All.hiring process.how to guide

Hiring process

Pre-hiring: Bounty

• We have hundreds of candidates who want to contribute to our projects and work with us, but we can't easily find the ones that have the right skills to join the team
• One approach is for us to go through the applications, rank the candidates, on-board them and help them achieve the quality of code we expect from team members
• Another approach is to let the candidates show that they can deliver through bounty hunting
• The idea is to have challenging projects (bounties) that potential hires can take on
  • From a couple of days to ~2 weeks of work
  • Lots of coding with clear specs
  • Not on the critical path, "nice to have" projects that will become useful in the future
• Those who excel at the bounties get paid and get onto the hiring path
• More information and instructions for bounty hunters are provided in /docs/onboarding/bounty.onboarding_checklist.reference.md

Hiring stages

• We separate the hiring process into the following stages:
• Intern
  • Not a part of the company
  • Paid, but not through the company payroll
  • Interns only have access to public repos (e.g., helpers, tutorials)
  • Can be full-time or part-time
    • Since most are students, during summer they can work full-time
    • In any case we expect at least 20 hrs/week
  • Interns go through "light" on-boarding
    • Read the "must-read" docs about how we do things
    • Set up for development on their laptops
  • Interns get simple tasks to work on, so that we can assess how well they can follow directions and work independently
    • The tasks would be most likely related to Linter, documentation, AI, DS
    • How to test potential hires to the Infra team? We decide case by case
  • Ideal goal: minimal effort for us to give a chance to somebody, high probability of failing
  • Interns are managed only by the hiring team without any input from team leaders
  • Interns receive feedback on various skills every 2 weeks (see more below)
  • After 1-2 months (or whenever we feel we have enough information to make an informed decision), we decide whether the intern can move on to the following stage of the hiring pipeline
• 3-month trial
  • Before an intern can turn into a permanent team member, they go through a 3-month trial period
  • At this stage, they work full-time and have all the markings of a Causify team member
  • They go through full on-boarding, receiving company e-mail, server access, access to private repos, etc.
  • They receive feedback on various skills every month to make sure they are adapting and improving in the way we expect
  • After 3 months, we make a decision whether to make an offer or not
    • The probability of failing at this stage should be low
  • This stage is run by the hiring team with some input from team leaders
  • During this stage, we decide which team they go on: Infra, Dev, DS, AI
• Permanent team member
  • Successful candidates receive an offer for a permanent full-time position after the 3-month trial
  • At this point they should already be fully on-boarded and ready to hit the ground running
  • They get assigned to a particular team/project and start being managed by the corresponding team leader
  • For now, we don't consider hiring new people to part-time positions since it's too difficult to plan their involvement in projects

HiringMeister

• Members of the hiring team alternate being the HiringMeister for 2 weeks
• To see who is the HiringMeister now, refer to Rotation Meisters
• HiringMeister's duties include:
  • Organizing the hiring and onboarding process (see below for more details)
  • Communicating with applicants by email
  • Supervising interns and people on a 3-month trial period
  • Keeping all the relevant documentation up-to-date
  • Improving the process when needed
  • Managing the hiring project on Asana
• In other words, HiringMeister is the first point of contact for triaging, making sure nothing falls through the cracks

Step by step

• We look for candidates based on the specific hiring needs in our teams/projects. There are several avenues:

  • Emails to CS and related depts
    • Especially for PhD students
  • Using our LinkedIn pipeline
    • We are going to start targeting graduates from top schools
  • Job postings on LinkedIn
  • Job postings on Upwork

• HiringMeister/GP: send an email to the applicant with a link to the questionnaire to gather information about them

• (Optional) HiringMeister/GP: send an email inviting the applicant to participate in bounty hunting

  • All further steps are put on hold while the applicant works on bounty tasks

• Hiring team: decide whether we take on the applicant as an intern

  • Decided at a review meeting that takes place every 2 weeks
  • We want to increase the quality of the collaborators, so if there is a red flag (e.g., no GitHub, low GPA, undergrad) we can decide not to offer the internship
  • The goal is to avoid onboarding people that will likely disappoint us
  • If we receive a single candidate application and find no red flags in the profile, we should proceed further in the process
  • It's ok to ask more team members to take a look
  • If the candidate is a no-go, GP sends an email of rejection
  • If we decide to on-board the candidate, continue with the steps below

• HiringMeister/GP: send an email asking to confirm if they are still interested and ready to go

  • Proceed with the steps below only if they respond with a confirmation

• HiringMeister: create a task on Asana in the Hiring project

  • The task goes in the "Onboarding" section
  • The name of the task is the name of the intern

  • In the task description, use the following template:

    Pronoun:
    Personal email:
    Work status (e.g., when graduates):
    
    GitHub:
        Onboarding issue:x
        Issues:
        PRs:
    
    Hiring info:
        Google Form:
        CV:
        LinkedIn:
        GitHub user:
        TG:
        Working hours / week:
        Best piece of code:
        How good (1-5):
    

    - Fill in the template based on their questionnaire responses - We use this Asana task to communicate about the intern

• HiringMeister/GP: send invitations to GitHub repos with write permissions:

  • helpers
  • tutorials

• HiringMeister: create a GitHub issue for onboarding the intern

  • Follow the instructions in intern.onboarding_checklist.reference.md

• HiringMeister: regularly check the updates made by the intern in the onboarding issue and help resolve any errors they face

  • This "light" onboarding process should take 2-3 days max
  • The goal is to make sure that all the mechanisms for developing are tested and working, so that we can focus on the next stages ("can the intern fix a simple bug?", "can the intern write more complex code?", etc.)

• HiringMeister: once the onboarding is complete, assign a warm-up issue to the intern

  • If an intern shows lack of progress on their assigned warm-up task, ping them twice for updates. If no progress is made, reassign the task to a more promising intern
  • Once the intern submits a pull request, review it to ensure adherence to our processes. Provide constructive feedback on areas for improvement and ascertain if the task's objectives have been fully met
  • If the task is completed, assign a new one

• Hiring team: after 1 month, decide whether we should continue to collaborate with the intern or not

• HiringMeister: when the intern moves on to the 3-month trial period, create a GitHub issue for further onboarding

  • Follow the instructions in all.onboarding_checklist.reference.md

• HiringMeister: once the full onboarding is complete, organize more complex tasks to test their development and problem-solving skills

  • This is done together with team leaders

• Hiring team: after 3 months, decide whether we want to offer a permanent position on the team

  • If the offer is made, decide which team/project the new team member is joining, based on their background, skills, performance during internship and 3-month trial, and, last but not least, company needs

Warm-up tasks

• The HiringMeister should collaborate with the team to identify potential warm-up tasks to give to the interns upon completion of their onboarding process
• The goal of a warm-up issue is to write a bit of code and show they can follow the process, the goal is not to check if they can solve a complex coding problem
• It should take 1-2 days to get it done
• This helps us understand if they can
  • Follow the process (or at least show that they have read the docs and somehow internalized them)
  • Solve some trivial problems
  • Write Python code
  • Interact on GitHub
  • Communicate with the team
• The warm-up tasks should be straightforward to integrate, immediately beneficial, unrelated to new features, and should not rely on the code in private repos
• It is important that specs are provided in a manner that is easy to be understood by interns, and any queries they may have regarding the task are addressed quickly by the HiringMeister or another permanent team member
• Warm-up tasks are collected in advance:
  • Issues marked with the "good first issue" label on GH
    • Extremely simple (e.g., changing a few lines of code, converting Gdoc to Markdown...)
    • The goal is to practice following our procedure
  • Issues marked with the "good second issue" label on GH
    • Still simple but require a little bit more coding than the first issue
    • The goal is to start testing the skills as well as confirm the understanding of our process
  • Outsourceable issues gdoc

Giving feedback

• Every 2 weeks interns are provided feedback that includes scores given to their skills and performance
• The process and scoring criteria are defined in all.contributor_feedback.how_to_guide.md
• Scoring should be done by all members of the hiring team
• Interns with a low score should be let go