> I had been talking to the candidate for months and they had completed our entire interview panel. We’d had great conversations where I’d learned about their background and developed a sense for how they would fit in this role. Unfortunately, I had to tell them we would not be moving forward with an offer.
"Hiring" isn't the emotional thing here. The emotional thing was knowing you were shitty to someone. You were shitty because you took months to build a relationship with this person and didn't have a compelling reason to say yes or no, and decided to say no. If you saw gaps, you should have said no sooner. If it takes you months of talking to someone and building a relationship to decide they're not right for the team, it's not hiring that's the problem, it's that you're bad at hiring that's the problem.
There's exactly no reason to lead a candidate on for months. If you ever get to the point where scheduling a 1:1 zoom conversation is implied to be a job offer, you've fucked up. Interviewing isn't personal, it's business—until you've spent long hours making it personal.
> Hiring is a roller coaster. It involves more ups and downs than normal engineering work.
It might be a roller coaster, but the longest roller coaster by duration in the world is four minutes. Keep that in mind.
That's a really good analogy that the longest rollercoaster is 4 minutes. You're absolutely right that a months long interview process would suck. Fortunately, that wasn't what happened. I've added an amendment to the story to clarify, take a look!
I obviously can't go into the details of the feedback but I share your wish that hiring decisions would more cut and dry! It would be a lot easier for everyone.
> They were close and had potential, but we also saw some gaps.
I would be really interested to hear more about the specific "gaps".
> After lots of discussion with my management chain, we decided not to extend the offer.
I wonder exactly what was said, given that this candidate was led on for months by this point and I presume the management knew about everything along the way. Also, was someone else hired, or did they just cancel the entire opening?
I understand some emotional pain about passing up a really nice candidate for an objectively unbeatable one (that's competition for you), but I only get the sense that it was a single person in the interview loop (who was then cancelled on): they were apparently hiring for just one extra manager position?
It was on the thirtieth interview when things went south. While excitedly explaining how they’d just scaled a business to eight million users the candidate casually picked up a shrimp fork and dug into the house salad with it!!
It was right then I realized we’d made a terrible mistake. I feigned gastric distress and headed for the restroom where I immediately called HR.
Months wasted but I feel we dodged a bullet on this one. Now it’s back to the drawing board but I’m sure we will eventually find a qualified junior web developer.
I can't share the specifics of feedback but you're right that's the most interesting part of this decision and where I could learn the most. Ultimately, it's a hard to reverse decision with imperfect information and that's why it can be so emotionally tough.
> I had been talking to the candidate for months and they had completed our entire interview panel. We’d had great conversations where I’d learned about their background and developed a sense for how they would fit in this role. Unfortunately, I had to tell them we would not be moving forward with an offer.
> It was hard because I wasn’t confident in the decision. They were close and had potential, but we also saw some gaps. After lots of discussion with my management chain, ...
WAY too long a time period, and WAY too much time invested. And hopefully you'll never, never, ever need this candidate's good word or goodwill for anything - 'cause you'll have precious little chance of getting either.
Curious how many other people were similarly taken for a ride while management was waffling on this decision. How many dozens of hours were invested on both sides.
Yes! You're right! That would be way too long for an interview loop. I'm sorry I wasn't clear in the article.
The candidate and I first met long before they were interested in interviewing. They had potential and I got to know them so that when they were interested in interviewing they'd reach out. Once they decided to interview, we made that happen as quickly as schedules allowed!
Hope that clarification helps! Thanks for the note!
It sounds as if the hiring managers got cold feet and made an emotional or impulsive decision. It's not surprising they could feel bad for treating a candidate that way, for indescribable reasons. It's not as if the justification offered was, "We lost our budget and couldn't go through with our offer" or "We have another much more highly qualified candidate and the organization needs that person." Managers that interact with candidates should be decent enough to anticipate the possibility of not going through with an offer and create sufficient emotional buffering to leave people with their self-respect, or give the candidate more useful clues about how they're really doing. There are many ways hiring managers can increase their skill at this difficult work. I will never forget, I made someone cry in an interview once. You can ask hard questions but we all have to decide if this is the kind of human being we want to be.
It sounds like you understand the burden of being an interviewer!
Can you share a little more about what made the decision emotional or impulsive? I'd love to make sure my writing is clear and it sounds like it wasn't. While building a relationship with a candidate can be emotional, we always use a standardized rubric to evaluate candidates. Even with a rubric the decisions can be hard!
I remember not too long ago when you'd do a quick phone screen, then sit for maybe a technical interview and maybe come into the office for a panel to talk to other devs. Most of the time, hiring managers would say, "If you're close with your technical skills, we can teach you, but we're more interested if you fit in with our culture "
Months of interaction? Why did just a few years ago, managers could spot a phony a mile away and could see potential in people? Why is it I feel like I'm dating you just to try and get a job?
This story just confirms how broken and dysfunctional the process has become to make a simple hire.
Amen. If an organization is taking months to come to a hiring decision that’s a red flag, unless it’s a C-suite level position, where a misstep could have irreversible damage. A tech position should be able to close within a few weeks, lest the candidate get a better offer from a less dysfunctional company.
My first hand observations: took 4 months to hire, 5 months for the candidate to start.
My first hiring in a corporate world so I had to learn a bit.
Then we are expected to plan for diversity, not even looking at qualified candidates until we have met diversity benchmarks.
Then my group had a committee kind of setup where one person could veto a candidate. Being my first hiring, I had to go along with it for a while. At one point, we had a viable candidate, but there was one person who was sideways and my manager did not want to go ahead unless every single panelist said yes. We held on for another month trying to look for other better candidates. The candidate was nice enough to wait. BTW we had a viable candidate even before that, within the first 2-3 I think, and that candidate did not wait for us.
Then getting the offer approved and negotiated and signed takes time.
It has been a pain, and after hiring quite a few people in startups or consulting companies, I could have done it in less than a month, but we had our inertia.
> where a misstep could have irreversible damage.
However, when I see it help is that we have a person in our peer team who is not good and they are trying to let that person go. It is in Europe so laws a bit more stringent. It is quite a work to let someone go so the fear of a bad hire and then having months of work to let that person go is quite real. And this is for a run of the mill IC.
> Most of the time, hiring managers would say, "If you're close with your technical skills, we can teach you, but we're more interested if you fit in with our culture "
This is my criteria:
1-Smart, problem solver, sees the big picture, etc.
2-Collaborative, flexible, not dogmatic
3-Responsible, takes ownership
4-Technical experience is in the ballpark, gaps ok and expected
The first 3 things are much more important than the tech because tech gaps can be filled, personality can't be changed.
Yeah you're right a months long process would be horrible!
Fortunately, that didn't happen in this case. Part of building a team is getting to know talented people before they're looking for a job so when they're ready they reach out to you.
And you're right, this is work, not dating. But that doesn't remove the human emotion involved in getting to know someone.
This is one of the key reasons you let the recruiting/HR do this. The other red flag is the amount of time you have engaged with the person before the decision which also sounds bad. You might have inadvertently let them have false hope.
One of my starting points for companies looking to grow from small founding team to a more larger structure is to define the hiring and firing process way up front. It is not worth playing around with people's emotion and putting everyone in a difficult position.
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"Hiring" isn't the emotional thing here. The emotional thing was knowing you were shitty to someone. You were shitty because you took months to build a relationship with this person and didn't have a compelling reason to say yes or no, and decided to say no. If you saw gaps, you should have said no sooner. If it takes you months of talking to someone and building a relationship to decide they're not right for the team, it's not hiring that's the problem, it's that you're bad at hiring that's the problem.
There's exactly no reason to lead a candidate on for months. If you ever get to the point where scheduling a 1:1 zoom conversation is implied to be a job offer, you've fucked up. Interviewing isn't personal, it's business—until you've spent long hours making it personal.
> Hiring is a roller coaster. It involves more ups and downs than normal engineering work.
It might be a roller coaster, but the longest roller coaster by duration in the world is four minutes. Keep that in mind.
I obviously can't go into the details of the feedback but I share your wish that hiring decisions would more cut and dry! It would be a lot easier for everyone.
Thanks for the feedback!
I would be really interested to hear more about the specific "gaps".
> After lots of discussion with my management chain, we decided not to extend the offer.
I wonder exactly what was said, given that this candidate was led on for months by this point and I presume the management knew about everything along the way. Also, was someone else hired, or did they just cancel the entire opening?
I understand some emotional pain about passing up a really nice candidate for an objectively unbeatable one (that's competition for you), but I only get the sense that it was a single person in the interview loop (who was then cancelled on): they were apparently hiring for just one extra manager position?
It was right then I realized we’d made a terrible mistake. I feigned gastric distress and headed for the restroom where I immediately called HR.
Months wasted but I feel we dodged a bullet on this one. Now it’s back to the drawing board but I’m sure we will eventually find a qualified junior web developer.
Thanks for the note!
> It was hard because I wasn’t confident in the decision. They were close and had potential, but we also saw some gaps. After lots of discussion with my management chain, ...
WAY too long a time period, and WAY too much time invested. And hopefully you'll never, never, ever need this candidate's good word or goodwill for anything - 'cause you'll have precious little chance of getting either.
The candidate and I first met long before they were interested in interviewing. They had potential and I got to know them so that when they were interested in interviewing they'd reach out. Once they decided to interview, we made that happen as quickly as schedules allowed!
Hope that clarification helps! Thanks for the note!
Can you share a little more about what made the decision emotional or impulsive? I'd love to make sure my writing is clear and it sounds like it wasn't. While building a relationship with a candidate can be emotional, we always use a standardized rubric to evaluate candidates. Even with a rubric the decisions can be hard!
Thanks for the note!
Months of interaction? Why did just a few years ago, managers could spot a phony a mile away and could see potential in people? Why is it I feel like I'm dating you just to try and get a job?
This story just confirms how broken and dysfunctional the process has become to make a simple hire.
My first hiring in a corporate world so I had to learn a bit.
Then we are expected to plan for diversity, not even looking at qualified candidates until we have met diversity benchmarks.
Then my group had a committee kind of setup where one person could veto a candidate. Being my first hiring, I had to go along with it for a while. At one point, we had a viable candidate, but there was one person who was sideways and my manager did not want to go ahead unless every single panelist said yes. We held on for another month trying to look for other better candidates. The candidate was nice enough to wait. BTW we had a viable candidate even before that, within the first 2-3 I think, and that candidate did not wait for us.
Then getting the offer approved and negotiated and signed takes time.
It has been a pain, and after hiring quite a few people in startups or consulting companies, I could have done it in less than a month, but we had our inertia.
> where a misstep could have irreversible damage.
However, when I see it help is that we have a person in our peer team who is not good and they are trying to let that person go. It is in Europe so laws a bit more stringent. It is quite a work to let someone go so the fear of a bad hire and then having months of work to let that person go is quite real. And this is for a run of the mill IC.
And/Or it feels like going through a hazing ritual.
This is my criteria:
1-Smart, problem solver, sees the big picture, etc.
2-Collaborative, flexible, not dogmatic
3-Responsible, takes ownership
4-Technical experience is in the ballpark, gaps ok and expected
The first 3 things are much more important than the tech because tech gaps can be filled, personality can't be changed.
Fortunately, that didn't happen in this case. Part of building a team is getting to know talented people before they're looking for a job so when they're ready they reach out to you.
And you're right, this is work, not dating. But that doesn't remove the human emotion involved in getting to know someone.
One of my starting points for companies looking to grow from small founding team to a more larger structure is to define the hiring and firing process way up front. It is not worth playing around with people's emotion and putting everyone in a difficult position.