As someone who’s been reading & thinking about hiring a lot lately, I agree with quite a few things here. For example, I agree that providing a clear understanding of when to apply, emphasising mentorship & culture, tackling the remote-work issue head on, and being as straight with candidates as possible about the role, organisation, and application process, all seem good.
However, there are also things that feel like mistakes, some of them quite significant. (I’m open to being persuaded I’m wrong about most of these, especially since this could represent a significant improvement in my group’s hiring practices.)
As a community, I think it would be better if we’d give applicants some kind of feedback.
As I’ve written elsewhere recently, giving thorough feedback to candidates is very expensive, and frequently isn’t the best use of current staff’s time. I’m in favour of at least giving some feedback, but I’m currently weakly opposed to any strong cultural expectation of in-depth feedback.
I recommend asking for ONLY a CV, without even filling in a form. I think that would be attractive, and good for us as a community, since it will give the developers more time to do useful things, including applying to more EA orgs.
I agree that it’s often a good idea to skip the cover letter, which mainly tests rhetorical ability rather than ability to do the job. I also agree that application forms should be kept reasonably short. But only asking for a CV doesn’t seem great to me, for two reasons. Firstly, CVs are typically very hard to blind well for unbiased application review. Secondly, there’s a variety of other critical info I need about candidates, and a Google Form or similar is typically the most efficient way (for both us and the candidates) to get that information[1].
Insofar as a longer application form allows for less reliance on interviewing, I think adding more stuff to the application form will often be a good trade-off.
My current-best recommendation (from a startup that is really good at hiring) is to ask the candidate what they prefer.
This currently seems like quite a bad idea to me, for two important reasons.
Firstly, some assessment methods are straight-up better at predicting job performance than others, and we have evidence of which ones those are – we shouldn’t let candidates choose worse ones. EA orgs don’t put a lot of emphasis on take-home tasks because we enjoy them, we do it because they are better than the alternative for the thing we are trying to do[2].
Secondly, comparability of assessment is critical to comparing candidates fairly. Letting different candidates choose different assessment methods seems like it would make that impossible.
I am a strong proponent of paying applicants for their time, and otherwise being respectful of their time and needs. But I think we should use the assessment methods we have evidence for, and take a lot of care to make sure we assess every candidate as identically as possible, not allow applicants to pick and choose.
I could potentially be persuaded that a two-step process, with an initial very short application form followed by a longer one for credible applicants, could be a decent workaround.
How about giving feedback such as “the main reason is..”
“Leetcode stuff”
“Theory about React”
“Understanding of tradeoffs in backend architectures”
“We expect it to be expensive to onboard you to Scala”
“We don’t think we provide the kind of job that we think you want”
Or a similar short sentence.
The main thing I am trying to avoid is feedback that will lead the candidate to work for 2 extra years before they reapply if they don’t have to, specifically sentences like “you need more experience”. Anything more specific than that would be good, I think
Perhaps to make it even cheaper for you:
Only give this one sentence feedback to candidates who ask for it (may I ask how many ask?)
As someone who’s been reading & thinking about hiring a lot lately, I agree with quite a few things here. For example, I agree that providing a clear understanding of when to apply, emphasising mentorship & culture, tackling the remote-work issue head on, and being as straight with candidates as possible about the role, organisation, and application process, all seem good.
However, there are also things that feel like mistakes, some of them quite significant. (I’m open to being persuaded I’m wrong about most of these, especially since this could represent a significant improvement in my group’s hiring practices.)
As I’ve written elsewhere recently, giving thorough feedback to candidates is very expensive, and frequently isn’t the best use of current staff’s time. I’m in favour of at least giving some feedback, but I’m currently weakly opposed to any strong cultural expectation of in-depth feedback.
I agree that it’s often a good idea to skip the cover letter, which mainly tests rhetorical ability rather than ability to do the job. I also agree that application forms should be kept reasonably short. But only asking for a CV doesn’t seem great to me, for two reasons. Firstly, CVs are typically very hard to blind well for unbiased application review. Secondly, there’s a variety of other critical info I need about candidates, and a Google Form or similar is typically the most efficient way (for both us and the candidates) to get that information[1].
Insofar as a longer application form allows for less reliance on interviewing, I think adding more stuff to the application form will often be a good trade-off.
This currently seems like quite a bad idea to me, for two important reasons.
Firstly, some assessment methods are straight-up better at predicting job performance than others, and we have evidence of which ones those are – we shouldn’t let candidates choose worse ones. EA orgs don’t put a lot of emphasis on take-home tasks because we enjoy them, we do it because they are better than the alternative for the thing we are trying to do[2].
Secondly, comparability of assessment is critical to comparing candidates fairly. Letting different candidates choose different assessment methods seems like it would make that impossible.
I am a strong proponent of paying applicants for their time, and otherwise being respectful of their time and needs. But I think we should use the assessment methods we have evidence for, and take a lot of care to make sure we assess every candidate as identically as possible, not allow applicants to pick and choose.
I could potentially be persuaded that a two-step process, with an initial very short application form followed by a longer one for credible applicants, could be a decent workaround.
(And because a lot of us are copying OpenPhil.)
Giving thorough feedback is expensive:
How about giving feedback such as “the main reason is..”
“Leetcode stuff”
“Theory about React”
“Understanding of tradeoffs in backend architectures”
“We expect it to be expensive to onboard you to Scala”
“We don’t think we provide the kind of job that we think you want”
Or a similar short sentence.
The main thing I am trying to avoid is feedback that will lead the candidate to work for 2 extra years before they reapply if they don’t have to, specifically sentences like “you need more experience”. Anything more specific than that would be good, I think
Perhaps to make it even cheaper for you:
Only give this one sentence feedback to candidates who ask for it (may I ask how many ask?)
What do you think?
[happy to get your pushback]
Yeah, if we’re talking a shortish paragraph given to candidates who ask for it, I think that’s fine. I think I’d be fine with that as a norm.