Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
Google’s Area 120 launches Byteboard to improve technical interviews (techcrunch.com)
9 points by dylandavidson 2522 days ago
2 comments

> "So despite companies investing 7 to 9 hours per person on interviewing, they miss out on great, capable talent by testing for memorization instead of practical application of skills."

I'm not sure if I agree with this, I can easily eliminate 80% of candidates by telling them to show me a project that is either in production or you have recent patches that are classed as significant to well-known open-source projects based on the technologies I require. That in itself raises the barrier to exclude candidates who fail this threshold.

I don't think that what Google's approach to technical hiring solves anything other than contributing to yet another way of screening candidates by implementing a side-project for free in 40 mins with it being tied to your Google account.

No thanks.

Disclaimer: I am google employee, all opinions expressed are my own.

Really excited to see interview platforms focus on time-constrained, mini-projects. I also like the idea that there is an element of choice for the applicant as well as potential employer -- having a one-size fits all interview approach for different disciplines never made sense to me even if everyone in the company is as "generalist" as they can be. I got to see the Byteboard team put together this platform and I've been really impressed at the passion involved in creating this product -- the team really put their hearts into making something accessible and efficient that looks to respect both parties time during the interview process.