| How do you know that interviewees aren't spending more time on it? Because you can't guarantee all candidates are spending the same amount of time, it becomes a game theory problem where the candidates will typically lose in some form. In many cases, the right answer is to spend extra time making a really polished (but not too polished!) solution and pretend like you stayed in the time limit. And every candidate is either a) doing that, or at least b) worried that their competition is doing that. Even if we ignore that dynamic, 3 hours is a long ass time for a candidate to spend when they're not even sure they'll get to talk to another human about it. In a 1-hour interview, you can run a candidate through a programming exercise and be guaranteed they're not wasting extra time on it. And if they happen to prefer doing take home assessments, you can always let them send you an updated answer later. (But often by the time a candidate asks me if they can do that, I've already developed a favorable view of their skills and can tell them, "go for it if you want, but you've already 'passed' my test.") By keeping the candidate-interviewer time investment the same, you guarantee that you're respecting the candidate's time as you would your own (because you're sitting there with them.) I can help them skip over the parts I'm not interested in (e.g., by feeding them info they'd be able to find via search or telling them not to worry about certain details.) If a hiring manager doesn't respect their candidates' time, how likely are they to respect their employees' time? |