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by Throwaway23412 3450 days ago
>First: actually read the resume and letter. Learn about the experience this person has.

>I don't use challenges, homework, riddles, quizzes, etc. anymore.

Unless you don't get many resumes, I find it hard to believe that this is a good hiring flow for you at all. A lot of people who agree with me will often say that nobody has time to be reading hundreds or thousands of resumes, but I'll take it one step further: unless you are rigorously verifying the information on resumes, resumes are basically useless.

It is way too easy to lie on a resume. I don't mean mere embellishment or exaggeration. I mean straight-up lying. I looked at your profile. You have an impressive resume. What would stop me from copying your resume and submitting it as mine? Your impressive positions would be harder to fake, so I'd just lower all the CTO, head, VP, and chief titles to lower level titles.

Let's take this even further. Let's pretend that you actually call the references for the positions on all the resumes that you read. What's stopping an applicant from giving you a friend's number and having them pretend to be their former manager/employer? One could argue that the same sort of deceit works for challenges, quizzes, etc., but there's the additional barrier of at least knowing a decent enough programmer who can take the challenge or quiz for you.

2 comments

I have to respectfully disagree. The poster above you is not saying that they don't verify, they say they verify through different means.

They are saying, in my opinion, that it is important to step away from the S.O.P. because by doing so we gain the clarity of insight from treating them not as cogs to fill a gear ratio, but as human beings that bring an enormous range of abilities that, for various reasons, may not communicate unless one allows them to, hence the example of a root reduction in the db search space.

You raise the practicality of doing things this way, and you're right about the required effort. When I was in a larger organization, I set aside a week at time to get people in the door and talk to them. It was tough talking 6 or 7 people a day for an hour each, but I think it's worth the effort when you really need to bring on people.

Sure, you can copy a resume and you might get a phone call, but I suspect we're not going to have a very good conversation.