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The last few months have been an interesting mix of learning empathy for some of the pathologies of the recruiting industry and being absolutely slackjawed amaz
by patio11 10y ago
The last few months have been an interesting mix of learning empathy for some of the pathologies of the recruiting industry and being absolutely slackjawed amazed at how bad some players [edit in response to reply: meaning, actors in the recruiting industry] are.
An example of the former: I now totally understand why recruiters frequently forget elementary facts about individual candidates or jobs. They're often juggling multiples of both at once, at numbers which overwhelm the working memory of almost any human, for weeks at a time. I had a very nice conversation with (making up facts) Cindy the Pythonist and Sandy the front-end engineer one Tuesday, minutes from each other, and three weeks later had about twenty minutes of the conversation with Sandy go by before realizing that I was giving her advice for Cindy's situation, to her amazement. I do know that React is not made of Python, and I've recently shipped a retail stock trading site built in it, but from Sandy's view of the conversation it probably sounded like I was scatterbrained, incompetent, or scatterbrained and incompetent.
I thought I could fix this with better notes or a database, but I think it has to be fixed with process improvements, because the amount of task-switching I was doing was making it impossible for me to keep each of the X0 stories I was telling straight.
I don't anticipate us adopting lying as a business tactic. Telling the truth seems so much more straightforward.
- yawn 10y ago"being absolutely slackjawed amazed at how bad some players are" Can you elaborate on this? Were the results you're talking about just flat-out "I can't code FizzBuzz" or something else? Personally, I created an account, started reading the directions, then realized I had no interest in the problem domain and decided to wait for the next one. It helps when the problem gels with you. I wonder if that had any role.
- patio11 10y agoSorry for imprecision -- I meant "players in the recruiting industry", not Starfighter players. It is probably the case that at least one person who can't FizzBuzz has signed up for Stockfighter, but it's highly unlikely that I end up talking to them regarding career options, and even if I did I'd phrase things more like "OK, so you've got a fun couple of years ahead of you; let me recommend some resources for learning more about programming" rather than being contemptuous of that. Our industry does way too much of that; no need to add to it. Plus, we intend to be in business in 3 years, and even starting from "can't Fizzbuzz" if you're dedicated you could be a really interesting person to try placing in 3 years, so I'll happily spend a few minutes buying a call option. (I guess that's closer in actual practice to a put option, as I'd be selling the candidate's availability rather than buying it, but you get what I mean by the joke.)
- dctoedt 10y ago> I think it has to be fixed with process improvements, because the amount of task-switching I was doing was making it impossible for me to keep each of the X0 stories I was telling straight. Please write up and publish any hints you come up with!