14 Comments
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John Crickett's avatar

“You really impressed the team. They’d love to move forward.”

And then:

“We’re offering one level below the original scope"

Is dishonest, dodged a bullet there.

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Rafa Páez's avatar

Exactly, John. And it happened more than once in my career.

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HipsterTech's avatar

I agree with most of your point.

I haven’t had any experiences where a take-home assignment was more than 3-4 hours. I guess I was lucky 😀. Also, let’s see what happens with AI - maybe these assignments will start dying.

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Rafa Páez's avatar

They usually sell it like 3-4 hours but nobody prevents you from spending 12+ hours on it to "ensure" a high chance of passing.

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Anton Zaides's avatar

Really loved the stories and the article Rafa, thanks.

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Rafa Páez's avatar

Glad you loved them. Thank you, Anton!

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Rajesh  Mathur's avatar

I ask recruiters about the package first. If they mention a range below my expectations, I respectfully decline.

For me, I'm interviewing a company, too. So, I make it clear too the interviewers that I'll keep the process interactive.

And these days, I'm ready to leave the interview process if I anyone shows disrespect or arrogance.

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Rafa Páez's avatar

Good point. Ideally, they should provide it on the first call.

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Rajesh  Mathur's avatar

A Palo Alto company ghosted me once, and I let their recruitment leadership team know of my experience. Companies need good people, and the word of mouth goes both ways.

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Karthik Subramanian's avatar

Thanks for having the courage to publish this article Rafa. Reading through each of these points made me think about my own candidate experiences. If I had to pick the few that resonated the most with me, those would be:

* No more than 5 interview rounds (Less rounds where possible please. Helps company save time which is money and less scheduling emails.)

* No room for disrespect in interviews (The candidate takes their time to prepare and show excitement for the company and interviewers should reciprocate the same rather than treating the role of "being interviewer as a chore")

* No leetcode memorization based questions (i'd prefer a debugging interview, laptop programming with the interviewer as a thought partner on fairly scoped problem, or mock code review)

I would love to see a Part 2 of this article where you talk about the best interview process you've been in and what made it effective in your eyes as a leader

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Rafa Páez's avatar

Glad you enjoyed it, Karthik. And thank you for adding your thoughts.

Yes, I had to think about it twice before I published it. But in the end, that's me, my experiences and my lessons after dozens of interview processes.

Great idea! I'll write about the best interview process I have been!

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Karthik Subramanian's avatar

For sure. Looking forward to reading your part 2 of this article!

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Karol Skrzymowski's avatar

These are some really useful insights

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Rafa Páez's avatar

Glad it resonates. Thank you, Karol!

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