Show HN: HiDimensional – senior engineers recommend candidates to startups

[pradeep_m]

Hi HN! We’re excited to share with you the public beta launch of our startup, HiDimensional (www.hidimensional.com). We are a platform consisting of senior engineering leaders who interview candidates and provide recommendations of the best candidates and their strengths. We then use the recommendations to refer these candidates to founders of startups that match their strengths and interests.

The recommendation serves as a personal referral from the interviewer, so for candidates, it amplifies their application and fast-tracks them through the process. And for companies, they are receiving pre-vetted candidates endorsed by someone they can trust. That last point is key - our interviewers are established senior engineers (e.g., former Head of ML @ Quora, former VP @ Addepar, former Head of Newsfeed @ Facebook, etc.) and technical founders and hiring managers, so we believe their word carries weight. We have over 30 such interviewers today, and they cover a variety of engineering disciplines from full-stack/product engineers to data scientists to backend/data engineers, and everything in between.

There’s more detail about the platform, how it works here: https://blog.hidimensional.com/2017/09/07/introducing-hidime...

We’d love to hear your feedback or if you have any questions about this or generally about technical hiring, feel free to drop us a message at [e-mail]! And of course, if you’re interested in trying out the service as a candidate, sign up on our website: www.hidimensional.com/signup

Thanks! Pradeep & Nikhil

P.S. If you’d like to interview on our platform or hire our candidates, we’d love to hear from you. Send us a note at [e-mail].

[graphememes]

Oh hey look, another recruiting firm acting as a startup.

[pradeep_m]

ha, I agree we are a recruiting company. However, we do believe we are solving a couple of different pain points.

a) For companies, resume doesn't convey the complete picture and any additional signal would be super valuable. We believe the level of signal you get from a senior interviewer is far more valuable than resume-based signals or coding test-based signals.

b) For candidates, they get feedback directly from the senior engineers about what they are good at and what they should improve on. Most companies provide no feedback at all and that can be frustrating! In addition to that, if you do well, you get a direct referral from the senior engineer to all startups. And because of the referral, you get fast-tracked to onsites!

[srikantaggarwal]

I am very thankful to HiDimensional for helping me out throughout my interview process.

The feedback provided by Pradeep and Stefan helped me understand my week points and work on them to be better at cracking interviews.

It was next to impossible for me to be interviewed with startups like Rippling without the much needed help by HiDimensional.

Even after my interviews, HiDimensional personally helped me in deciding my next career move which was awesome.

I salute the HiDimensional team to give such a personalized interview experience and never backing out from helping the candidates. Kudos to the HiDimensional team! You guys rock...

[swaroopgrs]

My friend and I interviewed with them and I can tell you it works. My friend got offers from 2 very good startups. The interviews work very differently and the personal referral can be invaluable. Apart from all these, you will make a lot of great contacts.

PS. I have no relation with the company.

[reiinakano]

Having nobody you know at top tech companies to vouch for you is one of the biggest problems for people from other countries (esp. 3rd world countries) when applying. Can't even get through the resume screen.

This seems like a great way to provide a solution to this problem. Are you currently open to people who would need any form of visa sponsorship in the future? Assuming great performance, would they finally have a realistic shot at a job in a top tech company?

[literallycancer]

The interviewer showcase box at the bottom of your page should wait for the picture to load and render the changes together, now it looks weird when the info changes but the old picture stays there for a moment.

Another one: your signup form doesn't handle international phone numbers well.

[pradeep_m]

Oh - thanks for the feedback! We'll fix.

[literallycancer]

Another one: your signup form doesn't handle international phone numbers well.

[lozzo]

Before giving my details I always take a look at the site. If it looks professional and maybe I might indulge.

The problem here is that it would take any half decent developer less than a day to knock up a website similar to yours. So why should I trust you good luck but not for me.

[gigatexal]

Would junior{developers, engineers} etc. apply?

[gigatexal]

Just had my call and these guys are really cool. I hope they do great things.

[pradeep_m]

Yes, we work with junior engineers too.

[gigatexal]

Signed up.

[iamfunatparties]

It's liked hired, honeypot and other recruiting websites?

[pradeep_m]

Hired, Vettery and other recruiting websites typically connect candidates to companies based on almost little to no vetting (Their vetting is based on your resume: essentially pedigree).

On HiDimensional, as a candidate, you interview with a senior engineer in your field and based on what you are strongest at, you get a personal referral from that engineer to the companies we work with. The engineer fills out an evaluation highlighting your strengths and we match you with the companies looking for your strengths.

Also, you get very clear feedback about what you are good at and what you can improve on from the senior engineers directly. For example, if you are an ML engineer, do you believe it'd be useful to interview with and get a direct referral from the former Head of ML at Quora to all startups?

The end goal is the same, but this approach yields a better experience for all parties.

[vthallam]

So then you are like Triplebyte?

Also, this will definitely work great until you scale and when you are out of qualified engineering leaders who can help you vet candidates. How do you plan to manage that?

[pradeep_m]

Yes, I'd agree they are a closer comparable. Our primary difference is that our interview process is personalized to each individual candidate because we match candidates to an independent interviewer relevant to their domain and field of interest. We don't specify what the interviewer should ask. Instead our direction to them is: "We matched this candidate to you because they expressed these skills/interests. Try to identify where their strengths are and if you would recommend them for a role in your specialty."

The evaluations our interviewers write as a result gives us a lot of nuance and evidence to match candidates with the best roles for them.

The fact that the interviewers are independent is also another differentiator. This gives candidates an opportunity to make a valuable connection, and we expect interviewers to take ~10-15 min at the end to share feedback on the candidate's performance, how they can improve, and answer any questions / share personalized advice. We have heard many frustrated accounts from our candidates about receiving rejections with no feedback and how this is one of their most valued benefits of our approach.

On the scaling point - it's a very good question. We are collecting a lot of data about each interviewer and specifically their skill at evaluating skill (i.e., how predictive is their evaluation). So over time, we will be able to understand interviewer strength and what they are qualified to evaluate, and seniority of the interviewer becomes less important.

[reiinakano]

Sure, but without seniority of the interviewer, would his/her reference carry as much weight?

Instead of banking on an interviewer's reputation, you would in essence be asking companies to trust your ability "to understand interviewer strength and what they are qualified to evaluate". Not so sure how well that'll work...

[pradeep_m]

Fair question. We collect data about every interviewer (at a very granular level to understand what skills they are good at evaluating and how predictive they are).

Also, we provide interviewing history data as part of the evaluation. For example, if you knew the last 10 candidates a particular interviewer has endorsed have ended up at companies like Airbnb, Stripe, Google, Facebook, etc, would the interviewer's reputation still be in question?