone call where we talk to the candidate to make sure we're on the same page. We find out what their goals are and if we can help. We explain how we work, and see if they'll like it. We explain the hiring process. We answer questions they have about us.
If we're both happy at the end of the call then we move them into the automated process.
"unable to implement a simple linked list"
"Vet the technical competency of full stack rails engineers..."3 hrs of backend/algo testing? rolleyes
4 hrs of frontend? rolleyes
I hope they enjoyed tooting their own horn, yet another place I know to avoid bothering to interview at.
Why didn't the engineers sit around the room and say, "Why do only 1 of 100 candidates that we interview meet our bar? Are we sourcing the right people?" or "Why does it take us 8 hours of someones engineering time to figure out if we want them to meet the team?".
Asking the best candidates–the ones you really want to hire–to do a full day of work just to be able to meet the team is insanity.
Full disclosure: Founder of Mighty Spring (https://www.mightyspring.com) — we're solving exactly these sorts of problems (for both companies and candidates) by turning a truly great recruiting interaction into a web service. Invites are sent out regularly.
TL; DR version:
It isn't fair to throw a company out of a windows because they are serious about their hiring process. It totally depends on their company's growth need! First bullet point is extremely fair but the rest aren't and I agree on that.
Longer version: A lot of hackathon projects become startups and many of them don't require any algorithms. They can use libraries from Python and Ruby to do things they want to do. They can get away with a couple n^3 in their code and customers are okay as long as the service is stable.
And then there are startups out there building products using real algorithms that really require the knowledge of graph and sorting, dynamic programming and etc. If they need an engineer that can build on top of existing algorithms, then that's what they need.
I was a former intern at Mozilla and my interview was very simple and I really appreciate that. But what I do doesn't require me to know any sophisticated algorithm. I can survive with knowing Python and getting around with my brain. But interns on Firefox, servo and Rust probably had to face harder interviews, more tedious algorithmic types (although I heard most of those are basic too, like linked list and talk about C++).
I am also looking for new internship this winter and I fear these algorithmic interviews too, but some companies have serious need and they need people who can at least implement a linked list is important. I don't bother to read what their needs are.
I did roll my eyes when I looked at "3 hrs", "4hrs". That's a lot. But the first item: you don't even know how to write a linked list using your favorite language? Then that's the end. Linked list is not hard - you are not writing in C++ in this case.
The 7.5 hr is a different story, but I won't trash at the first point.
1. How long it has been since you graduated from college. The further away the less likely you will remember how to do it, because you will never do it after college.
or
2. How often you have interviewed for other positions, because that is the exception to 1.
Only something along the commitment of the 0.5-1hr "weed out" question can/should be done remotely.
If you're going to require people to do ~7 hrs of tests, that had better be at the office, pairing, with other folks (and at least give them a free breakfast/lunch/dinner!). 7 hrs while working a 40hr (or more!) week is a pretty hefty commitment, and I see no reason why that should be solely the burden of the candidate.
You should be able to trust one or two short, simple weed-out conversations (I tend to do one 30 minute "deal-breaker" discussion on non-tech stuff {make sure their and our deal-breakers are met}, then one about 1hr tech screen {fizzbuzz-sorts of things, but more diagnostic}).
After that, you should have a general sense of whether or not they are a) smart and b) can get stuff done. From there, you need to take a risk and bring them in. What is proposed is not fair to the candidate.
Also, (explicitly) timed coding tests imply that you don't really trust the candidate. Of course they could be lying when you casually ask how much time it took (or whether they got any help), but the few who go that route will probably quickly test out your other filters.
The trust signal, meanwhile, takes a lot of care and consideration to cultivate -- and shouldn't be discounted lightly.
If you see the constraints defined in the post - the goal is to have the interview be remote so that the candidate can do this wherever and whenever they want. And, the tests are specifically designed to be not longer than 4 hours long each. Perhaps what wasn't clear is that this is not in a single session.
Interviews can go for as long as a week - really depends on the candidate's schedule.
We've tried conversations as well, but unfortunately, it is very difficult to objectively measure them into what will make the candidate successful at the company (interested to learn how you do it).
Why would anyone want to work with amazing engineers?
You shouldn't be hiring people because they have experience that matches your tech stack solely because they'll kick ass on the first week.
You should be hiring people that will kick ass 3 weeks in, and a year from now, and 5 years from now -- regardless of whether or not they currently have competence in the nitty gritty details of whatever libwidget you use at this exact moment.
We don't agree with brainteaser interviews. Having someone build a made up project would be just as bad as a brainteaser. We wouldn't do that to a candidate.
Why not provide the potential candidate with some actual work that you need done?
I'd have to say that's my favorite thing about this process. All too often applicants go away with no idea about what exactly why they weren't a good fit. If someone gets rejected, the least you can do for them is to tell them how, so they can improve themselves.
I've had luck emailing after an unsuccessful interview and saying "Thank you for the opportunity. Informally, is there anything I can work on so that I could be a successful candidate in the future?"
Everyone wants rockstars. But very few companies are worthy.
As if, you know, the candidates don't also have a "bar" that companies have to muster up to. Yet if a candidate where to write a blog post musing that "only 1 in 100 qualified meet my bar", you probably wouldn't want to work with them.
I decided at the time that I would never do this again, and that's still more or less the case. I might be willing to make a deal - if someone from the company is willing to put a workday into one of my open source projects, even just trying it out and writing up the experience, I might be willing to spend a workday on their programming assignment.
Or, of course, if my family was starving and I was unemployed, I'd do it.
One huge difference here - they do say they'll give detailed feedback. If I had gotten detailed feedback on my programming assignment instead of crickets chirping for a month and then a recruiter call with a one-sentence brush off, that would have taken quite a bit of the edge off. I do give them credit for this.
But still, they are mainly looking for a way to use a candidate's time to their own at an 8:1 ratio. For me, this is a "no apply" condition.
If we assume that only 1 in 100 qualified engineers meets our bar ..
Really?
The technical portion of the interview process described here is receiving a lot of well-deserved criticism, but I feel this is worth pointing out as well because it's another example of how out-of-touch this company seems to be.
Any experienced candidate knows The Rule (don't drink during the interview process, even at a social event), so an employer that intentionally puts a prospective employee in the position where he or she is effectively asked to do so is incredibly unthoughtful. And foolish to boot, as this could very well become a legal liability.
In the end you rather want to hire a brilliant engineer with little experience in the desired technology stack than a mediocre developer that is able to pass your automated tests because he has worked with the technology for years.
You might even get a PR or two. :)
As long as this is made clear in the interview, I see no problem with this process.
Yes. One more non-arrogant company.