Creating a Person-centered Hiring Process — That Works

The Hiring Process in the tech industry has an awful reputation. Stories abound of complex processes that are too long, unfair, and unclear. It’s difficult enough that books, courses, and meetups are offered to help candidates “Crack the Coding Interview”. There’s obviously something wrong here.

We want to make the interview process humane, useful, practical, and meaningful. Based on feedback, internal research, and experimentation, we’ve created a better hiring process. It’s working really well for us, and we’re excited to share it.

To make our hiring process, we focused on the following areas:

1. Clarity
2. Transparency
3. Communication
4. Practicality
5. Respect

Clarity

As a candidate, you should know exactly what job you’re applying for. You should understand why we need you — and why you would want to work for us. To create clarity:

• Team members and chapter leads are responsible for defining our open positions.
• We state the specific needs we have for each position we post, avoiding buzz words and filler.
• Our Job Descriptions communicate the nature of the work, our work environment, and our benefits.

Transparency

We’re very open about our hiring process. It’s pretty simple. In fact, here it is:

Let’s break that down:

1. Find a job, and apply. What do we look at?

• Ability. First and foremost, we’re looking for problem solvers, learners, and doers — people who are self motivated, and work well with others. Yes, professional experience is a factor. Yes, relevant technologies and languages also influence our decision. But, technologies evolve all the time. Are you the kind of person who can evolve with them — and support others to do so?
• Cultural fit. There’s a particular way we work. We have strong company values. Do we think you’re going to get along well with the Blacklane team? Will we enjoy going out to lunch together, and chatting? Do we think you will enrich and be enriched by your experience at Blacklane? Do you share our vision for what a workplace should be like, what we should accomplish, and how we should accomplish it?

2. First conversation

• Our initial phone screening takes anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. In that conversation, we’ll:

1. Tell you a bit about Blacklane,
2. Ask you a little about yourself,
3. Talk about your experience and,
4. Ask you some baseline technical questions. The questions will be practical. You won’t find any trick questions, or questions about odd parts of a language.

You’ll have a chance to ask questions, too — during the interview, and after, by email.

3. Smoke Test

• We’ve talked. We thought the conversation went well. You thought the conversation went well. We’ll give you a short, 30 minute take home exercise. The point of this exercise is for us to get a sense of how you code.
• What do we look for? We’re looking at the quality of your code. You should be able to talk about the decisions you made when writing it, and your coding process.

4. Final Interview

• If the take home goes well, we’ll chauffeur you in a Blacklane to our offices for an in-person interview. The interview is broken into two stages: Pair coding, team fit.
• Pair coding. You’ll spend an hour with a Chapter Lead working on developing a simple application. The point of the exercise is not for you to finish the application. It’s not for you to know everything. You’ll be able to look up whatever information you want. You can ask the lead any questions you want. The point of the exercise is to see how you work, and to get a sense of what it’s like to work with you.
• What do we look for? Do you work well with others? Do you ask questions when you need help — or look up resources? Do you code well?
• Team Fit. You’ll spend 30 minutes with the hiring team. The point of this interview is to get a sense of whether or not you and the team think you might work well together.
• What do we look for? Each member of the team is trying to get a sense of how they feel about the interview. This is an opportunity for you to do the same.

Communication

Our first communication with candidates is through our online postings. We manage those postings carefully.

• We update postings as soon as jobs are filled. Our postings reflect whether there is an open position, or we are collecting resumes for future consideration. No applying for a job only to learn it’s no longer available.
• We keep postings up to date. No applying for a job only to learn that it’s not what you thought it was.

Once you reach out to us, we get back to you — quickly. If you’re actively looking for work, we realize that you are busy. During this time, you need to make important decisions, and you need information to make them.

• It’s our goal to respond to you within one day. Had an interview yesterday? You should know the outcome of that interview by the following day.
• Have a question? You can reach out to us at any time.

Practicality

We’re hiring people to do a specific job. It’s a waste of everybody’s time playing engineering games.

• We don’t waste time asking trick questions.
• We don’t ask questions about obscure parts of computer science, or languages.
• We DO ask practical questions that directly apply to the position we’re hiring for.
• We DO look for soft skills: collaboration, communication, problem solving, &c.

We’re looking for a good fit — not a perfect fit.

• Are you self-motivated?
• Do you have a willingness to learn?
• Do you fit with Blacklane’s culture, and mission?

Respect

Your time is valuable. Your feelings are valuable. Your opinions are valuable.

• We keep our interview cycles short.
• We give feedback to you as soon as possible — within one day.
• We know your time is valuable. We won’t ask you to spend hours and hours on a take home. We won’t put you through five different interviews, where you’re asked the same questions over and over. We will keep our meetings focused, ask you pertinent questions, and respect your time.

In the End

We’re proud of the improvements we’ve made to our hiring process. And, we’re continuing to work on it.

It’s important to us that our process reflects our value for people. Let us know what you think in the comments below.