Will the Solve-the-Riddle Hiring Trend Affect IT?

An anonymous reader wonders: "It's probably harder to find a good developer, than for a developer to find a job. Seems to be a Google-riddle trend; rather than caring about references/diplomas/resumes, employers are using solve-this-and-you-have-a-job approach, not even caring about any usual information. Does that give decent graduates/talented unexperienced devs/homegrown coders a chance at the corporate job, or does it alienate potential matches?"

Solution

[mikeumass]

http://www.proveyourworth.net/?p=begin&mistake=lit tle [proveyourworth.net]

Re:Solution

[Nos.]

That's step one, step two is to automate the reply to the form in step two. Not incredibly difficult, and they give you hints on what to use to do it (fscok, curl, snoopy). Since it requires you to use POST, its a little more than just manipulating the URL, but like I said, its not incredibly difficult.

That being said, this is probably not a bad way to screen out those who are incompetent. It would narrow the field down at least somewhat.

Riddles work

[grapeape]

Its how I landed my current job. Resume wise I have an unrelated degree, few certifications that are still valid but many years of experience. The companies owner saw my resume and noticed an application I had listed was a relatively obscure one that they were having trouble with. I was asked to come in as a consultant for a week and fix the problem for them. I had everything fixed in less than a day, they were impressed enough that I was offered a full time job on the spot.

Riddle solving evens the playing field for those that are skilled but may not have the resume to reflect their skill level. I know most hate the old saying that "those who can do and those who cant teach" but many times book smarts doesnt translate into real world performance. Being able to display the smarts and tenacity to tackle a problem head especially after others have tried and given up instantly gives you a "value" to the potential employer. I think most that dont like the idea arent comfortable with the idea that someone with a lesser resume might actually be better in real world situations.

Is it legal to do this?

[Animats]

To submit your resume, you have to construct a URL manually. The Angelides campaign in California is in trouble for doing that on Governor Schwartznegger's "speeches" site, where all they did was to look at the directory of available audio and listen to it, instead of just listening to the stuff that had external links.

If anybody cares, http://www.proveyourworth.net/?p=begin&mistake=lit tle [proveyourworth.net] gets you to their stupid form.

Re:Is it legal to do this?

[Animats]

And then you have to build up the URL as if some app had built it. The arguments are

p="auto_submit"&hash="number you get from form page"&referer="URL of form page"...

There's more, but you get the idea.

Re:Moo

[sirsky]

www.rot13.com, copy and paste.

Re:I've used them

[iapetus]

Perhaps you ought to consult a dictionary before telling me that I have no idea what I'm talking about:

USAGE NOTE
The application of the term culture to the collective attitudes and behavior of corporations arose in business jargon during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Unlike many locutions that emerge in business jargon, it spread to popular use in newspapers and magazines. Few Usage Panelists object to it. Over 80 percent of Panelists accept the sentence The new management style is a reversal of GE's traditional corporate culture, in which virtually everything the company does is measured in some form and filed away somewhere.
  Ever since C.P. Snow wrote of the gap between "the two cultures" (the humanities and science) in the 1950s, the notion that culture can refer to smaller segments of society has seemed implicit.

The arts-science cultural divide (and subdivisions within each of those) is significant, and the sort of puzzle presented by the original poster is heavily slanted towards a specific subcategory of people on the 'science' side of the divide. There are plenty of good puzzles of this nature that check an ability for rational thinking that doesn't require particular knowledge on either side.

The distinction you attempt to draw isn't one that exists - in just the same way that your example requires the knowledge of the meaning of the words 'birdie' and 'eagle', the original examples require understanding of terminology ('quadratic formula' and 'irrational') as well as techniques specific to a particular area of education. They also skew against many of the same social groups as your golfing example.

Re:Can't solve the puzzle, so you're trying Slashd

[charlesnw]

Exactly. I interviewed at google and got the impression it was a sweat shop. I detailed in a Blog Post [livejournal.com] why I won't work there (at least as an engineer. I would do consulting on hiring practices). They are way to secretive for my liking. I work for Disney and am very happy.

Re:Can't solve the puzzle, so you're trying Slashd

[IamTheRealMike]

Unfortunately, the comparison with Google is poor. Google requires that you have a Masters Degree (PhDs are preferrable) before they even give you their test.

What?

I don't know what "test" you are talking about, but no qualifications whatsoever are required to do certain types of engineering at Google. Specifically look at what they call "Google.com Engineering" or "Site Reliability Engineering". This is not some trivial job; they require very broad and deep knowledge across operating system design, programming, networking, systems administration, and so on and the interview process is notoriously thorough. The job is basically running the server grid. A degree certainly isn't frowned upon but they didn't require one from me, that's for sure!

Certain jobs at Google do require degrees for sure, and some of the research jobs basically require a PhD. But that's not true of the whole company.

You'll never even know why they didn't get back to you, despite a promise to start an interview process after the test.

Again, huh? I have a friend who is also Masters-less yet they got back to him with feedback pretty much straight away.

Re:Moo

[Thuktun]

The text is simply rot-13'd, the bit about the subject being the key is a bit of humor.

Of course, they say a joke isn't funny when you have to explain it, but I thought it was funny anyway.

Re:Battle-Hardened Veteran

[gfody]

2 hours?
it took me 20 seconds to google for and find a complete web server in under 200 lines of code
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/eserver/libr ary/es-nweb.html [ibm.com]

Yes

[BenEnglishAtHome]

The policy, as originally stated, left no wiggle room whatsoever. Yes, that would be brain-dead. Zero-tolerance policies always are.

A sensible approach is to weigh the seriousness of the offense against the position and duties. Where I work, [irs.gov] for example, you get conditionally hired for the first year. We trust what you said on your application, bring you on board, and do a full background check during that first year. (Why do we trust what you said on the app? Because lying to us on that application is a felony and, experience shows, dadgum rare. And why do we allow ourselves a year to do the background check? Because we do a serious one - verifying any hits on the initial computer searches, interviewing your family and friends if you're in a sensitive position, and auditing your last three years of tax returns, etc. It takes time.) If there are problems, you may or may not get fired. Bouncing checks, for example, will definitely get you shown the door; it's just a behavior so at odds with our mission of fiscal responsibility that there's no room for second chances. Likewise, we have to be pretty harsh about lots of things and tend to reject anyone without a clean record.

But does every employer need to exercise that same level of caution? Do I really care if the guy selling me my car has a past conviction for felony cruelty to animals? Should someone who has a previous conviction for disturbing the peace be automatically barred from a "you want fries with that?" job? I just think there has to be some room for a judgement call. Any policy that is as was originally stated (iow, absolute) is not smart. Brain dead, even.