The Other Side of Your Interview
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This document provides guidance on Artsy's interview and hiring process. It discusses evaluating candidates based on whether they will raise the bar and increase excitement about work. Feedback should clearly state whether a candidate is a yes or no. References are opportunities to learn more about a candidate's performance and culture fit. Rejection letters thank candidates but provide constructive feedback on areas for improvement. The document advises job seekers on creating effective resumes that highlight relevant skills and experience.
The Other Side of Your Interview
- 1. Of Your Interview follow me on Twitter @dblockdotorg Tuesday, December 10, 2013
- 2. Many Sides Medium Companies Big Companies Companies Run By Kids Companies Run By Pros Companies Run By Committee Companies ... Not Quite Companies Small Companies
- 3. Unique You
- 4. Amongst Many Of You
- 5. How Many? 240 Engineering 102 Editorial 548 Designer 124 Research ~ 6 a day
- 6. This is where ... … I start boring you with a story about how we filter resumes ...
- 7. People #1
- 8. What kind of people? Inspiring High Performing + Team Player Right Brain + Left Brain
- 9. Lead Generation @engineer => cold email to our CEO @engineer => an early hiring website experiment @pm => viral job post on tumblr @engineer => referral via friend of CEO @mobile engineer => referral via friend of CEO @engineer => hiring website @engineer => worked together with someone above @engineer => worked together with someone above @engineer => worked together with someone above @engineer => random encounter during Hurricane Irene @engineer => cold email to CEO @engineer => cold email to jobs@ @engineer => referral via friend @engineer => met @engineer at a tech talk @engineer => met @engineer at a conference
- 11. We Know You You better know us!
- 12. Onsite Interview 2-3 Engineers 1 Non-Engineer 45 minutes 1:1 Lunch / Coffee Standup
- 13. How to Decide? Does the candidate raise the bar? Will I be more excited to come to work if the candidate sits next to me? Clear Yes or No, not Maybe or Hesitations
- 14. Written Feedback: Yep Yep, Seemed like a strong developer and a very humble individual. I talked to her about her work on project Blue Beam for a while and it was clear that she made a substantial contribution to it, specifically the software infrastructure for the launcher. I described a simplified version of our current architecture and asked her to think up some ways to get better performance from our back end and he came up with some good ideas, including refactoring the API and rewriting the caching layer to use Russian Doll caching. She was very interested in how we measure the success of new features or changes on the site and had some good ideas in that area as well.
- 15. Written Feedback: Nope Nope, While very energetic and clearly quite ambitious, the candidate's fundamental understanding of computer science seemed weak for a college graduate in CS. For example, when asked what's a b-tree answered that it's a kind of plant. He deflected almost every technical question to a more general discussion, rather than addressing the specific problem at hand. When I asked him to describe a specific time when he identified and fixed an application performance problem, he described something completely unrelated to application performance a bike race.
- 16. Gushing References from very successful individuals Offense vs Defense Force objectivity via ranking Separate performance from culture Pay attention to tone not content References are also pitch opportunities
- 18. Rejection Thank you for taking the time to interview with Artsy. We have decided not to move forward. We think you're very energetic and ambitious. You take initiative and are generally curious. Things like your involvement in your school’s programming club and your personal project X speak for themselves. However, your fundamentals in CS and the responses to technical questions were below the bar that we have set for a candidate in this position. However, we definitely want to stay in touch and would be grateful for the opportunity to reevaluate working together in the future. In the meantime, I'd love to see you succeed at another NYC company. I am serious about this, so if you have some startups in mind that you would like to be introduced to, or would like us to suggest some, please let me know and I will connect you with the right people. Thank you,
- 20. Objectives “To obtain a full time position that matches my enthusiasm, constant effort and efficiency.”
- 22. Lead, Driven and Managed
- 23. X-Pert Skillz
- 24. Career Changer is a Strength
- 25. Have Someone* Read Your Resume And Give You Honest Feedback * Someone = Who Hires a Lot of Engineers
- 26. You Definitely Have What It Takes Meet A NYC Company That Wants You @dblockdotorg dblock@dblock.org