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> 1. Can this candidate do the job? I'd go so far as to ask: "can this candidate learn to do the job?". In our recent job postings, I've started adding a speci

> 1. Can this candidate do the job? I'd go so far as to ask: "can this candidate learn to do the job?". In our recent job postings, I've started adding a specific paragraph after the desired qualifications stating more or less "if you don't tick all the boxes above but are motivated to learn and grow, please apply. We'll teach you what you need to do the job" > 2. Will this candidate be motivated? This. Even more than question 1. I've had a lot of good surprises with motivated candidates who didn't have all the expected qualifications. Some of my best hires were people whose CV didn't line up with what I was looking for but who demonstrated impressive motivation to get the job. On the other hand, I've often been disappointed with "perfect" candidates who didn't have the right mind-frame for the job. (Note: I'm not saying I'm expecting slavish devotion and "giving it 200%" every day of the week. But if your personal, intrinsic motivations don't align with the job's responsibilities, it won't work). > 3. Will this candidate get along with coworkers? Duh. But also, how do you actually test objectively for this without introducing bias? And how do you insure you're not creating a monoculture that will eventually harden into navel-gazing and dogma? I'm really of two minds on this topic. > 4. What this candidate will be in three, six, twelve months from now? Related to the rephrasing of 1. Can the candidate learn and grow? And will we provide the right environment for them to grow? One of my favorite quotes is from an ex-manager who hired me when I was far from ticking all the boxes on the job description. "If you hire someone who has all the necessary qualifications for the job, they'll be bored in 6 months."

asdkhadsj 8y ago
> I'd go so far as to ask: "can this candidate learn to do the job?". In our recent job postings, I've started adding a specific paragraph after the desired qualifications stating more or less "if you don't tick all the boxes above but are motivated to learn and grow, please apply. We'll teach you what you need to do the job" Totally agree. I was involved in the hiring process (new for me) in the last two hires and this was my main motivation. I primarily looked for passion in the field[1]. I didn't care if they explicitly knew what we were programming in, or what frameworks we were using, or w/e. I wanted to know if they were interested in the area, if they wanted to learn (if needed), and if the workload areas (backend, frontend, etc) were areas they wanted to work in. I wanted to hire a bright person, passionate in what they do, and interested in the problems we'd give them[2]. I felt like if those three were true it didn't matter what they knew.. within reason, of course. [1]: I'm not saying what I did is right or wrong, just explaining what I did. [2]: By interested, I mean they want to work in X language with Y workload. Not explicitly that they were personally invested/interested in the product domain as a company. I wouldn't expect that of anyone.. rarely, imo, do companies inherently do such interesting work that people should be personally invested. Ie, solving cancer or feeding homeless. A job can be a means to a paycheck. I just want it to be enjoyable for all involved, as much as possible at least.
- dmarlow 8y ago
  I agree for most scenarios. However, when building out a team, you can't hire a bunch of people you're going to have to train. Sometimes, like I had to recently, you have to hire an individual that has the skills you need at the moment who can help mentor and help others learn the tools and frameworks needed.
  - asdkhadsj 8y ago
    Yea that's definitely fair. It's also a movable "bar", as even in my example I mentioned within reason, because I wanted to hire by passion, but they needed some pre-existing skills. So it's all relative
leetrout 8y ago
> And will we provide the right environment for them to grow? This. I'm so tired of investing in my work and my workplace to have obscure management "advice" on fixing my character flaws (e.g. being too soft / too emotional) to have any chance of growth by trying to transform in to something they want. Part of that is on me- the picking and choosing of battles is a real problem for me- I care a lot about maintaining high standards for code quality with automated linting and formating, for instance. I like having soft skills and as I tell anyone I'm interested in working with- I want to work with nice, intelligent people; in that order.
tomnipotent 8y ago
>> 3. Will this candidate get along with coworkers? > Duh. But also, how do you actually test objectively for this without introducing bias? You can't because it's a bs metric like "culture fit". After about a dozen people, you can no longer ensure people will get along or like each other. I only have five brothers but I don't even like all of them. People have quirks, and it's easy to find reasons to pass on candidates because of them (reminds me of Seinfeld and how the characters ended relationships because of man hands or toes). I see this a lot in non-technical hiring where marketing folk exclaim "I like the candidate, we have great rapport" only to discover the candidate was subpar. > I'm really of two minds on this topic. I used to be, but after suffering through a bout of mental illness that rendered me an anxious mess when I was once the life of the party really changed how I evaluate this dimension. Be kind and assume the best, which we can all agree would be amazing if the tables were turned.
- zvrba 8y ago
  > You can't because it's a bs metric like "culture fit". I'd disagree. An indirect metric is "Can I as the technical lead [1] communicate effectively with the candidate?" If the leadership is stable, then a "yes" to this question is likely to imply "yes" to the "getting along" question. If all "subordinates" can effectively communicate with the "hub" (lead), it's not unreasonable to expect that they'd be able to get along with each other using the same mode of communication they use with the lead. That's what my intuition tells me. May be wrong though. [1] Presumably, the technical lead takes part in the interview process.
  - tomnipotent 8y ago
    I translate this as wanting a candidate that is compliant and can remove his ego to work in a hierarchal management structure. This is fine, of course, but let's not confuse that as "getting along" or "culture fit" when it's really "following orders".
    - ankimal 8y ago
      We have taken out any mention of "culture fit" which to me means more of the same. Instead, we measure culture addition. How will this person add to our culture?
phkahler 8y ago
Agreed. My criteria on the technical side are: 1) Can this person DO things? This doesn't even have to be the kind of things we need done. A diversity of experience or interests is mostly what I look for. 2) Can this person LEARN things? Again, some diversity of experience goes a long way. 3) Is there enough interest in learning to DO what we need them to, and enough education/experience to get started reasonably well. I start by looking for verbs on the resume. It's amazing how many people say "I was on the team that XXX for system YYY which was a type of ZZZ with technologies ABCD" and never say what they actually did. I say "I understand there's this push for being a team player, but I don't care about that, I want to know what you did." Sometimes this shifts them into useful discussion while other times it reveals that they didn't really do much if anything. One of my co-interviewers once started crossing out whole lines of a guys resume right there in front of him which was a little cruel, but made the point to the candidate. Again, a diversity of things done and an interest in learning to do what we need is almost everything. I leave the personality evaluation to other people in the process but will vote "no" if something about them really bothers me. This doesn't just apply to technical jobs. There are things managers need to DO. Letting your people handle the tech does not absolve someone from adding value to the organization through what they do.
EB66 8y ago
>> 3. Will this candidate get along with coworkers? > Duh. But also, how do you actually test objectively for this without introducing bias? Dev team cohesion and harmony is hugely important for us. We'll pass on a highly skilled engineer any day if we believe they'll sow division and conflict on our dev team. In the sense of hard metrics, you can't really test for a toxic personality, but here's what we do: - We have engineering candidates come on-site for a couple hours before formal interviews and chat informally with several of our engineers. Our engineers show them what they're working on, what technologies we're using, etc. You can learn a fair bit about someone just based upon less formal interactions with a variety of different people. Are they showing interest in what we're doing? Are they eager to tell us about something similar they've done? Are they a respectful attentive listener while a junior is showing the candidate something? Can they communicate and express themselves easily? Obviously candidates are on their best behavior when they come in for a visit, but you can still pick up on certain behaviors that might indicate a problem. - During formal interviews, we ask candidates the following questions: Tell me about a team project when you had to work with someone difficult. How did you work through that? Could you tell me about a time that you disagreed with a rule or approach? Tell me about a time you made mistake that you learned from and what you’d do differently the next time? The answers to these questions can be very telling. We've had candidates who have been unable to think of a mistake they've made as well as candidates who thought of a mistake they made, but then spent the next 5 minutes explaining how it really wasn't their fault. We've seen some people describe some truly awful approaches to dealing with difficult teammates.
Invictus0 8y ago
Would you mind sending me a link to one of your job postings? I'm a mechanical engineering graduate looking to pivot into a CS career. My temp email: stadumajoc@memeil.top Thanks!
- laurentl 8y ago
  Hello, as I replied in the thread above I'm based in France, so the job postings are in French. However if I have a bit of time I'll put up an English translation as well.
ankimal 8y ago
We took out all mentions of prior knowledge and experience in our entry level job postings. In our more experienced posting, we only ask for prior work experience building software for X years. We list only our stack and even caveat that by saying that it can change. I can wager that most software engineer positions fall in this category. Another relevant point here is that women are less likely to apply for positions with a predefined list of requirements even if they are only missing 1 of them as opposed to men. So why are we shooting ourselves in the foot with all of these requirements?
eclat 8y ago
Mind saying where you work? Companies with sane hiring culture are few and far between.
- laurentl 8y ago
  I’m the CTO of a startup in France
scarface74 8y ago
Duh. But also, how do you actually test objectively for this without introducing bias? And how do you insure you're not creating a monoculture that will eventually harden into navel-gazing and dogma? I'm really of two minds on this topic. Give them a simplified version of a class that represents what you do everyday with failing unit tests. Have them pair program with another developer to make the unit tests pass. Then once they do that... Give them another set of unit tests for the same set of problems and add more requirements. They have to make the second set pass without breaking the first set. It’s realistic, you can see how they think through a problem, and you can see how well they work with others.

asdkhadsj 8y ago

> I'd go so far as to ask: "can this candidate learn to do the job?". In our recent job postings, I've started adding a specific paragraph after the desired qualifications stating more or less "if you don't tick all the boxes above but are motivated to learn and grow, please apply. We'll teach you what you need to do the job" Totally agree. I was involved in the hiring process (new for me) in the last two hires and this was my main motivation. I primarily looked for passion in the field[1]. I didn't care if they explicitly knew what we were programming in, or what frameworks we were using, or w/e. I wanted to know if they were interested in the area, if they wanted to learn (if needed), and if the workload areas (backend, frontend, etc) were areas they wanted to work in. I wanted to hire a bright person, passionate in what they do, and interested in the problems we'd give them[2]. I felt like if those three were true it didn't matter what they knew.. within reason, of course. [1]: I'm not saying what I did is right or wrong, just explaining what I did. [2]: By interested, I mean they want to work in X language with Y workload. Not explicitly that they were personally invested/interested in the product domain as a company. I wouldn't expect that of anyone.. rarely, imo, do companies inherently do such interesting work that people should be personally invested. Ie, solving cancer or feeding homeless. A job can be a means to a paycheck. I just want it to be enjoyable for all involved, as much as possible at least.

dmarlow 8y ago
I agree for most scenarios. However, when building out a team, you can't hire a bunch of people you're going to have to train. Sometimes, like I had to recently, you have to hire an individual that has the skills you need at the moment who can help mentor and help others learn the tools and frameworks needed.
- asdkhadsj 8y ago
  Yea that's definitely fair. It's also a movable "bar", as even in my example I mentioned within reason, because I wanted to hire by passion, but they needed some pre-existing skills. So it's all relative

leetrout 8y ago

> And will we provide the right environment for them to grow? This. I'm so tired of investing in my work and my workplace to have obscure management "advice" on fixing my character flaws (e.g. being too soft / too emotional) to have any chance of growth by trying to transform in to something they want. Part of that is on me- the picking and choosing of battles is a real problem for me- I care a lot about maintaining high standards for code quality with automated linting and formating, for instance. I like having soft skills and as I tell anyone I'm interested in working with- I want to work with nice, intelligent people; in that order.

tomnipotent 8y ago

>> 3. Will this candidate get along with coworkers? > Duh. But also, how do you actually test objectively for this without introducing bias? You can't because it's a bs metric like "culture fit". After about a dozen people, you can no longer ensure people will get along or like each other. I only have five brothers but I don't even like all of them. People have quirks, and it's easy to find reasons to pass on candidates because of them (reminds me of Seinfeld and how the characters ended relationships because of man hands or toes). I see this a lot in non-technical hiring where marketing folk exclaim "I like the candidate, we have great rapport" only to discover the candidate was subpar. > I'm really of two minds on this topic. I used to be, but after suffering through a bout of mental illness that rendered me an anxious mess when I was once the life of the party really changed how I evaluate this dimension. Be kind and assume the best, which we can all agree would be amazing if the tables were turned.

zvrba 8y ago
> You can't because it's a bs metric like "culture fit". I'd disagree. An indirect metric is "Can I as the technical lead [1] communicate effectively with the candidate?" If the leadership is stable, then a "yes" to this question is likely to imply "yes" to the "getting along" question. If all "subordinates" can effectively communicate with the "hub" (lead), it's not unreasonable to expect that they'd be able to get along with each other using the same mode of communication they use with the lead. That's what my intuition tells me. May be wrong though. [1] Presumably, the technical lead takes part in the interview process.
- tomnipotent 8y ago
  I translate this as wanting a candidate that is compliant and can remove his ego to work in a hierarchal management structure. This is fine, of course, but let's not confuse that as "getting along" or "culture fit" when it's really "following orders".
  - ankimal 8y ago
    We have taken out any mention of "culture fit" which to me means more of the same. Instead, we measure culture addition. How will this person add to our culture?

phkahler 8y ago

Agreed. My criteria on the technical side are: 1) Can this person DO things? This doesn't even have to be the kind of things we need done. A diversity of experience or interests is mostly what I look for. 2) Can this person LEARN things? Again, some diversity of experience goes a long way. 3) Is there enough interest in learning to DO what we need them to, and enough education/experience to get started reasonably well. I start by looking for verbs on the resume. It's amazing how many people say "I was on the team that XXX for system YYY which was a type of ZZZ with technologies ABCD" and never say what they actually did. I say "I understand there's this push for being a team player, but I don't care about that, I want to know what you did." Sometimes this shifts them into useful discussion while other times it reveals that they didn't really do much if anything. One of my co-interviewers once started crossing out whole lines of a guys resume right there in front of him which was a little cruel, but made the point to the candidate. Again, a diversity of things done and an interest in learning to do what we need is almost everything. I leave the personality evaluation to other people in the process but will vote "no" if something about them really bothers me. This doesn't just apply to technical jobs. There are things managers need to DO. Letting your people handle the tech does not absolve someone from adding value to the organization through what they do.

EB66 8y ago

>> 3. Will this candidate get along with coworkers? > Duh. But also, how do you actually test objectively for this without introducing bias? Dev team cohesion and harmony is hugely important for us. We'll pass on a highly skilled engineer any day if we believe they'll sow division and conflict on our dev team. In the sense of hard metrics, you can't really test for a toxic personality, but here's what we do: - We have engineering candidates come on-site for a couple hours before formal interviews and chat informally with several of our engineers. Our engineers show them what they're working on, what technologies we're using, etc. You can learn a fair bit about someone just based upon less formal interactions with a variety of different people. Are they showing interest in what we're doing? Are they eager to tell us about something similar they've done? Are they a respectful attentive listener while a junior is showing the candidate something? Can they communicate and express themselves easily? Obviously candidates are on their best behavior when they come in for a visit, but you can still pick up on certain behaviors that might indicate a problem. - During formal interviews, we ask candidates the following questions: Tell me about a team project when you had to work with someone difficult. How did you work through that? Could you tell me about a time that you disagreed with a rule or approach? Tell me about a time you made mistake that you learned from and what you’d do differently the next time? The answers to these questions can be very telling. We've had candidates who have been unable to think of a mistake they've made as well as candidates who thought of a mistake they made, but then spent the next 5 minutes explaining how it really wasn't their fault. We've seen some people describe some truly awful approaches to dealing with difficult teammates.

Invictus0 8y ago

Would you mind sending me a link to one of your job postings? I'm a mechanical engineering graduate looking to pivot into a CS career. My temp email: stadumajoc@memeil.top Thanks!

laurentl 8y ago
Hello, as I replied in the thread above I'm based in France, so the job postings are in French. However if I have a bit of time I'll put up an English translation as well.

ankimal 8y ago

We took out all mentions of prior knowledge and experience in our entry level job postings. In our more experienced posting, we only ask for prior work experience building software for X years. We list only our stack and even caveat that by saying that it can change. I can wager that most software engineer positions fall in this category. Another relevant point here is that women are less likely to apply for positions with a predefined list of requirements even if they are only missing 1 of them as opposed to men. So why are we shooting ourselves in the foot with all of these requirements?

eclat 8y ago

Mind saying where you work? Companies with sane hiring culture are few and far between.

laurentl 8y ago
I’m the CTO of a startup in France

scarface74 8y ago

Duh. But also, how do you actually test objectively for this without introducing bias? And how do you insure you're not creating a monoculture that will eventually harden into navel-gazing and dogma? I'm really of two minds on this topic. Give them a simplified version of a class that represents what you do everyday with failing unit tests. Have them pair program with another developer to make the unit tests pass. Then once they do that... Give them another set of unit tests for the same set of problems and add more requirements. They have to make the second set pass without breaking the first set. It’s realistic, you can see how they think through a problem, and you can see how well they work with others.