5 ms·

Hiring people is difficult, exhausting, time-consuming, and largely a crap shoot, since hiring consists of deducing a person's technical abilities with around 1

Hiring people is difficult, exhausting, time-consuming, and largely a crap shoot, since hiring consists of deducing a person's technical abilities with around 1-2 hours of interaction in a very limited scope. If we could find a better way, we'd be using it. But, as it stands, recruiters and HR have only a few minutes per potential candidate to determine whether or not they meet the hiring manager's criteria. It's unreasonable to expect HR/recruiters to keep abreast of an ever expanding list of technologies and their analogs because that's not their core competency. Unless they are repeatedly told that GCP experience is worth like 70% of AWS experience (replace the values and technologies as you see fit), they aren't going to know that.

magduf 7y ago
The solution seems pretty simple to me: get rid of the HR and recruiters, at least as having much power in deciding who to interview. That's the hiring manager's job. He knows what kind of person he's looking for, so let him make decisions. Why would you let some non-technical person decide who's qualified to be interviews? It makes no sense. At best, have the hiring manager give some very basic things to look for on resumes to the HR person, so they can screen out the people who are obvious wastes of time. >If we could find a better way, we'd be using it. It seems to me that the reason it's so bad is because, at many companies, HR people refuse to admit that they're incompetent at hiring technical people, and insist on inserting themselves into the process to a degree which is highly counterproductive. The only thing HR should be doing is helping hiring managers find the people they need, and otherwise staying out of the way. The bulk of the HR person's time should be on other tasks: personnel issues with existing employees, helping new employees get situated, maybe interpersonal issues, etc. The hiring manager can afford to spend an hour a day looking through resumes and giving good ones back to HR to recruit.
- loopz 7y ago
  This is assuming technical hiring manager, which may often not be so. Also, a team often wants new hires with all the latest buzzword experience as they are too swamped themselves.
- mywittyname 7y ago
  Maybe have experienced different approaches, but where I've worked, the hiring manager told HR what skillset they needed and HR would fire over resumes for the team to look at and decide who to bring in. Our team decided 100% who to hire and not. So, basically what you're talking about already happens at every company I've been involved in hiring at. HR posts the job posting from the manager, forwards resumes that look good. The do perform the initial non-technical interview, but teams handle technical interviews as they see fit. HR is only involved to present the offer. Because of that, I took the parent comment to say that HR should be better at resume fishing. Meaning, they should understand technological equivalencies better, like MySQL and Oracle are somewhat equivalent or related skills but Bash and Elasticsearch are not. This is what recruiters are supposed to do; obviously most are bad at it, but his is largely because few SWE/SysAdmins/DevOps are going to pivot into recruitment.
digitalsushi 7y ago
It would be cool if the industry let us play "Confident Applicant's Gambit": I will agree to work for you, dubious but reputable employer, for six weeks to prove my mettle. At the end of the six weeks, we part ways unless I have clearly demonstrated I am in fact, the genuine article, at which point you owe me back pay, and commence my salary which is about 140% of what you would normally pay someone. Quite a bargain for you. The intention of this being, the employer is not at risk for slave labor, but the applicant is clearly wasting their time if they know they are not genuinely solving a problem the employer has for the given salary.
- loopz 7y ago
  Just hire temps and maybe extend contract. Already overdone and creates helluva toxic and abusive env.
  - tatersolid 7y ago
    Unfortunately temp-or-contract-to-hire is automatically the bottom 1/3 of available people. A CHRO thought this was a brilliant solution to the six-month searches those silly people in IT kept complaining about. Been there, done that, it doesn’t work in practice. We had to unwind nearly all of them after a few weeks, and all the on boarding wasted copious amounts of time for existing staff.
- k__ 7y ago
  In Germany we have a probation period of 6 months in which both partys can resign at any time, no questions asked.
ta999999171 7y ago
More concise than other responses: HR isn't qualified to hire for technical positions, then, and team members should evaluate other potential team members.
- mywittyname 7y ago
  I commented elsewhere, but this is how it works at every job I've ever had and interviewed for. And I'm not some "SV ninja coder" either, I'm just a regular Joe working regular jobs. Hiring manager tells HR to post a job, they send over the resumes that they get, and schedule interviews with anyone who looks good. With my last three jobs, the involvement with HR was limited to initial phone screen, asking about salary and legal status, then onto the hiring manager for the rest.

magduf 7y ago

The solution seems pretty simple to me: get rid of the HR and recruiters, at least as having much power in deciding who to interview. That's the hiring manager's job. He knows what kind of person he's looking for, so let him make decisions. Why would you let some non-technical person decide who's qualified to be interviews? It makes no sense. At best, have the hiring manager give some very basic things to look for on resumes to the HR person, so they can screen out the people who are obvious wastes of time. >If we could find a better way, we'd be using it. It seems to me that the reason it's so bad is because, at many companies, HR people refuse to admit that they're incompetent at hiring technical people, and insist on inserting themselves into the process to a degree which is highly counterproductive. The only thing HR should be doing is helping hiring managers find the people they need, and otherwise staying out of the way. The bulk of the HR person's time should be on other tasks: personnel issues with existing employees, helping new employees get situated, maybe interpersonal issues, etc. The hiring manager can afford to spend an hour a day looking through resumes and giving good ones back to HR to recruit.

loopz 7y ago
This is assuming technical hiring manager, which may often not be so. Also, a team often wants new hires with all the latest buzzword experience as they are too swamped themselves.
mywittyname 7y ago
Maybe have experienced different approaches, but where I've worked, the hiring manager told HR what skillset they needed and HR would fire over resumes for the team to look at and decide who to bring in. Our team decided 100% who to hire and not. So, basically what you're talking about already happens at every company I've been involved in hiring at. HR posts the job posting from the manager, forwards resumes that look good. The do perform the initial non-technical interview, but teams handle technical interviews as they see fit. HR is only involved to present the offer. Because of that, I took the parent comment to say that HR should be better at resume fishing. Meaning, they should understand technological equivalencies better, like MySQL and Oracle are somewhat equivalent or related skills but Bash and Elasticsearch are not. This is what recruiters are supposed to do; obviously most are bad at it, but his is largely because few SWE/SysAdmins/DevOps are going to pivot into recruitment.

digitalsushi 7y ago

It would be cool if the industry let us play "Confident Applicant's Gambit": I will agree to work for you, dubious but reputable employer, for six weeks to prove my mettle. At the end of the six weeks, we part ways unless I have clearly demonstrated I am in fact, the genuine article, at which point you owe me back pay, and commence my salary which is about 140% of what you would normally pay someone. Quite a bargain for you. The intention of this being, the employer is not at risk for slave labor, but the applicant is clearly wasting their time if they know they are not genuinely solving a problem the employer has for the given salary.

loopz 7y ago
Just hire temps and maybe extend contract. Already overdone and creates helluva toxic and abusive env.
- tatersolid 7y ago
  Unfortunately temp-or-contract-to-hire is automatically the bottom 1/3 of available people. A CHRO thought this was a brilliant solution to the six-month searches those silly people in IT kept complaining about. Been there, done that, it doesn’t work in practice. We had to unwind nearly all of them after a few weeks, and all the on boarding wasted copious amounts of time for existing staff.
k__ 7y ago
In Germany we have a probation period of 6 months in which both partys can resign at any time, no questions asked.

ta999999171 7y ago

More concise than other responses: HR isn't qualified to hire for technical positions, then, and team members should evaluate other potential team members.

mywittyname 7y ago
I commented elsewhere, but this is how it works at every job I've ever had and interviewed for. And I'm not some "SV ninja coder" either, I'm just a regular Joe working regular jobs. Hiring manager tells HR to post a job, they send over the resumes that they get, and schedule interviews with anyone who looks good. With my last three jobs, the involvement with HR was limited to initial phone screen, asking about salary and legal status, then onto the hiring manager for the rest.