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Partially, this is based on a disconnect between engineering and hiring. For example, the people who are writing the job descriptions got a 1-line email, "We ne
by gervase 8y ago
Partially, this is based on a disconnect between engineering and hiring. For example, the people who are writing the job descriptions got a 1-line email, "We need to expand the engineering team; could you take care of it? Thanks!", and so they're basically having to come up with all this on their own.
Their first stop is probably a Google search: "example job description software engineering"
Then, they replace the buzzwords with their own buzzwords, which they probably already know, and they're done. This takes much less time than scheduling time with the engineering team, and since they'll be doing the interviews anyway, what's the harm? Their part of the job is already done.
The second part is that companies are doing the same thing that applicants are doing with their resumes; they don't want to put any red flags out there, in order to keep their possible pool of matches as large as possible. There's a chance they can persuade you to ignore a red flag if they talk to you; if they list it in the job description, there's a 0% chance.
Examples of information that might be excluded:
> where is this?
- It's in the suburbs outside Reno, NV.
> exactly what is the work I’m supposed to be doing here?
- You'll be maintaining our undocumented, 12-year old legacy backend.
> What’s the team? 4 beginners? 4000 experienced devs?
- I literally have no idea, I was just given a budget and a number of slots to fill.
> What tech is used
- Something you've never heard of, running on top of PHP 4.
> what is it about my skill set that makes me a good fit?
- We will literally take anyone who can FizzBuzz.
Finally, there are some dog-whistle/shibboleth phrasing that seems perfectly clear to the person who wrote the description, but might not be clear to you. Examples:
> “You’ll work with the core of our digital strategy”
- You'll be working on our product that is the closest to making money (or actually makes some! who knows).
> “You’ll work close to the systems”
- You'll be doing some DevOps as well.
> “You’ll have a central role”
- We have a small team.
And so on.
- pjmlp 8y ago> “Highly motivated” > “Passion” Working overtime and week-ends while not getting a dime for it.
- arvinsim 8y ago> Partially, this is based on a disconnect between engineering and hiring. For example, the people who are writing the job descriptions got a 1-line email, "We need to expand the engineering team; could you take care of it? Thanks!", and so they're basically having to come up with all this on their own. And to think that hiring will have one of biggest impact on the engineering team.
- dx034 8y ago> Partially, this is based on a disconnect between engineering and hiring. I have the feeling many see this as malicious by employers. But it's already hard to find good developers, employing them as recruiters is a waste of resources. You'll try to find recruiters who have some idea what to look for and then only include engineers in the last stage. Having every application for a senior dev scanned by other senior devs won't work. As for the recruiter, they can only learn so much about the job because the company probably has 20+ roles to fill where they need to know the basics for all. They can't be expert in all domains.
- jtmcmc 8y agoat larger companies you often have recruiters focused on specific areas - so they can know more. At places I've worked we've had just an engineering recruiter and just a sales recruiter and etc...
- jtmcmc 8y agoI feel like this isn't often the case. In multiple teams I've been on - the team wrote their own job descriptions and even revised them multiple times.