my experience with the interview process is that they just will ask high level questions and dont test skills much.
Hello. There are good recruiters, there are bad recruiters.
Hiring people is also a skill I believe.
Sometimes they really don’t know what they want/what they are doing, we need to deal with this somehow.
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I’m going on 3 years of professional experience and try to avoid any interviews with coding tests, especially if they’re to be completed outside of an interview slot.
the most i’ll do is a simple pair programming exercise, and set a max of 3 interviews.
companies may be catering to the job market.
as an interviewer, we don’t do coding tests either, and it’s usually clear enough just with Q&A who would be a good fit from a technical perspective and who doesn’t quite have the relevant experience.
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There’s something to be said about the companies/recruiters you are talking with and roles you are applying to. Ultimately a majority of companies are not technical, and thus a majority of roles are also not technical.
Hiring people is expensive. This is the primary driver of a majority of all the “hoop jumping” practices we see today with hiring. Having a coding interview is more expensive for a company. Hence why a majority of companies have some sort of “screen” that is automated/cheaper to field to weed out possible applicants.
There’s also what sort of roles, and experience levels you care about. Larger companies can afford “more risk” and will actually be “greener” more inexperienced individuals so they can train them themselves. In those scenarios soft skills become a larger factor than hard experience, or prep.
Hu? 5 interviews in means you have 5 interviews? If you by “actual interview” you mean “coding interview” usually that’s the first or second step, as some sort of screen depending on the role.
Later steps usually are for finding “fit” and checking other skills within the company, and are usually “more costly” in regards to the company fielding them, as your deeper in the process so they are more serious.
Lastly, any company or recruiter worth their salt will give you an overview of the processes ahead of time. You shouldn’t need to get into the actual process without knowing what the process is.
If they don’t do this, then directly ask. Neither you nor the company or recruiter wants to waste their time.
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The #1 rule all companies usually try to test against when recruiting is to hire someone who wont end up costing more money later.
More money is lacking skills, training, people-skills, ethical, etc etc.
So yea making the application process convoluted, is worth it relative to hiring the wrong people.
This isn’t usually done over email due to a number of factors:
- making sure you exist (seriously)
- checking your communication skills
- doing some basic checks against your personality
Recruiters are in the process to get you hired, they are pretty lenient in regards to getting you in-front of potential employers. That said they aren’t dumb, wont aren’t looking to pick anyone, as that would make them look bad and thus “waste time” for the company using them to hire.
Depending on the role and company culture this may or may not be expected. Writing code directly is usually kinda overrated if there are other metrics you can look at, or the role.
These are usually where your coding skills are put to the test. It sounds like you’ve gotten “coding challenges” but not the kind you expect maybe? Oftentimes coding challenges exist primarily to see how you solve problems and communicate just as much as they check your coding skills.
I saw the email, if they are hiring a mid-level React developer odds are the Q&A by itself will give a gauge about developer skills. A prime example would be: “What’s a difficult thing you’ve done in the past?”
I’m also unsure about the process beyond the 1 interview, but I assume there’s more to the interview process than a single technical questions screener.
Finally I’d like to point out that the email example is for an external recruiter. External recruiters usually are used by smaller companies who can’t afford their own recruiters, and thus automatically usually lead to less intense interviews.
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That’s actually important stuff, some developers from my locale once said, that they want people to manage coding even if there is some noisy/distracting stuff going on in the office.
true but is not so easy. There was an online coding group in my area, where you got to practice pair programming, I attended it a few times, it was good but they stopped doing it.
Getting a job is hard. Interviews and the hiring process suck.
You have to convince the company that hiring you will not be an expensive mistake. Each company picks their own process that they believe best fits their needs in avoiding making expensive hiring mistakes. That’s really all that is going on.
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Any company that is willing to have unpaid employees is an unethical company that should not work for. Even if that wasn’t a problem, bringing in a new developer is expensive and takes time away from other development efforts. Onboarding is expensive.
There isn’t really a way to talk/convince/bully/etc a company into interviewing you in the way you want to be interviewed.
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Hi,
Do you present any of your code to the company? Do you share your GitHub or portfolio of any kind? If so, they should be able to see your code if they are interested. If not, than you are clearly not giving then a chance to see your technical knowledge in action. I am asking as you didn’t mentioned it in your post.
Also, they are many developers out there with the same coding knowledge like you but maybe that is not the most important for the roles you got to be interviewed for.
She actually addressed both concerns you wrote you had:
1.
You said: “They are not doing any coding interviews”
She said: “It is a Q&A interview that includes technical questions. NO whiteboard coding.”
2.
You said: “They want me as a mid-level developer.”
She said: “Yes, this is a mid to senior level React Developer opening.”
Then you said you are confused but didn’t explain about what.
There is no direct correlation between mid-level developer and a coding interview (mid-developer does not equal doing a coding interview). You are saying she didn’t address your concerns but you didn’t actually ask any questions.
If I were you I would also improve my written communication. As you already said you are potentially talking to non-technical people so capital letters, dots and commas could go a long way.
It is a tough world out there. I am also looking for a job right now and I personally hate applying for jobs.
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I’m coming late to this, but for what it’s worth, at my level (professional for 5 years) I only did coding on about half of the interviews. It doesn’t make much sense to have some experienced coder do fizz-buzz or whatever. I have experience working on big projects for major companies so what are they going to learn? But they can learn a lot about how you think by talking to you, asking technical questions.
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