HN user
That is a fair point, thank you for commenting.
Discussing how many no’s it should take to reject a candidate is a worthwhile discussion. I can override specific no’s with good reason at my company, but not all companies have that.
My broader point is that this is a specific issue with the process we can iterate on. We don’t need to throw out the whole process.
I think we should agree to disagree. We both seem to like our own process and see major flaws with the other’s. The best solution is to work at different companies.
How does me being okay with a smaller role in the overall hiring process equate to me wanting to lord over people? I’m a hiring manager, it’s literally my job to pick people to hire. I’d rather have the opinions of my colleagues in addition to my own.
My response was in good faith, and yours is not.
I’m not saying you’re categorically wrong, but this doesn’t match with my experience, at all. If you’re an HM and this works for you and your company, great, but the HMs responding here don’t agree.
The processes you are questioning scale to thousands of people with varying backgrounds. It’s not an accident all of these companies do this. Your process places extreme trust in one group of people. It’s just so risky.
Also, resumes are mostly bullshit, IMO. Reference checks are complete bullshit, IMO. I’ve worked with my buddies at startups (who get lofty titles) and just have them give me reference checks. Other references have asked me for call scripts.
Also keep in mind that most of these big tech jobs are highly competitive. Your solution eventually requires a coin toss if you have limited spots. There’s only so much data you can collect from the process you propose. The natural thing is to then assess each candidate a bit more until you’re confident you’ve picked the right one. And then you’re here.
You’re asking someone to quit their job to maybe get this new job. And you won’t know for months so all your other offers are gone. So if it doesn’t work out, you’re unemployed with no prospects. Sounds terrible.
I’d take 15 interviews before taking that risk.
I’m a HM at a big tech company with this format as well. Honestly, I really like it. I don’t want to hire the wrong person, it’s expensive and it makes my job awful for a while. It’s great getting data points on several programming interviews, system design, etc. That makes my sell interview so much easier because I can trust the process to assess their technical skills. You need multiple people because you’re constantly training up new people and need to calibrate everyone fairly.
Scaling any process to thousands of people is always hard.
Is it annoying for candidates? Yeah, but we pay you a lot of money, and it does actually work for us. Is it perfect? No, but it does work.
“Hire and Fire fast” doesn’t actually work well if you want to give people a chance to succeed. Also people tend to keep low performers around too long. Best to avoid this as much as possible.