> I tell people that the worst case scenario is that they use a week of vacation, but because of the extra pay they can take a nicer vacation later on.
I don't know about you guys, but if you're only getting 2 or 3 weeks of vacation a year, I think it's pretty insane to waste up to half of it on testing out a job. You need your vacation days for, you know, vacation, for your long-term mental sanity.
For a candidate who's already employed, that comes across as a completely unreasonable request. I mean, imagine if you interviewed at two companies like this -- you get no vacation that year! Ugh.
The point, I think, is that by the time you get to "trial week" phase you are pretty much set on joining, and it's just to avoid complete disasters. So the odds of you burning through two of these is incredibly low, and it's worth it anyway, since if you actually ended up not getting through trial week you are avoiding what could have been several years of a dysfunctional work environment, not to mention all the other opportunity costs of moving, etc.
Honest question here: Why do the vast majority of people don't first quit their previous job, and then use the time to interview conveniently at many companies? That would allow this trial-week arrangement for most candidates, and that actually sounds better for the candidates too - they don't want to join the wrong (for them) company.
I know U.S. health insurance is based around the current employer - is that the reason? Or a meager one month of salary, which you can probably offset just by getting offers from more companies which will determine your salary probably for the next 2 years at least - if money is the reason.
Also, what happens if the candidate's contract with their employer says they can't do other work while they're employed there? What happens if the contract says - any IP you create, we own, unless we clear this in advance?
All in all, the trial-week arrangement sounds to me like it's better for all sides, assuming people are willing to first quit, then look for another job. A lot of people end up miserable at their jobs, so why doesn't everyone do it?
I look at this way... If you're 2/3 of the way through the process (66% pass rate) and you think there's a high chance of leaving your current job, it's worth the risk. You can always take a 2 week break between jobs.
What I like about this is it also sells the company on the candidate. They have a full week to convince people they like to stick around.
I think this trial week is mostly for hiring fresh out of college candidates. They can spare the week, and it makes sense there. It's not such a good idea for people who already have a job.
It's funny. Silicon Valley is considered to be one of the least risk averse places but when it comes to hiring, it's incredibly risk averse.
On one hand, companies are loathe to make a hiring decision without running candidates through a meat grinder. Resumes? Those doesn't tell us anything. Code samples? You might not have even written the code and truth be told, we're not going to take the time to look at them anyway. References? Everyone says you're a rockstar, but how do we know you'll be a hit with our team?
On the other hand, prospective candidates who are currently employed often expect offers without doing much of anything. Four-plus hours of interviews? I can't take time out from my job. A real-world coding test of some sort? I could get in trouble with my current employer, and I want to spend time with my family tonight. And by the way, how much are you going to pay me again, because if total comp is less than $xxx,xxx, we should end this conversation before it even gets started.
Don't get me wrong: the cost of a bad hire or career move can be very high, and companies and prospective employees should use common sense (and gut instinct) to filter out relationships that clearly aren't likely to work. But it's insane to believe that every element of risk can be eliminated in these transactions, which is precisely what both sides so frequently seem to be doing.
As a company, if you demand to try before you buy and the word "employee development" is a foreign concept, you're likely to have problems. As a prospective employee, don't expect a company to hand you the goods if you act like you're window shopping.
I tell people that the worst case scenario is that they use a week of vacation, but because of the extra pay they can take a nicer vacation later on.
Maybe I'm a paranoid pessimist, but it seems to me that the worst case is that their employer finds out about this and then fires them because of breach of contract, specifically the non-compete clause. Granted, not everyone is under a non-compete clause, but it's still a risk people should think about. And it's still something Weebly should think about, too, unless they actually completely throw away the work their candidates produced during the trial week.
Employers of salaried employees generally don't need cause to fire employees, and not only are employee non-compete contracts generally not binding in California, but also it's not the nature of an enforceable non-compete that you can't do software development for any company (or even most companies).
I've interviewed north of 300 candidates in the last 10 years. I consider myself an expert interviewer and regularly baseline my interview results with the 6 month and 1 year results of those candidates that we hire.
Despite having very strong domain knowledge in the areas that I interview in, and having had lots of experience - it's unclear to me that my "interviews" do anything other than eliminate those manifestly unqualified for the position, that should have been filtered out during a phone screen by a qualified technical recruiter (or, for that matter, by the candidate themselves after reading through the requirements and comparing them with their own skillset/experience)
Indeed, the only process that I've observed in the last 10 years that really correlates well with the actual outcome of a candidate, is getting a reference, either my own, or someone I trust, from someone who has worked with that person for a significant (1 year+) period of time.
Interviewing is really next to worthless - I think even Google has discovered that, even in their incredibly quantitative process, there really isn't much in the way of correlation with how candidates perform on the job and what the interviewers thought of them. Even worse, there is some evidence to suggest that some candidates who performed poorly on the interviews (but still got hired) ended up performing better on the job.
Negative Correlation!
I think Weebly is on the right track here - but unfortunately the process doesn't scale, and, eventually, they'll end up with too many star candidates who will just pass them up rather than jump through these hoops. These types of candidates already have lots of job offers, and they certainly aren't going to "burn a week of vacation" on the off chance they might get a job.
It's the sort of thing you can do when you have under a couple hundred employees, but starts to fall apart as you grow.
>I think even Google has discovered that, even in their incredibly quantitative process
Google's process is not that incredibly quantitative. When I interviewed there everyone I spoke to had seen my resume, for example, if you wanted your process to be quantitative you would want your datapoints to be correlated as little as possible.
I think they are doing it more to keep up with appearances (it should look hard, to attract the best candidates and repel the worst ones) than anything scientific. They also copied a lot of their hiring process from Microsoft (and most software houses in SV are just copying from Google).
While I have no problem with an evenings/weekend work sample, I'd only agree to a trial week if I was currently unemployed and desperate. I also choose not to do contract-to-hire, which is the other 'trial period' approach I've seen. Anecdotally, the two places I've worked at that mostly did contract-to-hire for their other employees, the quality of my coworkers seemed a fair bit lower than at other jobs. Good contractors didn't care for the for-hire part, and folks who just wanted salary didn't care for the contract part, so you were left with people who couldn't find a position without agreeing to something they didn't care for.
I couldn't see anyone with a current job willing to do this. Not only does it cost a week of vacation (difficult to justify to a spouse), but how much advance notice can you give your current management?
Edit: Honestly, I wouldn't have agreed to this in college either. A week is long time to dedicate to one potential job offer when other companies have more reasonable expectations. Weebly would have to be offering something really special.
We've never hired anyone straight out of college (but not because we don't want to). Nearly everyone we've hired has been currently employed, and about 75% were even relocated from out of state.
On the college student front, we're trying to make improvements to get better at that. As a small startup, we never made the long-term investment in properly timing the recruiting and interviewing process, but now that we're a bit bigger, we're focusing on it more.
I am very surprised that the number of people who opt out of the trial week is only 5% -- clearly it's working for the company, but personally I'd be hard-pressed to give up a week's vacation time.
Still, if you were to do such a work-trial program, I can't imagine a better way to do it than this.
That was my thought. Especially with a family, vacation time is too important to spend working. While everything they pay for and do is nice, I wouldn't be willing to give it up to try and get a job. (Just one job, that is. If I really wanted to leave, I might spend some vacation time interviewing at many places, but 1 place for 1 week seems a little reckless in that circumstance.)
Highly agree - vacation time is extremely valuable to me as a Marine reservist since I often have to spend it for my two weeks of annual training, so if a prospective company asked me to do that, I'd thank them for their time, and part ways unless they were willing to forego that requirement in their decision making. I believe it's unreasonable to ask that time and money of people unless they were willing to compensate me for the time missed at my job.
I am personally willing to do a trial week at a company that I would really like to work for, because I don't like the traditional 1-hour stress-filled interview, and also because it'd let me evaluate the company and co-workers over a period of time. (Many companies are uglier on the inside that they would seem if you go by their web presence, and a few hour interview.)
But I can think of many awesome people I've hired over the hires who have other life commitments and would have passed if we'd used a trial-week policy for hiring.
So it's tricky, but I think you can pull this off if you're an "in demand" company with a good funnel of candidates; you would simply have to live with many excellent candidates passing on your company.
In larger companies, it's not uncommon to offer a 3 month contracting trial period. That gives the prospective employee a more stable income, and gives the employer a much better idea of work performance.
I've seen people that have been great in week 1, showing initiative, energy, insights into the problem, etc. But by week 3, their insights are gone, their initiative has shrank, and their energy is wiped - despite everyone working to support their success.
What I'm saying is, it's easy to put in one great week of work - especially when everything is new, and you're amazing people with the speed at which you pick things up. After 3 - 4 weeks, you'll see the real employee emerge.
Unless they aren't being upfront about their hiring process (in which case you could argue they are being deceitful), I imagine they number is greater than 5%. If you do not apply because of that requirement, you aren't getting counted.
I'm not sure that this is an issue, especially if the conversion rate is in the 70% range quoted in the article. You're getting double-paid for the trial week (from old job and new job), so just take a week of 'vacation' after you quit and before you start the new job.
The only issue is for those who don't get an offer or don't accept the offer, which is why this is (or should be) reserved for very late in the interview process.
I am curious how they figure that out - how many people 'declined to continue the interview process' but didn't say 'it's because you have a trial week'?
Wow, talk about a mono-culture. I just checked some of their photos and it seems they are male-dominated, 90% white, 10% oriental-asian with an average age of 25.
Is there any way that this could lead to legal trouble? If you're taking a week of vacation from your current job, that seems to imply that you're now drawing two salaries simultaneously; double dipping, so to speak. Sure, your current job isn't expecting you to be working, but they are expecting you to be getting rest and relaxation, and be able to come back fresher, not, say, come back stressed out after not quite cutting it for a week at another company.
Your job has no business "expecting" anything about what you do on your vacation. It's your time, do whatever you want.
For an example, see a poster above who goes on military training at that time, - it likely is more exhausting than any computer job, but perfectly okay anyways.
I think this is a really bad idea and I am not entirely sure if its legal. People who need a visa sponsorship are not allowed to work for other employers except their sponsoring employer. So your "trial" week idea, while legal, is indirectly preventing sponsorship candidates from applying to your company. You are also discriminating against disabled people or people who cannot leave their current location for extended periods, due to health related conditions, for example people on dialysis.
Are you comfortable precluding such people from applying to your company?
Unrelated, but this is the first time I've seen blog post on SequoiaCap.com. Can't help but think they were inspired by YC/HN (and the design seems inspired by Medium.com).
I love it and hope more companies like Sequoia publish useful content for entrepreneurs, whatever the medium -- their own site, or wherever.
A few years back I would have been thrilled to show up for a week and prove my skills.
Most of the interviews bored me to death. Coming up with a solution for a non-existing problem was a pain. "How many tennis balls would fit into a ..."
Fortunately for the jobs I really wanted I was asked to solve real problems the companies had at that time. It got me excited and I was hired in no time, without any effort or stress.
On the other hand some good developers were not this lucky and they struggled finding a job they actually enjoy. Having a chance to prove themselves is all they need.
"Other commitments" is moot point. A new job is a life-changing event for most of us. The potential of finding a great job where you feel happy every day worth it many times over. (Yes, I do have a family and other commitments.)
I really like this idea, and Weebly seems to be doing everything to make it as easy on the applicant as possible.
Outside of financial compensation, though, I hope that companies that do this are very flexible on the scheduling of the week of work.
I know that it would be difficult to take a week off of work at the wrong time without burning too many bridges. I try to give my company plenty of notice on vacation (months sometimes) so that they can plan ahead for my absence. It's a two way street, since they try and give me plenty notice for when I'm absolutely necessary. Most interview processes I've been through would not have that flexibility.
Its always funny how every time one of these articles gets written, the author mentions a small percentage of people (in this case 5%) who refuse to go along with the process. What they always seem to miss is that they are the top 5%. In other words, the ones who you want to hire. This goes for any whiz-bang candidate filtering mechanism.
Who cares if they are the top 5% if they don't jive with the way you do things. That just causes extra stress and trouble later on, so it is better for both sides. Besides, the top 5% of what? Raw coding ability? I bet you the people they hire are in the top N% of people who should work there.
I share the sentiment that you shouldn't just adopt whatever whizbang hiring scheme you read about. It takes experience to hone in on.
I'm in the 5% that would never agree to this. Why not just hire them and then make the trial week their first week of actual employment. Nothing stops a company from terminating an employee after one week for no reason at all.
[+] [-] crazygringo|12 years ago|reply
I don't know about you guys, but if you're only getting 2 or 3 weeks of vacation a year, I think it's pretty insane to waste up to half of it on testing out a job. You need your vacation days for, you know, vacation, for your long-term mental sanity.
For a candidate who's already employed, that comes across as a completely unreasonable request. I mean, imagine if you interviewed at two companies like this -- you get no vacation that year! Ugh.
[+] [-] gfodor|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epsylon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nimi|12 years ago|reply
I know U.S. health insurance is based around the current employer - is that the reason? Or a meager one month of salary, which you can probably offset just by getting offers from more companies which will determine your salary probably for the next 2 years at least - if money is the reason.
Also, what happens if the candidate's contract with their employer says they can't do other work while they're employed there? What happens if the contract says - any IP you create, we own, unless we clear this in advance?
All in all, the trial-week arrangement sounds to me like it's better for all sides, assuming people are willing to first quit, then look for another job. A lot of people end up miserable at their jobs, so why doesn't everyone do it?
[+] [-] mathattack|12 years ago|reply
What I like about this is it also sells the company on the candidate. They have a full week to convince people they like to stick around.
[+] [-] mike_esspe|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcv|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 7Figures2Commas|12 years ago|reply
On one hand, companies are loathe to make a hiring decision without running candidates through a meat grinder. Resumes? Those doesn't tell us anything. Code samples? You might not have even written the code and truth be told, we're not going to take the time to look at them anyway. References? Everyone says you're a rockstar, but how do we know you'll be a hit with our team?
On the other hand, prospective candidates who are currently employed often expect offers without doing much of anything. Four-plus hours of interviews? I can't take time out from my job. A real-world coding test of some sort? I could get in trouble with my current employer, and I want to spend time with my family tonight. And by the way, how much are you going to pay me again, because if total comp is less than $xxx,xxx, we should end this conversation before it even gets started.
Don't get me wrong: the cost of a bad hire or career move can be very high, and companies and prospective employees should use common sense (and gut instinct) to filter out relationships that clearly aren't likely to work. But it's insane to believe that every element of risk can be eliminated in these transactions, which is precisely what both sides so frequently seem to be doing.
As a company, if you demand to try before you buy and the word "employee development" is a foreign concept, you're likely to have problems. As a prospective employee, don't expect a company to hand you the goods if you act like you're window shopping.
[+] [-] CodeMage|12 years ago|reply
Maybe I'm a paranoid pessimist, but it seems to me that the worst case is that their employer finds out about this and then fires them because of breach of contract, specifically the non-compete clause. Granted, not everyone is under a non-compete clause, but it's still a risk people should think about. And it's still something Weebly should think about, too, unless they actually completely throw away the work their candidates produced during the trial week.
[+] [-] tptacek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] isb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmansley|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spinlock|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghshephard|12 years ago|reply
Despite having very strong domain knowledge in the areas that I interview in, and having had lots of experience - it's unclear to me that my "interviews" do anything other than eliminate those manifestly unqualified for the position, that should have been filtered out during a phone screen by a qualified technical recruiter (or, for that matter, by the candidate themselves after reading through the requirements and comparing them with their own skillset/experience)
Indeed, the only process that I've observed in the last 10 years that really correlates well with the actual outcome of a candidate, is getting a reference, either my own, or someone I trust, from someone who has worked with that person for a significant (1 year+) period of time.
Interviewing is really next to worthless - I think even Google has discovered that, even in their incredibly quantitative process, there really isn't much in the way of correlation with how candidates perform on the job and what the interviewers thought of them. Even worse, there is some evidence to suggest that some candidates who performed poorly on the interviews (but still got hired) ended up performing better on the job.
Negative Correlation!
I think Weebly is on the right track here - but unfortunately the process doesn't scale, and, eventually, they'll end up with too many star candidates who will just pass them up rather than jump through these hoops. These types of candidates already have lots of job offers, and they certainly aren't going to "burn a week of vacation" on the off chance they might get a job.
It's the sort of thing you can do when you have under a couple hundred employees, but starts to fall apart as you grow.
[+] [-] EdiX|12 years ago|reply
Google's process is not that incredibly quantitative. When I interviewed there everyone I spoke to had seen my resume, for example, if you wanted your process to be quantitative you would want your datapoints to be correlated as little as possible. I think they are doing it more to keep up with appearances (it should look hard, to attract the best candidates and repel the worst ones) than anything scientific. They also copied a lot of their hiring process from Microsoft (and most software houses in SV are just copying from Google).
[+] [-] pkteison|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] overgryphon|12 years ago|reply
I couldn't see anyone with a current job willing to do this. Not only does it cost a week of vacation (difficult to justify to a spouse), but how much advance notice can you give your current management?
Edit: Honestly, I wouldn't have agreed to this in college either. A week is long time to dedicate to one potential job offer when other companies have more reasonable expectations. Weebly would have to be offering something really special.
[+] [-] drusenko|12 years ago|reply
On the college student front, we're trying to make improvements to get better at that. As a small startup, we never made the long-term investment in properly timing the recruiting and interviewing process, but now that we're a bit bigger, we're focusing on it more.
[+] [-] analog31|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] c23gooey|12 years ago|reply
Its much harder to get a worker with family commitments to work long hours/weekends etc
[+] [-] jmduke|12 years ago|reply
Still, if you were to do such a work-trial program, I can't imagine a better way to do it than this.
[+] [-] _dark_matter_|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bahamut|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nairteashop|12 years ago|reply
I am personally willing to do a trial week at a company that I would really like to work for, because I don't like the traditional 1-hour stress-filled interview, and also because it'd let me evaluate the company and co-workers over a period of time. (Many companies are uglier on the inside that they would seem if you go by their web presence, and a few hour interview.)
But I can think of many awesome people I've hired over the hires who have other life commitments and would have passed if we'd used a trial-week policy for hiring.
So it's tricky, but I think you can pull this off if you're an "in demand" company with a good funnel of candidates; you would simply have to live with many excellent candidates passing on your company.
[+] [-] Swannie|12 years ago|reply
I've seen people that have been great in week 1, showing initiative, energy, insights into the problem, etc. But by week 3, their insights are gone, their initiative has shrank, and their energy is wiped - despite everyone working to support their success.
What I'm saying is, it's easy to put in one great week of work - especially when everything is new, and you're amazing people with the speed at which you pick things up. After 3 - 4 weeks, you'll see the real employee emerge.
[+] [-] jasonlotito|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmsmith|12 years ago|reply
The only issue is for those who don't get an offer or don't accept the offer, which is why this is (or should be) reserved for very late in the interview process.
[+] [-] jacalata|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] d3gamer|12 years ago|reply
They even dress alike lol
Is this common with Silicon Valley startups?
[+] [-] lambda|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PeterisP|12 years ago|reply
For an example, see a poster above who goes on military training at that time, - it likely is more exhausting than any computer job, but perfectly okay anyways.
[+] [-] hpagey|12 years ago|reply
Are you comfortable precluding such people from applying to your company?
[+] [-] jorgem|12 years ago|reply
He liked the new job, came back from "vacation", and gave his notice. I don't remember how much notice he gave.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, I guess.
[+] [-] pud|12 years ago|reply
I love it and hope more companies like Sequoia publish useful content for entrepreneurs, whatever the medium -- their own site, or wherever.
[+] [-] nerfhammer|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tlogan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CCs|12 years ago|reply
Most of the interviews bored me to death. Coming up with a solution for a non-existing problem was a pain. "How many tennis balls would fit into a ..."
Fortunately for the jobs I really wanted I was asked to solve real problems the companies had at that time. It got me excited and I was hired in no time, without any effort or stress.
On the other hand some good developers were not this lucky and they struggled finding a job they actually enjoy. Having a chance to prove themselves is all they need.
"Other commitments" is moot point. A new job is a life-changing event for most of us. The potential of finding a great job where you feel happy every day worth it many times over. (Yes, I do have a family and other commitments.)
[+] [-] EvanKelly|12 years ago|reply
Outside of financial compensation, though, I hope that companies that do this are very flexible on the scheduling of the week of work.
I know that it would be difficult to take a week off of work at the wrong time without burning too many bridges. I try to give my company plenty of notice on vacation (months sometimes) so that they can plan ahead for my absence. It's a two way street, since they try and give me plenty notice for when I'm absolutely necessary. Most interview processes I've been through would not have that flexibility.
[+] [-] tptacek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drusenko|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonlotito|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freework|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bryanh|12 years ago|reply
I share the sentiment that you shouldn't just adopt whatever whizbang hiring scheme you read about. It takes experience to hone in on.
[+] [-] kevinpet|12 years ago|reply
How many people decline the interview process before you've offered them trial week because they are aware that's how you hire?
[+] [-] dmourati|12 years ago|reply