What happens on the other side of your interview. The way we do it at Artsy.

1. Of Your Interview
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@dblockdotorg
Tuesday, December 10, 2013

2. Many Sides
Medium Companies
Big Companies
Companies Run By Kids
Companies Run By Pros
Companies Run By Committee
Companies ...
Not Quite Companies
Small Companies

3. Unique You

4. Amongst Many Of You

5. How Many?
240 Engineering
102 Editorial
548 Designer
124 Research
~ 6 a day

6. This is where ...
… I start boring you with a story
about how we filter resumes ...

7. People
#1

8. What kind of people?
Inspiring
High Performing + Team Player
Right Brain + Left Brain

9. Lead Generation
@engineer => cold email to our CEO
@engineer => an early hiring website experiment
@pm => viral job post on tumblr
@engineer => referral via friend of CEO
@mobile engineer => referral via friend of CEO
@engineer => hiring website
@engineer => worked together with someone above
@engineer => worked together with someone above
@engineer => worked together with someone above
@engineer => random encounter during Hurricane Irene
@engineer => cold email to CEO
@engineer => cold email to jobs@
@engineer => referral via friend
@engineer => met @engineer at a tech talk
@engineer => met @engineer at a conference

10. Materializing a Lead

11. We Know You
You better know us!

12. Onsite Interview
2-3 Engineers
1 Non-Engineer
45 minutes 1:1
Lunch / Coffee
Standup

13. How to Decide?
Does the candidate raise the bar?
Will I be more excited to come to work if the candidate
sits next to me?
Clear Yes or No, not Maybe or Hesitations

14. Written Feedback: Yep
Yep,
Seemed like a strong developer and a very humble individual. I talked to her about her work on
project Blue Beam for a while and it was clear that she made a substantial contribution to it,
specifically the software infrastructure for the launcher.
I described a simplified version of our current architecture and asked her to think up some ways to
get better performance from our back end and he came up with some good ideas, including
refactoring the API and rewriting the caching layer to use Russian Doll caching.
She was very interested in how we measure the success of new features or changes on the site and
had some good ideas in that area as well.

15. Written Feedback: Nope
Nope,
While very energetic and clearly quite ambitious, the candidate's fundamental understanding of
computer science seemed weak for a college graduate in CS.
For example, when asked what's a b-tree answered that it's a kind of plant.
He deflected almost every technical question to a more general discussion, rather than addressing
the specific problem at hand.
When I asked him to describe a specific time when he identified and fixed an application
performance problem, he described something completely unrelated to application performance a bike race.

16. Gushing References
from very successful individuals
Offense vs Defense
Force objectivity via ranking
Separate performance from culture
Pay attention to tone not content
References are also pitch opportunities

17. Decision-Making Process

18. Rejection
Thank you for taking the time to interview with Artsy. We have decided not to move forward.
We think you're very energetic and ambitious. You take initiative and are generally curious.
Things like your involvement in your school’s programming club and your personal project X
speak for themselves. However, your fundamentals in CS and the responses to technical questions
were below the bar that we have set for a candidate in this position.
However, we definitely want to stay in touch and would be grateful for the opportunity to reevaluate working together in the future. In the meantime, I'd love to see you succeed at another
NYC company. I am serious about this, so if you have some startups in mind that you would like to
be introduced to, or would like us to suggest some, please let me know and I will connect you with
the right people.
Thank you,

19. Your Resume
Simple
Short
Factual
Accurate
Consistent
Coherent

20. Objectives
“To obtain a full time position that matches my enthusiasm,
constant effort and efficiency.”

21. Github and Open-Source

22. Lead, Driven and Managed

23. X-Pert Skillz

24. Career Changer is a Strength

25. Have Someone* Read Your Resume
And Give You Honest Feedback
* Someone = Who Hires a Lot of Engineers

26. You Definitely Have What It Takes
Meet A NYC Company That Wants You
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dblock@dblock.org