Thread by @NGKabra

1. "There is too much variability in our hiring process," says the business leader. "Depending on which interviewer they get, people with very different skills get hired. Your tool will help us standardize."

Supposedly the customer is always right, but this is where I push back

2. I feel like wisecracking: if our software outperforms your employees, you need better employees

But I know that's not true. They are usually good employees who need to be given better training

3. So I dig into what is happening in the interviews.

Depending on availability, a candidate gets randomly assigned to one of 3 different interviewers. And each of those interviewers asks questions based on their experience, background, and what they're currently obsessed with.

4. One interviewer asks tricky or hard questions from the net.

For example, "write a single expression to check if a number is a power of 2 or not". (The answer is "n & (n - 1) == 0" 🙄.

When was the last time a programmer needed to do this when doing their job?!

4. "Only smart people can answer this question," thinks the interviewer.

In reality, only people who've googled "Top Interview Questions from Microsoft and Google" can answer this question.

And in any case, this has no relevance to the job.

5. Bad tweet numbering; previous tweet should have been 5, hence this placeholder.

6. And another interviewer is deep into ReactJS and rejects anyone who isn't familiar with all the ins and outs of ReactJS.

And a third interviewer is just focused on unit testing (which 95% of candidates are completely clueless about).

7. No wonder there is too much variability in the hiring process.

What is needed is getting the interviewers to all agree on what kinds of questions make the most sense, and ensuring that they ask similar questions to the candidates

8. Does this happen in your company too?

9. There is a lot of research which says that the *only* effective interviewing technique is "structured interviews" where the interviewers are *required* to ask exactly the same questions (with minor variations) to all candidates. Maybe I'll do a thread on that some day.

10. In any case, what is *not* needed is a software program to replace your interviewers. That's a pretty bad idea.

11. Is there a word for the belief that a software tool/algorithm will magically fix your problems by doing a better job than your employees?

Let's call it algorithmitis.

12. AI-hype, fueled by deceitful marketing and click-happy media, makes people ascribe magical powers to algorithms.

As a result, more and more people are suffering from algorithmitis.

And they start reaching for AI-enabled software tools as the treatment for this problem.

13. Don't fall for that trap. If you feel an onset of the symptoms of algorithmitis, start asking yourself how you can fix the problems with your employees (or more accurately, your process). You've hired smart people; now give them the training to do the right thing.

14. Of course, I am not arguing that you don't need software at all. After all, I am in the business of selling that software. But just be clear of what the software can and should do, and what it can't and hence, shouldn't.

15. Let's look at the typical hiring process in India. For 1 position, a company starts with 100 resumes, uses keyword filtering to bring it down to 40, then phone screens to bring it down to 20, and then actual interviews are conducted with those 20 to get 2 or 3 final offers.

16. Many of those 20 interviews are a complete waste of time because the candidate doesn't even know the basics of the area that they supposedly have years of experience in. Like a programmer with 2+ years experience who can't even write a trivial program that compiles cleanly.

17. So the interviewers, who should be working on the company's product, are instead spending hours and hours conducting interviews, and 75+% of those interviews are a complete waste of time because bad candidates get shortlisted.

18. Our software isn't intended to replace the human interviewers. It is intended as a filter before the human interviewers to ensure that they don't waste their time with completely inappropriate candidates.

19. Our pitch is this: send our customized test to the 100 candidates and the system will help you shortlist the 10 decent candidates. No keyword filtering, no telephone screens, and much fewer interviews. And 3 to 4 of those 10 will clear the technical interview.

20. Your interviewers will be happier because they'll be spending more time with good candidates (who are a pleasure to interview), and less time with idiots who suck the life out of you.

Happy interviewers are good interviewers.

21. Companies that use software to make their humans more productive will always beat companies that use software to replace the humans.