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What I find funny is how little time and effort is put in writing the job description. The interview process is mostly very generic and the questions hardly in

What I find funny is how little time and effort is put in writing the job description. The interview process is mostly very generic and the questions hardly in alignment to the role. As a profession we try hard to be correct about creating clear specs that can be translated to unambiguous steps for a machine to execute, but when it comes to hiring - we write ambiguous specs, toss it over to recruiters who are poorly equipped. Here are some thoughts: - When the new position opens, the team (say the scrum team) collaboratively writes a job description based on the current backlog. Let's not leave it to a manager or recruiter who is writing the job description. Use the company/team's mission and values as guidance to see who an ideal candidate would be. This is like writing your stories. - Then write the filtering criteria based on the typical day to day skills - what are must haves, what are good to have, what is ok to not have. This is like write your test cases. - What are the areas where the team is lacking. Try to get skills/qualities that will, for lack of a better expression, raise the bar of the team. This is like your retrospectives - and if you have notes from your recent retrospectives, they should help you identify what you are looking for. - This better spec should help the recruiters, and also give the candidates an honest look into the team. - For the interview, go back to your previous sprints etc. and build questions that are simplified models of what a typical story would look like. Instead of asking to invert a tree, may be it would be better to talk about how a particular problem you solved and see the approach the candidate would take. Give the candidate all the tools - their favorite editor/ide or whiteboard, whatever they prefer.

RicStrong 7y ago
I'm actually assisting with a startup in building a solution for things like this, so your comment really struck home! And as somebody with a past in technical recruiting, I really like your thinking. Indeed you're right: many recruiters are poorly equipped to actually understand the roles. We have non-coders as the first or second tier gatekeepers for development roles, which does not seem ideal. Sometimes I'd get different signals from the job descriptions than the senior recruiters or hiring managers, which was frustrating. Other times, the requirements in descriptions were way too broad: like the team had an idea of what they wanted, but couldn't get it down on paper in a concise way. Resumes can be a challenge, too: many engineers don't always give full details of their work. Perhaps because they're tired of getting recruiters reaching out for irrelevant roles (that happen to have a keyword match somewhere). Perhaps they don't have the time to always be updating and polishing. A two-front solution could be really great. We need developers to write their best resumes, and we need employers to write their best job descriptions. Having them 'speak the same language' on concise accomplishments, metrics, technologies will make more automated matching a lot (a lot) easier. And then, of course - build the interview process around the shared skills / technologies / etc. Hopefully I'll have something to share here soon, or perhaps do an ask HN to chat more about making hiring developers easier for everyone
- tathagatadg 7y ago
  That is just great to hear. "A two-front solution could be really great. We need developers to write their best resumes, and we need employers to write their best job descriptions. Having them 'speak the same language' on concise accomplishments, metrics, technologies will make more automated matching a lot (a lot) easier." - 100%! This is the market place that Linkedin has been trying to create - but hasn't worked very well, right? They have largely solved the problem of structuring the resume data - which is definitely useful, but I don't see much of that on the job description side. The matching algorithms can only rise up to the level of quality of the input data - the resume data, and the job description. There are similar problems in the dating industry, but mostly you can be sure both parties are putting their best efforts for creating better input. I think honesty is also a critical part of the equation. And if the Linkedin or indeed could encourage both sides to reveal what they value deeply - that would things more useful. May be a few why questions rather than just checkboxes and drop downs that can be filled quickly. Candidate: Why is remote working important for you? Job poster: Why is a self-starter important for you? That would help bring out the uniqueness for the candidates and helped the matching algorithms. Will look forward to seeing your product on Show HN - best wishes!
  - RicStrong 7y ago
    Thank you so much - and we can't wait to share! For anyone who may be interested, https://www.rocketship.jobs/ https://www.rocketship.jobs/ If it can help even one person land a job, we'll be happy with having built something new and different!

RicStrong 7y ago

I'm actually assisting with a startup in building a solution for things like this, so your comment really struck home! And as somebody with a past in technical recruiting, I really like your thinking. Indeed you're right: many recruiters are poorly equipped to actually understand the roles. We have non-coders as the first or second tier gatekeepers for development roles, which does not seem ideal. Sometimes I'd get different signals from the job descriptions than the senior recruiters or hiring managers, which was frustrating. Other times, the requirements in descriptions were way too broad: like the team had an idea of what they wanted, but couldn't get it down on paper in a concise way. Resumes can be a challenge, too: many engineers don't always give full details of their work. Perhaps because they're tired of getting recruiters reaching out for irrelevant roles (that happen to have a keyword match somewhere). Perhaps they don't have the time to always be updating and polishing. A two-front solution could be really great. We need developers to write their best resumes, and we need employers to write their best job descriptions. Having them 'speak the same language' on concise accomplishments, metrics, technologies will make more automated matching a lot (a lot) easier. And then, of course - build the interview process around the shared skills / technologies / etc. Hopefully I'll have something to share here soon, or perhaps do an ask HN to chat more about making hiring developers easier for everyone

tathagatadg 7y ago
That is just great to hear. "A two-front solution could be really great. We need developers to write their best resumes, and we need employers to write their best job descriptions. Having them 'speak the same language' on concise accomplishments, metrics, technologies will make more automated matching a lot (a lot) easier." - 100%! This is the market place that Linkedin has been trying to create - but hasn't worked very well, right? They have largely solved the problem of structuring the resume data - which is definitely useful, but I don't see much of that on the job description side. The matching algorithms can only rise up to the level of quality of the input data - the resume data, and the job description. There are similar problems in the dating industry, but mostly you can be sure both parties are putting their best efforts for creating better input. I think honesty is also a critical part of the equation. And if the Linkedin or indeed could encourage both sides to reveal what they value deeply - that would things more useful. May be a few why questions rather than just checkboxes and drop downs that can be filled quickly. Candidate: Why is remote working important for you? Job poster: Why is a self-starter important for you? That would help bring out the uniqueness for the candidates and helped the matching algorithms. Will look forward to seeing your product on Show HN - best wishes!
- RicStrong 7y ago
  Thank you so much - and we can't wait to share! For anyone who may be interested, https://www.rocketship.jobs/ https://www.rocketship.jobs/ If it can help even one person land a job, we'll be happy with having built something new and different!