One Company's Week-Long Interview Process

jfruh writes "What's the longest tech interview you've had to sit through — two hours? Eight? Ruby on Rails devs who want to work for Hashrocket need to travel to Florida and do pair-programming on real projects for a week before they can be hired. The upside is that you'll be put up in a beachfront condo for the week with your significant other; the downside is that you'll be doing real work for a week for little or no pay and no guarantee of a job slot."

Comments

Perhaps not such a bad idea

[RogueyWon]

I've been through (and passed) a 2-day assessment centre before, when applying for my first "proper" job. That included exercises designed to simulate the work I'd be doing on appointment - but there's always going to be a degree of artificiality around exercises like that.

It's hugely important to get recruitment right, as a wrong call can have consequences that last months or years. We've all seen cases of the alleged saviour of the universe who gets recruited, only to turn out to be a mediocre employee who trundles along just above the point at which it's worth getting rid of him. Set against that, a week long scrutiny process like this has some merits.

The obvious downside is that by definition, it's pretty much limiting the pool of applicants to those not already in employment. People already working full time will likely struggle to vanish for a full week, particularly if they have family committments that place demands on their vacation time.

They've Been Doing This For Years

[Jane Q. Public]

I know somebody who did this, about 4 years ago.

The ironic thing -- or funny, I suppose, depending on your point of view -- is that Hashrocket did not hire him. He's one of the best programmers I know (I know a lot), and he was also quite familiar with their development process. He taught it in college.

I think it's a pretty good bet that Hashrocket made a mistake in his case. He went on to work for other prestigious companies.

Re:This is too much

[vlm]

The only people that would be able to apply are people who are unemployed.

"I can't believe I wasted 10% of my annual vacation days on this stinking interview" Been there done that.

Re:Probably illegal.

[Anonymous Coward]

1 week beachfront condo rental is compensation. As long as that is over minimum wage (~$300/wk at $7.35/hr), then it's probably legal.

Re:Sounds like a good idea

[Karlt1]

Unless the company pays way above market rates, why would I go through this? I can understand if you're fresh out of college trying to prove yourself, but otherwise, I would skip it.

It's not like it's a prestigious company.

Re:The real downside.

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest I know a lot of good developers that primarily use scripting languages (Ruby, PHP, Python, etc) for their day jobs. They know they aren't the best languages ever developed, but they have fun writing stuff in them and get paid a good amount, because of their skill level. They could tell you exactly how the language works internally as well if you ask them. Not all of the people who write in scripting languages are bad.

Paid contract?

[i_ate_god]

I had an interview for an out of city employer. It resulted in me being given a PAID two week contract to see if I'm worth hiring. I forget what it was I made, but I was paid $2000.

that $2000 was part of my moving expenses if I was hired, and if I was not, I still got $2000, because I signed a contract stating if I finished the work on time, I get $2000.

This seemed like a good way to do things and benefits both the company and myself. I get money, company gets proof I can not only code, but be professional (meetings on time, meeting deadlines, etc).

Re:We don't have an HR department

[Kjella]

This is obviously of benefit to the employer, but also to the prospective employee.

Not really, if you're a weak candidate you might get "lucky", if you're a strong candidate your true value will probably show faster by simply going to more interviews - in fact some of them may overvalue you as well. It's not nearly as bad for you to be passed up for a job that you "should have" gotten as an employer stuck with a lemon hire. The only reason I'd go with this is because I was really desperate that there was this job or no job or that I really, really wanted to work for this company. Since the latter is not the case, I suspect it's a lot of the former and those are not the good candidates. And that doesn't include the possibility of a scam, that they're only using you for free labor with no intent to hire.