Working out a new idea, who has trouble with software interviews?
So, I have like...half a new idea brewing in my head for a new product. The very basics of it is "software interviews as a service", but I'm trying to nail down in my head what exactly that is, so I'd love to hear some experiences and pain points that I might try to solve.
So, indie hackers trying to find a developer: what are your biggest issues? Or if you have a team and you're interviewing new members, how could that get better? And developers that have been through the ringer a few times, what do you see as the biggest problems?
I think tech recruiting is completely broken. This is all I can say.
Okay, cool. What has gone wrong, in your eyes? How would you rather be found?
@thwiv software interviews as a service sound like a good idea. I am going to sidetrack a little here.
Companies across UK and US actively look for dev talents either in Eastern Europe or Asia (especially in India) for the obvious reason of resources being cheap but also able to get the job done.
But the problem is finding the right talent, testing the English proficiency and communication skills. I know two companies who work on this problem https://www.gointeractive.co/ from Kiev and http://recruiterlane.com/ from Pune.
I feel there is a goldmine if you were able to provide a similar service catering towards UK and US companies., your company being the gateway between these talents and the companies.
I second this and it is a constant struggle to find a reliable company to provide the required talent either one off or an ongoing basis.
The issue is it can take a few months to prepare for interviews. There are services which charge on the order of $10,000/month for interview prep. What about doing this in the other direction, where you build a platform to help people study for these interviews, and charge them a monthly fee. I'd be into building that, hit me up if that interests you. I have a related project I am working on that could be very complementary.
I would guess that companies want to so their interviews themselves since the candidates personality has to fit to the team and company.
In my previous job it took us some time you create good coding challenges. They need to fit the technology of the company and experience of the candidate. So a list of challenges would be nice. I could imagine that companies that are growing quickly could use a subscription like that.
Yeah that was the first idea: Lets have a bank of questions that people can pull from, that gets updated constantly with new stuff. But I keep thinking about it, and most of the interview process is a time waster, especially when you think about how...different people are from their interview persona.
It takes some skill to be able to see through that and find good teammates, and some time and effort. If we could automate and outsource everything but the final "meet the team, here's your offer" part of the interview process, then that would be a huge value add. I haven't figured out how to do that yet, though, so, I'm trying to pin down that idea.
Triplebyte and a few others do technical screening and then jump you straight to the onsite interview if you pass.
My biggest issue is that technical challenge proficiency doesn't map directly to value added to business. I get why companies do it. I think they think the programming is the difficult part and so they want guaranteed proficiency. But 95% of software engineering people. It's a multidisciplinary role where you have to weigh tons of different factors and risks and then be able to clearly communicate your plan, progress, architecture, etc. to droves of people.
Yeah, thanks for the link to Triplebyte. This is definitely a similar idea, but I haven't done any actual work on this yet, so hey, lets differentiate.
I agree with you that the technical proficiency part really isn't the hard part of software engineering. It is, however, the easiest part to lie about to someone who doesn't know software. I'd love to build a system where we don't just look for "does this thing compile", but get deeper into the weeds on how a person thinks and acts, and in a way that lets the developer feel comfortable and work on their own terms.