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Just curious, how does apple's recruiters shortlist people if they are not looking for college degrees. We need some criteria for sorting through the haystack..

Just curious, how does apple's recruiters shortlist people if they are not looking for college degrees. We need some criteria for sorting through the haystack..right? Or is it just a standard motivational talk which we just read ,feel good, nod our heads and move on?

xfitm3 8y ago
How about accomplishment and impact instead of credentials?
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  Because recruiters can reason about the latter but only engineers/practitioners can really reason about the former. Non-degreed applicants almost always need a recommendation to bypass recruiter screening (though recommendations work better than recruiter CV screening in general).
- sthadevoos 8y ago
  The point is who says you are accomplished and your work has an impact? For coding,yes. Your github account showcases your accomplishments and it is open to everyone for verification. But for the rest, i mean the non programmer jobs in sales, marketing, retail,finance ,customer care you cannot have your accomplishments showcased in a verifiable manner. For any company or recruiter, a guy from a decent college with good enough grades gives far more comfort than a random guy with a blog.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
Twirrim 8y ago
Speaking as someone without a degree, no clue, but I still get Apple recruiters reaching out to me regularly. I can only assume they're working either from recommendations or my profile on LinkedIn which shows extensive industry experience.
ericalexander3 8y ago
Coding test early in the recruitment pipeline. I've seen plenty of CS degrees on resumes that can't pass basic coding exercises/tests; at the same time, I've been impressed with the capabilities of new grads. I'm looking for autodidects and could care less what educational format they prefer.
- orclev 8y ago
  Seen similar and also used coding tests to good success. I myself don't have a 4 year degree (I got my 2 year, although truthfully I didn't learn anything new CS related when I got that degree), but I'm also an autodidact that was writing assembly programs by age 12, and OO perl/java before I graduated highschool. The hard problem is finding a way to filter out fresh graduates (from either college or highschool) who can't code from those that can without having to slog through reams of poorly written coding tests in the process. For people who have been in the business a while it's a bit easier because you can usually take a look at their work history and the keywords they decide to use on their CV and intuitively get a reasonably good feel for where they are career wise. It's still very important to have them go through the code test as well though because CVs can be misleading and I'm still regularly amazed at people that come through with 10+ years of experience on paper who somehow still fail at basic programming tasks. Ultimately I think tech recruiters may need to just step up their game. It's no longer sufficient to just play buzzword bingo to try to find candidates for a position, they need to actually have some amount of technical chops themselves in order to screen potential candidates. At the moment it seems like the industry standard is that recruiters function primarily as advertisers for open positions, while all the heavy lifting of actually evaluating candidates (of all levels) is ultimately left up to the devs at the hiring company.
- rafiki6 8y ago
  So you're looking for something that's so rare it's probably a myth? https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsnr.2014.0027 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsnr.2014... I think what you meant to say is you're looking for people with passion for the field, grit and curiosity and with a proven track record of delivering. The best engineers learn from others and stand on the shoulders of giants.
dagmx 8y ago
For reference, I was hired as a senior engineer at Apple and have no degree. Work experience counts for a lot more than any degree. You can get work experience at many places without a degree if you're capable of showing the quality of your skillset

xfitm3 8y ago

How about accomplishment and impact instead of credentials?

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
Because recruiters can reason about the latter but only engineers/practitioners can really reason about the former. Non-degreed applicants almost always need a recommendation to bypass recruiter screening (though recommendations work better than recruiter CV screening in general).
sthadevoos 8y ago
The point is who says you are accomplished and your work has an impact? For coding,yes. Your github account showcases your accomplishments and it is open to everyone for verification. But for the rest, i mean the non programmer jobs in sales, marketing, retail,finance ,customer care you cannot have your accomplishments showcased in a verifiable manner. For any company or recruiter, a guy from a decent college with good enough grades gives far more comfort than a random guy with a blog.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

Twirrim 8y ago

Speaking as someone without a degree, no clue, but I still get Apple recruiters reaching out to me regularly. I can only assume they're working either from recommendations or my profile on LinkedIn which shows extensive industry experience.

ericalexander3 8y ago

Coding test early in the recruitment pipeline. I've seen plenty of CS degrees on resumes that can't pass basic coding exercises/tests; at the same time, I've been impressed with the capabilities of new grads. I'm looking for autodidects and could care less what educational format they prefer.

orclev 8y ago
Seen similar and also used coding tests to good success. I myself don't have a 4 year degree (I got my 2 year, although truthfully I didn't learn anything new CS related when I got that degree), but I'm also an autodidact that was writing assembly programs by age 12, and OO perl/java before I graduated highschool. The hard problem is finding a way to filter out fresh graduates (from either college or highschool) who can't code from those that can without having to slog through reams of poorly written coding tests in the process. For people who have been in the business a while it's a bit easier because you can usually take a look at their work history and the keywords they decide to use on their CV and intuitively get a reasonably good feel for where they are career wise. It's still very important to have them go through the code test as well though because CVs can be misleading and I'm still regularly amazed at people that come through with 10+ years of experience on paper who somehow still fail at basic programming tasks. Ultimately I think tech recruiters may need to just step up their game. It's no longer sufficient to just play buzzword bingo to try to find candidates for a position, they need to actually have some amount of technical chops themselves in order to screen potential candidates. At the moment it seems like the industry standard is that recruiters function primarily as advertisers for open positions, while all the heavy lifting of actually evaluating candidates (of all levels) is ultimately left up to the devs at the hiring company.
rafiki6 8y ago
So you're looking for something that's so rare it's probably a myth? https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsnr.2014.0027 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsnr.2014... I think what you meant to say is you're looking for people with passion for the field, grit and curiosity and with a proven track record of delivering. The best engineers learn from others and stand on the shoulders of giants.

dagmx 8y ago

For reference, I was hired as a senior engineer at Apple and have no degree. Work experience counts for a lot more than any degree. You can get work experience at many places without a degree if you're capable of showing the quality of your skillset