An employee in the US may resign at any moment, and then it will be too late to look for a replacement’

The constant search for employees

Silicon Valley is a kind of Mecca for IT specialists, electronics engineers, designers and other related engineering professions. Specialists from all over the world strive to get there, there and in the immediate vicinity (primarily in San Francisco and San Jose) the most titled experts work here, such as Guido van Rossum (the author of Python) and Andrei Alexandrescu (D language programmer and co-author), here well-known products such as Gmail, Microsoft Office for Mac, DropBox and etc. were created.

Despite the fact that almost every second resident of Silicon Valley is an engineer by their diploma, every company has a large number of open vacancies and maintain a permanent recruitment. This is due to several reasons.

First, any company is ready to hire talented graduates and are keen to do this as early as possible. Therefore, in almost any University in California once or twice a year there are special events, where major companies recruit students to practice and recently graduated students – as engineers. If you have good grades, and you pass an interview (more details – below), you may get a job offer before graduating and not thinking about it anymore (that, actually, happened to me).

Secondly, in the United States if an employee dismisses at his own request, he usually works at the most a week. It means that at any moment someone from the staff can quit, and then it will be too late to look for a replacement.

The most titled experts work in Silicon Valley, such as Guido van Rossum (the author of Python). Photo: fr.academic.ru

Preliminary selection of candidates

Your grades in the diploma are important only to the recruiter, who decides whether to consider your resume or not. By the way, grades are approximately at the same level as the prestige of the University, work experience while studying, participation in volunteer programmes and so on. Of course, every recruiter determines the selection criteria for himself, but, in general, all previous experience helps a candidate to reach this stage of the interview.

The first interview with a candidate is conducted by phone (phone screening). The purpose of this interview is to weed out inappropriate candidates; those who exaggerated or lied in the curriculum vitae, who can't speak English at the required level and who has psychological problems.

Usually, a candidate is offered one or two simple tasks, the purpose of which is to test basic skills for a candidate: that is, if you sent a resume for a position as a web developer, it would be strange not to know the basic principles of HTML and JavaScript.

After the results of preliminary selection the interviewer decides whether it makes sense to conduct a full cycle of an interview for a candidate (so-called interview loop). And if it does, for what position — one that a candidate filed or for some other (lower or higher).

The procedure of an interview

If a phone interview is successful, the candidate is invited to campus for a face-to-face meeting. All expenses of a candidate (travel costs, and, if necessary, flights and accommodation) are fully paid by a company conducting the interview.

The interview starts with a meeting with a recruiter who tells the candidate his or her schedule, answers his or her questions and passes to the first interviewer. Usually, a candidate this day has from 4 to 6 interviews, each lasts about an hour.

In some companies, for example, in Facebook, every interview has a specific name and is aimed at evaluating a certain skill: programming, logical thinking, ability to design complex systems and etc. In other companies, the structure of the interview is not open, and every next interview can be different. However, the interviewers give tasks of gradually increasing complexity, until an applicant stops coping with it. This type of interview is called 'raising the bar'.

In some companies, every interview has a specific name and is aimed at evaluating a certain skill. On photo – headquarters Facebook (Matt Harnack /Facebook)

All interviews are held either at the board or (if the board is busy) with a piece of paper. They rarely ask to do specific programming on the computer. Usually, after 2-3 interviews one of interviewing engineers invites a candidate to lunch (at company expense). But you should not relax: it's the same interview, just in a less formal atmosphere.

The interview questions can be any. However, usually, they are of a practical nature, on the principle of 'to code the solution to this problem' or 'to invent an optimal algorithm for this process' (coding questions). Here they check the ability of a candidate to write code quickly, without errors, as well as the skills of testing and debugging a code. Often it's important not how you solve the problem, but how you check and explain it.

Another type is system design questions. For example, they may ask a candidate how he or she would have designed Google, Twitter, YouTube and other well-known systems. The question may be general (all Google) or very specific (for example, Google's search tip). The candidate should be able to break a large system into separate levels, to describe their structure and interaction. Despite its apparent simplicity, this task can be much harder than coding, because it requires more of vision and erudition, often far outside its field.

Well, the last type of questions — about a candidate's curriculum vitae: about his or her work, about future plans and so on. Usually, the interviewer raises a number of issues that he or she needs to figure out: 'How does a candidate handle conflicts?', 'What role does a candidate play in the team?' and so on. Usually, they ask what the candidate knows about the company, where he or she has applied, and why he wants to work here. Thus, in one company they asked me whether I knew the third basic principle of activity of their company. I honestly admitted that I don't know… I don't know if it affected or not, but I didn't get a job.

'In one company they asked me whether I knew the third basic principle of activity of their company. I honestly admitted that I don't know… I don't know if it affected or not, but I didn't get a job.' Photo: vk.com

After the interview, the employer must make a decision – whether to hire this candidate or not. Thus, he or she should briefly describe the interview for other interviewers and to justify the decision.

Usually after two or three no hire decisions the interview is interrupted, and the candidate is sent home. If there is only one no hire, a special commission discusses the final decision. In some companies, in this case, they conduct another interview with the engineer of very high qualification, who assesses a candidate in general, not his or her skills.

Interview results

Following the interview they make a decision whether a candidate get a job offer or not. Also, another decision is at what level he or she will start working – junior, senior of just an engineer and so on. Usually, positions that are open in companies have enough clearance for employment for entrants as well as for experienced specialists.