IMO there's a huge difference between "we do this because we had too many fraudulent applicants and this is a compromise compared to having you interview in-person" versus "this is representative of how the entire employment relationship will go."
If the former, their fears are not unfounded: Sometimes the person who impressed you in the interview is not actually the same person who arrives for their first day of work. There are also less-audacious forms of interview cheating, where an off-screen cyber-Cyrano is supplying them with answers and/or keyboard-input.
That said, I agree that any workplace with a "webcam on at all times for monitoring" policy for employees is one I would leave ASAP. Not just because it's hostile and offensive, but also because it's indicative of the company doing badly while management is busy "rearranging deck-chairs on the Titanic."
> "this is representative of how the entire employment relationship will go."
Seems like it's great signal of how the company thinks, and will behave.
Not necessarily that they'll put all employees under video surveillance, but if they think that interview thing is a good idea, I'd guess probably they'll do numerous other things along the same line of thinking.
Occam's Razor possibilities:
1. The company is normally very enlightened and thoughtful and fair, and has a very subtle and nuanced rationale for why they're coming across as invasive and overbearing in this one narrow instance, and their reasons in this bad first-impressions instance (when they should be thinking about first impressions) were simply somehow not explained.
I think the former might strongly imply the latter.
If a company can't think of a single way to ensure the person who interviews is actually the person who comes to work the first day (hint, there was a time when webcams did not exist), then that company is probably also inclined to inflict lazy, intrusive surveillance-based schemes on employees after they're hired.
That's what I was getting at. If you want to be sure that the human body who will be present in the office is the one doing the work, then you need to have at least one on-site interview.
If the work is fully remote, then does it really even matter? If you hire Person A to provide certain business results, but he actually contracts it out to Person B who does all the work, yet the expected business results are provided, then do you actually care?
1- You don't want an incompetent, non-trustworthy person to work for you. They ruin the culture and affect the entire company.
2- Once they are in, it's not likely that they care as much as the interview time to delegate the job to a person.
3- You might have other non-technical requirements, like a background check, culture fit, personal skills, etc. The person they might delegate the job has not gone through this filter.
> I will not install spyware on my personal computer.
Agreed, if they want to lend me a computer for the exercise, that's another matter. :p
It's been a while since I last interviewed in earnest, but my recollection is that those situations (fortunately) correspond with companies that I probably wouldn't want to work for anyway.
If you expect to be doing take home assignments, you need to know how to use virtual machines, restrictive outgoing white list only firewalls (or at least open snitch) and wipe everything except the source code you create. Between companies / every single use
If a prospective employer refused to conduct my interview because their anti-cheating software could detect I was using a virtual machine, then I would tell them to go fuck themselves.
I would rather clean toilets with dignity than be bitch-whipped into programming for such psychopathic entities.
So you are okay with giving random companies an hour of footage of your face and part of your house just for the privilege of going through their automated screening round?
Emm, yes? What do you think they are going to do with it. They are also considering giving you access to potentially a vast amount of their IP and maybe even customer data.
I just don't understand this at all. Perhaps if they said they intended to record the interview I'd be a little uncomfortable. Otherwise, did you hide your identity in face to face interviews? Do you refuse to enter buildings with CCTV?
I've interviewed hundreds of people since COVID / interviews going online. I'm not aware that it's been a problem for a single candidate, I don't even think we say it explicitly.
Wouldn't you need to sign over your name, image and likeness (along with an affidavit that it isn't already exclusively owned) in order for them to legally reuse it?
Granted, I've seen tech employee contracts that do include that wording, but it hasn't been in any of the pre-employment paperwork like NDA, etc., in my experience.
> Wouldn't you need to sign over your name, image and likeness (along with an affidavit that it isn't already exclusively owned) in order for them to legally reuse it
If the former, their fears are not unfounded: Sometimes the person who impressed you in the interview is not actually the same person who arrives for their first day of work. There are also less-audacious forms of interview cheating, where an off-screen cyber-Cyrano is supplying them with answers and/or keyboard-input.
That said, I agree that any workplace with a "webcam on at all times for monitoring" policy for employees is one I would leave ASAP. Not just because it's hostile and offensive, but also because it's indicative of the company doing badly while management is busy "rearranging deck-chairs on the Titanic."