[ap22213]

Instead of technical interviews, I would love to just pay a potentially great candidate to come in and work for the day. Not only would it give them an opportunity to demonstrate what they know and show off their other skills, it would give our team a chance to see if they're a good fit. And, there would be some real financial incentive for them to give us a try.

But, trying to get management and HR to change from the conventions is extremely difficult. I have not been successful.

[tptacek]

There are big problems with processes that work this way --- as a group, they're "temp-to-perm" arrangements, although your "one day" version of it occupies the less odious end of the spectrum. I've written about the idea elsewhere on HN before and will try to dig some links up.

[pmiller2]

The biggest problem with a "work there for a day" interview IMO is that there's no time to do anything useful. You can't get familiar with a codebase of any size in a day.

[VLM]

Welcome to pair programming. Unlike real pair programming, don't let the noob touch the keyboard for the entire day. Talk talk talk. Don't expect either to really get much work done. But pretending to work all day is a heck of an interview.

This works outside of programming. Over a decade ago when I was doing network stuff, I did "pair router work" with a couple people. You don't give a noob enable CLI on a production router on his first day, or during an interview, either. Even if on paper, or in reality, he is better at this than you are.

If you hire them, you'll be spending the first couple days like this, anyway, unless you go all sink or swim.

[bengali3]

good point, especially since all day interviews are most likely requiring the candidate to take the day off anyways. On the other hand, i'm a mess the first month starting a new gig with all the lingo that I don't know yet...

[vadman]

Most candidates cannot take a day off and just work for somebody else -- employment contracts may prevent that.