Thread by @neutronsNeurons

Story time.

SharpestMinds has a lot of hiring partners (>200). Today I'm going to talk about one of them.

Let's call them Moonshot Labs.

Moonshot Labs does cutting-edge AI research.

Moonshot Labs also does something very special.

1/ Like every other company, Moonshot Labs likes to hire hugely talented people.

Unlike every other company, Moonshot Labs likes to hire people who have trouble passing standard engineering interviews.

2/ There are lots of reasons why people have trouble passing standard engineering interviews.

Maybe they're on the spectrum.

Maybe they get nervous around people they don't know.

Maybe their life experience just hasn't prepared them for that ritual.

3/ What all those reasons have in common is that they have little to do with actual engineering skill.

4/ Can you sort a linked list on a whiteboard? Moonshot Labs doesn't care.

Can you build a world-class deep learning model with great modular code? Moonshot Labs would like to talk to you.

5/ Checking if you can sort a linked list is pretty easy. Checking if you can build a world-class deep learning model is pretty hard.

So how does Moonshot do it?

6/ Their process:

1) They pick a few candidates from a trusted pool (In this case: SharpestMinds students)

2) They ask each candidate to reproduce a research paper (In this case: as part of SM's mentorship program)

3) They hire everyone who succeeds

And that's it

7/ Moonshot has already hired 5 deep learning engineers from us.

Most of their deep learning research team is now SharpestMinds grads. And that's just the beginning.

8/ Two of those engineers are once-in-a-lifetime hires who will create over $1M in value each before the end of the year.

Both of them had been looking for work for *almost a year* before Moonshot hired them.

Because they had trouble passing engineering interviews. 🤦‍♂️

9/ There's a lot of talk about bias in interviews. Plenty of companies are trying to change their hiring process. It's hard.

10/ Traditional interviews are (relatively) cheap in upfront cost. And it's easy to put upfront cost into a spreadsheet.

But it's the opportunity cost that really gets you in the long run. And it's hard to put opportunity cost into a spreadsheet.

11/ So if you're at a company that's trying to improve their interviews,

try starting with these questions:

What opportunity costs am I *not* seeing?

And how can I lower those costs without sacrificing quality?

That's the story of Moonshot. 🚀