I’m agree, design problems are indeed a good way to assess many things about a candidate. It works really well when you have a funnel of relevant and motivated people. Sourcing such funnel is harder than many realize. Would love to hear your perspective on how startups do it in today’s market.
I've spent countless hours interviewing prospects and industry pros about hiring engineers and I have a pretty good idea of how it is done at companies across full spectrum of size, funding, locations, etc.
A few interesting things I've learned:
Why so many candidates get ghosted these days.
How and why people cheat on interviews. (#cheatTech)
What strategies work best for attracting best talent based on market.
When recruiters add value - and when they don’t.
I have a hypothesis that my product would be most useful to companies that are reluctant to spend large sums on recruiter fees or HR tools. My goal is to help them delay this step for as long as possible.
If you are hiring engineers at a company like this, I would love to talk to you! In exchange for your insight, I will share what I know about building robust hiring pipelines.
Drop me a line here:
[email protected] and I will share my calendly.
"optics". when used instead of "perception". As in "Blah Blah created bad optics for our department".
"head count" when used by mid-level managers, who want to look cool, instead of word "position" or "open position". Annoys me when I hear: "We have 3 open head-counts" - we are not cattle, we are people.
These companies have their own often quite robust recruiting pipelines, which are far more effective and predictable than posting an opening on their jobs page.
Think about it this way: your task is to have an inflow of X engineers / year. You can:
a) pay recruiters to do whatever they do to bring you candidates that match a certain spec.
b) build relationships with local campuses and recruit smart new grads, train them, and turn them into very capable engineers in a few years.
c) host various tech events and do the "come work for us" speech every now and then.
d) post a job on the jobs page.
In a long run (and they operate with this perspective in mind) you have way more control over your outcomes with options a-c. If you want more people on the output - you commit more money, effort, etc to each pipeline, and you will get your increased quantity. With the jobs page - all you can do is post and hope.
So it is no surprise to me that jobs pages get stale sometimes. Don't let that discourage you from applying to large companies. Instead, learn to play by their rules. Reach out to recruiters at those companies. Often those guys can be way more helpful than your friend engineer. Go to the talks they host, eat free pizza, socialize :)
That being said, there are some big companies out there that outsource their recruiting entirely, so it is really hard to find a recruiter that would help you. There are also big companies that don't host any talks or meetups. So if that's the case - don't waste your time and skip em - its their loss.