To me a bigger red flag is if someone has the time and desperation to put up with this kind of bullshit. Good professionals love money and respect.
Edit: IMHO the "unicorn" is someone who is both competent and spineless, which to me sounds like the candidate this article is asking you to find.
In 90% of the positions I have ever been in, an employer has needed/wanted just that.
Ouch, the cynicism here is astounding. Speaking for myself, I would love to delve into a challenge, like, cracking a small program [1], even if it gets me nothing because this, in itself, is so exciting.
This challenge seems great to get some, as the link refers to "part-time CS student" employees.
I read the original article as aimed at an employer who is trying to find an alternative to just seeking out "miracle" employees, for these people part timers with no experience are probably not what they need.
If you need someone with experience who's likely already working in the field, taking time and concentration energy away from current work/personal projects/family/life is a much harder sell.
It would be difficult to find a winning candidate who is unemployed, or who is employed and has the bandwidth to come in during office hours and work on a project with your team. That being said, performance on a paid "evening hours" consulting project would be a very good hiring metric that I think more companies should use.
Yes - please stop asking candidates to do this. I mean it's great that this particular company will offer to pay you for your time - but I've seen some companies require a candidate to come in and work for free for a day.
The last job application I was asked to take a 3 hour phone interview back-to-back (remote job). It just seems disrespectful that you would ask someone to be on the phone for half the day just for the possibility that they might get the job. I don't know about you guys - but if I disappeared for 3 hours from my job someone might be a little annoyed. I'm not saying to interview people - but break it out into smaller chunks throughout the week. Could I have asked this company to do that? Probably - but there were other red flags that suggested I stay away.
The vast majority of jobs require coming in for a half-day or day of interviews for the possibility of getting a job. I agree with your point about doing projects for free but a block of interviews is pretty normal. If they're by phone anyway, sure they could be spread out but most companies will have at least some interviews in-person.
You end up with this bizarre recruiting process, which I have seen many times, where some company approaches me about working for them because I am one of the best and most experienced in my field, and once I agree to talk to them they treat me like some idiot developer who rolled in off the street. The idea that they would waste a bunch of my time "challenging" me, paid or not, is just bizarre.
I can see it for developers with little experience. But no sane person wants to build a team with nothing but inexperienced developers which means you need to learn how to recruit highly skilled software engineers. The outlined process is a recipe for annoying them.
I'm not sure exactly what it's replacing, because those words are equally meaningless. As Humpty Dumpty would put it, it means exactly what the speaker wants it to mean, no more, no less. Just add it to the list:
- *unicorn*
- rockstar
- ninja
- diamond
- 10X
- 6-sigma
- Jedi
- guru
- wizard
- unobtainium
...
The article this industry needs is one on how to build an above-median team from near-median employees without wasting any time on bullshit HR fantasies.
I vote that every time we meet anyone who talks as if they think this way, we take out our smartphones and call up the My Little Pony song on YouTube until they learn to stop that shit.