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Want to build a more diverse engineering team?
You need a low anxiety hiring process
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😅" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß">
Here& #39;s how we did it at Progression
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="👇" title="Rückhand Zeigefinger nach unten" aria-label="Emoji: Rückhand Zeigefinger nach unten">
You need a low anxiety hiring process
Here& #39;s how we did it at Progression
It starts with the screening stage.
Make it a chat a between two humans rather than the first round interview between a candidate and hiring manager.
Make it a chat a between two humans rather than the first round interview between a candidate and hiring manager.
Tell them about the team, the vision the upcoming work.
Ask them to tell you about themselves, what they did in their last role and what they& #39;re looking for in their next role.
In my experience this is enough to know if they would be broadly a good fit for your team.
Ask them to tell you about themselves, what they did in their last role and what they& #39;re looking for in their next role.
In my experience this is enough to know if they would be broadly a good fit for your team.
So far so good.
But the technical interview is where things can get anxiety inducing. Here are some things we *don& #39;t* do in ours:
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😅" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß"> Whiteboard coding
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😅" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß"> Fizzbuzz / algorithm challenges
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😅" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß"> Pair programming
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😅" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß"> Ask questions from a ComSci textbook
But the technical interview is where things can get anxiety inducing. Here are some things we *don& #39;t* do in ours:
Here is what we do in our technical interview:
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🙂" title="Leicht lächelndes Gesicht" aria-label="Emoji: Leicht lächelndes Gesicht"> Ask about a time when they solved a complex problem that they are particularly proud of
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😃" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit geöffnetem Mund" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit geöffnetem Mund"> Talk through security and scale
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😄" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit geöffnetem Mund und lächelnden Augen" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit geöffnetem Mund und lächelnden Augen"> Work through a case study i.e how would they build feature X? How would they account for constraint y?
In fact we try to over-communicate through the whole process so the person applying knows exactly where they stand at all times.
Firstly, if the technical interview is done well, you can go deep into the details, ideally until you get to a "not sure about that, I& #39;d need to check".
It& #39;s hard to consistently fake at that level of detail.
Secondly, we find a way to look at code, any of these will do:
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🔗" title="Link Symbol" aria-label="Emoji: Link Symbol"> Open source contribs
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🔗" title="Link Symbol" aria-label="Emoji: Link Symbol"> A public repo
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🔗" title="Link Symbol" aria-label="Emoji: Link Symbol"> A peronsal project
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🔗" title="Link Symbol" aria-label="Emoji: Link Symbol"> A previous take home challenge
None of the above? No problem, we& #39;ll set a short (2 - 4 hr) take home challenge that fits with your schedule.
None of the above? No problem, we& #39;ll set a short (2 - 4 hr) take home challenge that fits with your schedule.
If we don& #39;t proceed we& #39;ll do our best to provide actionable feedback and introduce you to companies that might be a better fit for you.
We do a 1hr chat with @jonnyburch and another team member. We talk about past experiences, future plans, values and what motivates us.
We& #39;re not looking for more people like us.
We& #39;re looking for life experiences and points of view that broaden our outlook, compensates for our blind spots and compliments our team.
We& #39;re looking for life experiences and points of view that broaden our outlook, compensates for our blind spots and compliments our team.
We& #39;re building a product that defines what good looks like for millions of people so it& #39;s massively important that our team reflects the diversity of our users.
If you& #39;re interested in learning more about low anxiety hiring processes @the_thagomizer& #39;s talk is a great place to start https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCsXQQhVtkc
And">https://www.youtube.com/watch... these are some good reads:
And">https://www.youtube.com/watch... these are some good reads:
. @math_rachel on how to make tech interviews a little less awful https://medium.com/@racheltho/how-to-make-tech-interviews-a-little-less-awful-c29f35431987">https://medium.com/@rachelth...
. @chrisparnin and @shiplives on Tech Sector Job Interviews Assess Anxiety, Not Software Skills https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/07/tech-job-interviews-anxiety/">https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/07/t...
Oh, and one more thing. You guessed it, we are hiring! We& #39;re looking for a senior software engineer (Rails), a Customer Success manager and an associate ops person, find out more here: https://progressionapp.com/careers ">https://progressionapp.com/careers&q...
