As a software engineer with a non-traditional background, you get a better appreciation for the short-comings of traditional hiring practices. For example, it was significantly harder to break into the field of software engineering with any first job than it was to get offers from Facebook and Microsoft. It was so hard to break into software that it was easier for me to pass interviews than it was to get them. In my initial job search, it took nine months to get two interviews without referrals.
Why are things like this?
The interview process involves successive, increasingly targeted filters. The intent of this is to weed out candidates in a cost-effective fashion while minimizing false positives. The first filters discriminate on group attributes, not individual ones. Those two filters are recruiters and applicant tracking systems. They are two sides of the same coin, as they perform the same task: evaluate a candidate based on their resume.
What are the effects of filtering based on resume?
Resume evaluation is about evaluating groups, not individuals. Resume screening involves looking for attributes that are associated with higher interview pass rates. These attributes may include:
- a degree in computer science
- having gone to a prestigious institution
- having previous job experience it he same role
- having worked at a prestigious company
Another way to look at resumes is as a signaling mechanism. Signaling is just a proxy for skills and are actually statements about groups, not individuals. A good resume is just good signaling, and a bad one lacks that good signaling. A non-traditional candidate, by definition, will lack good signaling. Another way of thinking as a non-traditional candidate as them being from a low interview-pass-rate group.
Now it should be clear what the problem is. If the initial filter to screen software engineers is based on group characteristics (i.e. signaling), then non-traditional candidates will be disproportionately rejected prior to the evaluation of individual skills. For the industry in general, this is not really a big problem, as non-traditional candidates are relatively rare. For non-traditional candidates themselves, this is a serious, career-altering problem.
So where does Triplebyte come in?
Triplebyte acts as a third party for which companies can outsource all screening prior to the onsite. The differ from recruiting firms in that they actually interview candidates and pick out the best performing ones. This process works because people who pass Triplebyte’s screening process have a higher pass rate at the onsites (~60%) than the companys’ own internal screening process (~30%). What differentiates Triplebyte’s process is not their selectivity but that they are resume-blind.
Triplebyte’s secret sauce is that they evaluate candidates exclusively on individual characteristics, not group characteristics. Their initial filter is a standardized test of concepts in software engineering. As you may know standardized testing is the most unbiased, objective way of grading skills that is known. The final filter is a two hour technical screen by a senior engineer covering four major categories: coding, knowledge of computer science concepts, debugging an existing codebase, and system design. This final screen is so rigorous that I initially failed it while receiving offers from Facebook and Microsoft.
As someone with a non-traditional background, Triplebyte’s method is the proper solution to connecting unrecognized talent with software companies that normally screen based on a resume.