↵

Best interviewing experience?

over 3 years ago from Taylor Palmer, I do the UX

  • Taylor PalmerTaylor Palmer, over 3 years ago

    I know everyone has bad design challenge stories (I have my own), but let me play devil's advocate to this comment for a bit:

    Take home challenges are ridiculous and no one should do them. It shows an extreme lack of respect for peoples personal time

    Is this really true? I don't think we should take advantage of people, but by that logic isn't the interview itself an invasion of someone's time? If time is the concern, why bring them on site at all?

    the challenge is either loaded in a way where the interviewers presuppose way too much domain knowledge or assume the the interviewee has some baseline context that they may or may not have

    This sounds like a poorly designed exercise, not a problem with all exercises everywhere.

    where I was supposed to design a new dashboard for their enterprise product

    We tried doing things like this once and quickly found it has many problems, but it's also inappropriate to ask a candidate to do work for you. Again, it's a specific problem with that challenge, not with all challenges everywhere.

    I've seen people who've interviewed great end up being terrible employees

    Doesn't that make you feel like there should have been something in the interview process to root that out?

    Appreciate the thoughts, keep them coming.

    0 points
    • Gabriel Sturk, over 3 years ago

      Is this really true? I don't think we should take advantage of people, but by that logic isn't the interview itself an invasion of someone's time? If time is the concern, why bring them on site at all?

      Come on... Showing up for an interview is a choice the candidate actively made.

      0 points
      • Taylor PalmerTaylor Palmer, over 3 years ago

        Yeah yeah, I know this is hyperbole. But completing the exercise is also an active choice.

        We’ve also used a take home challenge as a second chance as well. If people don’t do well in the interview but our gut says we missed something, we’ll give the candidate the option of a take home challenge to show us a different skill set.

        A candidate can drop out at that point. Some do. But we can’t move forward until we’re confident in that candidate.

        0 points
    • Lee Williams, over 3 years ago

      It 100% shows a lack of respect of peoples time and it's extremely biased against people with families, people who teach, volunteer and illustrates general lack of understanding of a good work/life balance. I have a toddler and a disabled mother in law that we care for. I do not have free time after work...

      As for white boarding, step back for a second and critically look at what you learn from a 30 minute whiteboard session? What have your learned that you may not have from asking them really good questions about their portfolio?

      The problem isn't the interview process, the problem is people. Humans are bias and association machines. We can render a kinda sorta ok surface level judgement based on very limited information, but beyond that we become extremely inconsistent. More information often makes our decision making worse... I'd encourage you to read the latest Malcom Gladwell book talking to strangers.

      lastly a big part of UX is try and eliminate our extreme inability to make good personal decisions/judgements. You aggregate data, you look for patterns, more often than not ignore what people say and focus on what they do, and it's good practice that the person who actions on the research shouldn't be the one performing it...

      4 points