What’s the point of phone screens?
I understand the rationale if you’re coming from an unknown company - before wasting engineers’ time, it’s good to evaluate. But imagine people from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon etc. who have to interview for some no name startups or companies of similar stature like Airbnb or Uber - what’s the point? Like somehow you’re convinced people who produced the OS you use, engine you search, the platform you’ll use for marketing aren’t even qualified for an onsite?
Not everyone that works for those companies was personally responsible for their flagship products.
Agree. But a great company is built by great people and every great company makes sure they hire the best they can above a certain bar, else the industry will eat you up.
Lots of great companies employ plenty of shit people who fell through the cracks. Source: I’ve worked at Microsoft and Google and have worked with incompetent losers at both.
They’re afraid of discrimination lawsuits?
If you think you’re too good for phone screens, then you should have no trouble getting through them with minimal effort. I’m sure you can find the ~45 min needed for them in your day.
I’ve personally found them a pain in the ass more than an issue with not clearing them. And I am not interviewing anymore since I joined Google couple months ago. It’s not the 45 minute interview. It’s the weird 11 am or 3 pm timings that screw up half your day as well. Imagine doing multiple phone screens on top of that.
I agree they’re a pain in the ass, but my issue is more so with saying that if you’re from FAANG, you shouldn’t have to do phone screens. Just because you managed to get into FAANG, doesn’t necessarily make you a good engineer.
I think it's more about if you give crazy serial killer vibes
Well just got dinged 2 hours after a phone screen with Amazon, so I can relate lol.
The assumption that all the people hired at the big tech firms are quality is false. Some companies specifically don’t want people dripping with the culture from (insert big company name). A phone screen can save a lot of time and money and is smart recruiting for any company.
Phone screens exist to filter out candidates so they don’t have to spend time on an on-site. Anyone can put Amazon or Google on their Resume and LinkedIn. And even if you did work there there for years, you may still not be qualified to pass the phone screen.
You can discard a lot of people by talking to them. For example, if op given a hint of his high horse attitude, I would discard him in a heartbeat cause he thinks he is special. Newsflash, you are not and nobody wants to be around someone who has superiority complex. Phone screen doesn’t only help screening technical ability but detect jerks too.
It’s not about superiority complex. It’s about redundancy. The point of a phone screen is to see if a candidate can do well onsite. Having a standardised test or some credibility of some sort should at least help you weed out and bring down the insane number of man hours a company wastes in doing phone screens.
Also, thank you. I’m not applying to Oracle anyway. I’ve interned there and the farm jobs and the oralinux machines were enough to scar me for life :)
1. It is also cultural fit. 2. You usually touch wider range of tech stack with more responsobility at start up. Attitude and enthusiasm really matter. 3. How can the other company trust you that you actually work at FAANG? Probably by talking to you in person.
The second point I think is something I haven’t thought of. Nice !
To filter out strong candidates