They thought this candidate was worth asking to prepare an interview task, but not worth hearing the result of that preparation.

That's mightily disrespectful and sounds a lot like 'shits and giggles'.

When they asked them to prepare the presentation, they likely had full intention to consider them for hiring. Then, another candidate filled the role, meaning the company no longer would be able to hire the author.

Informing them of this and cancelling the interview is the most respectful thing they could have done. It's certainly better than wasting the author's time by making them give the presentation even though the company then knew there was no longer a position they could offer.

> Then, another candidate filled the role...

I highly doubt that the HR went from 0 to a hire in <1 week. The hired candidate was obviously already in a more advanced stage of the interviewing process when the OP was asked to make a presentation.

So they were double disrespectful: They asked for a presentation knowing that there's a very high chance it will be meaningless. They didn't have the courtesy to sit through the presentation they asked for, or at least offer a token of their appreciation for the time the OP put to prepare for the cancelled presentation.

>I highly doubt that the HR went from 0 to a hire in <1 week. The hired candidate was obviously already in a more advanced stage of the interviewing process when the OP was asked to make a presentation.

That doesn't change anything. The company had no idea if the other candidate would pass the final interview or accept the offer until the very moment when they did, at which point they would have canceled OP's presentation. And that's what they did.

>They asked for a presentation knowing that there's a very high chance it will be meaningless.

So are you saying the better option would be for the company to say "well, there's a small chance we might hire you, but instead of giving you the opportunity we're just going to go ahead and reject you without even giving you the chance"? No, that's disrespectful.

>They didn't have the courtesy to sit through the presentation they asked for

Telling the candidate to waste their time giving the presentation that they already know won't change any outcome is disrespectful. If that had happened, we would all be here commenting about how the company is assholish for wasting OP's time by making them give a pointless presentation.

> Telling the candidate to waste their time

You seem to be arguing as if the company wasting the author's time was a hypothetical. No, they veritably, absolutely, wasted his time.

The respectful thing to do, IMO, is not to ask people to perform this type of free work, specially if the likelihood of the preparation going to waste is this high.

Thankfully, no company so far has asked me to do something like this, because I would just refuse.

They didn't waste his time. OP put in work and in return the company gave them a chance to be hired. Once it was known that there was no longer a chance for them to be hired, the company told OP to stop putting in work for it.

If the company had known from the start that there was 0% chance of hiring OP, or if the company had allowed OP to give their presentation while already knowing that there was 0% chance that OP would be hired, that would be wasting their time. But that's not what they did.

You only seem to be repeating the same two arguments with no variation, and without actually addressing what other people are saying in response to those arguments. That makes it seem to me that not only you're not actually open to discussing the matter, but also that we fundamentally disagree on what constitutes "making someone else waste time" so I guess I'll just say that I agree to disagree.

Have a good night!

Ironic, because your initial comment was just repeating the same argument that someone made before you with no variation. If you wanted a different response, you should have tried coming up with a novel thought rather than one that was already stated two comments above.

Good night.

>> The respectful thing to do, IMO, is not to ask people to perform this type of free work

Could you share the link to where someone else presented that same point? In fact, I only commented because I found it odd that nobody had said it yet in this subthread.

I addressed your "free work" comment in a separate subthread in response to your comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26096991

I disagree with your statement that it was respectful.

Accepting your scenario, this suggests that they did not really want to hire the candidate and at best thought they might settle - when it came to it, they were not even willing to compare the candidate at the next stage, despite already asking them to do this work.

They strung the candidate along.

You say "strung along", I say "they were willing to give OP a chance at the job even though OP was not fully qualified for it, and when it was decided that the role was no longer available to OP, they told OP that rather than having OP waste their time giving a pointless presentation that wouldn't have changed anything".

I say "They asked OP to do a bunch of wasted work on the off-chance that their prize candidate was not available - even though they were not (under no circumstances) interested in considering the OP against the prize candidate"

There's a simple and known solution to not have to do this - which is to conduct fleets of interviews at the same time, so that you can fairly and accurately compare the candidates.

Sure they do. HR metrics are all based around pipelines, just like sales people. They get measured on number of candidates interviewed, and the more candidates interviewed for a specific position the better, as it makes them appear to be doing more 'due diligence'.

I've worked at, hired at, and consulted at many companies. I've never once seen an HR department be incentivized to interview people just for the sake of interviewing. At my last two companies, recruiters are measured on the number of candidates that end up being extended an offer, and are negatively measured against the number of candidates that are rejected. If a recruiter is pulling in a large number of people that all get rejected, that's not due diligence, it's wasting everyone's time and is a signal that the recruiter is not very good at identifying suitable candidates.

I don't doubt you. I'm sure these metrics depend on industry and company size.

Even if they make it to the onsite?

Recruiters are not incentivized to get people to the onsite where I work. Not sure about the original commenter.

>HR metrics are all based around pipelines, just like sales people. They get measured on number of candidates interviewed, and the more candidates interviewed for a specific position the better, as it makes them appear to be doing more 'due diligence'.

Wait, is this really a widely prevalent practice? Any stats/data?

The primary criteria at my company is retention. Once the HR forwards the resume, the interview only moves forward if the hiring manager is interested in the candidate. The hiring manager wont waste their time with multiple interviews when they know for sure that they're going to reject the candidate. What purpose would that serve?

Why did the author experience this then? This should have been 1 phone call max to establish the author didn't have this experience. But instead, they sent him through multiple rounds and made them give a lengthy presentation.

>They were looking for someone with a few years of experience working with a specific technology I had never used. But… they knew that from my resume.

Can you explain why they might have gone with the above excuse rather than "we found someone better" or "we won't be moving forward"?

Unfortunately rejecting candidates and/or providing feedback can be a legal minefield. The most generic excuse is the best one and using objective facts is one of the safest ways to reject someone.

I see liability cited as a reason all the time, but I never hear about specific cases or settlements, or even a justification from an actual legal team (HR doesn't count, they are trained to never allow anything as far as I can tell). It comes across from the inside and the outside as pure laziness.

It's a legal minefield in the sense that there is legal trouble if a hiring manager says "I hired the other candidate because they were white", but there is no such trouble if they just privately think it.

Would there be anything wrong with "we really liked you but found someone else better"? That's been the situation in my company recently. None of the candidates were bad, all of them would have been capable of doing the job but we had to choose one.

That's what they said. From the article: "They said that I interviewed extremely well, but that they decided to go with another candidate."

They were likely willing to hire the author anyway, even without the experience. But they ended up finding someone that was better than the author.

>Can you explain why they might have gone with the above excuse rather than "we found someone better" or "we won't be moving forward"?

They did say "we found someone better". From the article: "They said that I interviewed extremely well, but that they decided to go with another candidate."

>It costs a lot of money and people-hours to interview someone.

True. Doesn't mean they're managing it properly.

>no company is going to waste the time and money to go through 3 interviews with a person

Again, assuming the company is carefully keeping track of this.

Sounds like an "ideal world" fantasy to me. Yes, the situation you describe is how things would ideally be. But they're clearly not. This happens, a lot more than many feel comfortable admitting.

Its the companies place to take the risk. The power imbalance is greatly in favor of the employer. At worst they hire someone not quite perfect but also have a pool of other candidates they looked at to move onto if it really is that bad of a choice.