About this Episode

Parent Driven Development

059: Hiring and Interviewing

Jess, Chris S, and Allison discuss the hiring and interviewing process in tech. They share their experience as the interviewee, as well as the interviewer. The team identifies the underlying bias in the process, good signs and bad signs, and why it's important to set up a potential interviewee in the best environment possible.

01:45 Hiring and Interviewing in tech

Jess writes a book and gets a new job
How to reduce bias in interviewing process

03:33 Tech interviews hinder parents and caregivers

Take-home vs pairing session
Hiring managers should set up the interviewee in the best possible scenario
6-8 hours for a take-home test, unrealistic for caregivings

09:50 How to access talent

Everyway is flawed
Take-home - kids constantly interrupting
Paired - many engineers are introverted
Solutions: Short at-home mixed with pairing, or problem prompt

13:30 Bias

How to reduce: rubric for every round, being aware of the bias
Allison asks about parental leave, and feels the tone shift drastically
Legal protection, but a lot of fuzzy areas

16:45 Good signs for parents interviewing

Its a non-event when a child pops into the room while on a call
Companies reward evenly
Talk with team members outside the interviewing committee
Talk with someone you relate to on the team, mom, trans, BIPOC, etc

20:30 Bad signs for parents interviewing

The entire tone changes after asking about parental leave..
Judgmental, leadership team of non-parents

22:00 Handing flexibility

Ask about parental leave, primary and secondary leave
Be honest with needs
Workplace flexibility

28:37 Genius / fail

Jess deals with her son having accidents constantly
Chris and his kids play board games and jam out to all songs names satellite
Allison’s daughter sparks chaos when she leaves her room after bedtime… but soon learns to stay in her room to tire herself out.