While I see the value and need, I'm afraid a candidate that applied to for the job would be put off by having a 3rd party interview them (especially if it's their first call). It's not the most welcoming interaction and might make them question leadership's ability.
Thoughts, @akshayibanez / @aatifh?
Hi @rrhoover, you have got a valid point. :-)
We have seen apprehensions in the beginning related to this from some companies. So, we decided to leave that decision to the companies whether they want to disclose to the candidate that there is a 3rd party who would do the interview or it's just an extension of their team. In most of the cases, Aircto represents the company.
Hence the candidate’s interaction with the company is not affected.
@aatifh@rrhoover until the candidate asks questions like, "what's it like to work at XYZ?". This is an interesting challenge to overcome. Curious to see how candidates take both scenarios.
@kunalslab True. Usually (if these questions comes up), we tell the candidates that we will arrange a follow-up call with the HR to answer these queries. Also, we have a very sorted interview guidelines for the experts to follow. So, our experts keep the conversation completely as a technical interview.
@rrhoover@akshayibanez@aatifh I could see the potential for a non-technical team needing help in vetting tech talent. If you have a tech team and you're outsourcing the vetting process, it's a red flag for the candidate.
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@rrhoover It might be fine for candidate screening process in entry level openings.
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@aatifh
1. What defines a “technical expert” or a “top engineer”? (Please gimme something more than “Googler”, “ex-Googler”, “Microsoft veteran”, etc.)
2. As a software engineer who’s actually interviewed many engineering candidates (for my own startups, for startups I advise, for friends’ startups, and for companies I’ve worked for), I know that being a software engineer doesn’t immediately make you qualified to *properly* interview engineering candidates. Proper interviewing involves more than dealing with code and I’ve seen software engineers fuck up interviews so many times already. (Let’s not even mention dealing with minority candidates.) Do you understand this problem and how are you dealing with it?
Hi @jonathanmarvens, good points.
1. We have a strong internal curation process where we look at the developers' credentials in terms of their contribution to the open source projects, vast experience (anything above 7 years) in programming, have worked with more than 8-10 programming languages, Stackoverflow, Github, etc. followed by a couple of 1:1 calls with the developers before we get them on board as a "technical expert".
2. Totally agreed with you. Being a programmer myself for the last 8 years, I know for the fact that, being a great software engineer doesn't necessarily mean that one could be a great interviewer. Interviewing requires a lot of soft skills. We do a mock interview with our experts to get a complete sense on their interviewing skills. We also have a rating process where we rate interviewer in order to maintain the quality of the interviews.
Let me know if this makes sense to you. :)
@aatifh@akshayibanez This is awesome! Nice work. Are you planning to only work directly with businesses, or will you also be working with 3rd party recruiting firms / headhunters? I can see it being a great tool in both scenarios.
Hey @arrev - thanks for the kind words. :)
Very good question. Actually, we are already working with a limited number of recruitment agencies where they get their candidates interviewed with our technical experts before they share the candidates with their clients. This helps them source qualified candidates to their clients and improves their conversion rates.
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If I have a candidate that I want interviewed by Aircto, how long in
advance do I have to schedule a time?
Hi @brucebolton,
Good question. Scheduling is handled by our system. So, while uploading the resume of the candidate (with a brief JD) you can decide the turn-around time for the interview with your preferred date/time. We have 2 methods:
1. Priority Interviews: The interviews are conducted within 24-36 hours.
2. Standard Interviews: The interviews are conducted within 3-5 days.
Let me know if you have any more questions related to this.
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@aatifh@akshayibanez Congrats, great idea! Is there a way to see list of interviewers and to pick who will be interviewing the candidate?
Hi @aparkhills, thanks. :)
Yes. Once you get into the system and share the candidate (with a brief JD) then we will share the list of potential interviewers who could do the interview for the given job position. So, you do get to decide who you want to pick as an interviewer.
this is a great idea. at the start of Vungle, we had to ask our engineering friends (that we were lucky to meet via the angelpad incubator) to help interview our first few engineering hires.
I feel like the CTA should be more: "Hiring shouldn't be based on your gut." And target this more to startups/PMs/etc looking to hire engineers but want an outside opinion on their skill alone. Most engineers at startups would probably _want_ to talk to the person they will work with; but, most founders/CEOs don't have the skill to be able to really drill into their ability to do great work on Day 1.
@tarungangwani True that. Even if founders do have the technical skills then spending umpteen hours on interviewing unqualified candidates is just a sheer waste of both time and productivity. Our experts take the interviews and with the help of detailed feedback report of each interview, startups/companies get to make good and precise hiring decision very quickly.
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