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> Part of that is making sure the compensation is among the highest for the position I had the opposite experience back in 2015. We tried to find (locally) a C

> Part of that is making sure the compensation is among the highest for the position I had the opposite experience back in 2015. We tried to find (locally) a C programmer with good understanding of Linux and network protocols, and offered approximately what we thought to be a fair market salary. The initial attempt has attracted various people like fresh graduates, and also (strangely) a disproportionate amount of bank employees - not sure why, our application has nothing to do with finances. We could not find a candidate that was good enough, but there were several who "almost" did it. So the financial director approved republishing the vacancy with slightly modified requirements and 2x the salary. Result: all we got was some former developers, now managers. And the flow of talented students has completely stopped. We were able to fill that vacancy by re-offering it to a person who clearly had the relevant skills but applied to a different position. When asked why he didn't apply as a C programmer, high salary and consequently an expectation of very high demands were explicitly named as a demotivating factor.

flukus 6y ago
As someone who is probably much closer to the bank employees (assuming you mean developers from banks) but has considered transitioning to something like c at various times, the problem is there are no intermediate roles, everyone either want a c expert with years of commercial experience. To make the transition the only option seems to be to go for junior roles, which disregards the decades of experience that is relevant regardless of the language, and those junior roles are pretty few and far between too. The industry expects a constant supply of senior experienced devs but completely avoids any sort of training and development. It can somewhat work if you're in a mainstream field but it won't for anything specialized, which C is in my area.
908B64B197 6y ago
This could be the local market in which you operate or the timing when you advertised the position. College hiring is cyclical and the earlier you get to campus, the better. If you re-advertise the same position, especially after you interviewed a few fresh grads from the same university (who will talk to one another) and flunked them all, it's not surprising nobody bothered to apply. Also, keep in mind that it's not uncommon for college students to be offered full time position during their last internship (so 1+ year before they graduate). So by the time you try to hire new grads, some of the best are effectively already out of your local market.
webmaven 6y ago
> When asked why he didn't apply as a C programmer, high salary and consequently an expectation of very high demands were explicitly named as a demotivating factor. Keep in mind that this is a learned response (although imposter syndrome accounts for some of it) that you have to deliberately defuse in your job listing. Phrasing such as "The following is a list of nice-to-have skills. We do not expect candidates to have experience with all, or even most, of them." will help. You should also make it clear if you prefer candidates that have broad+shallow experience in more of the listed areas or narrow+deep in very few (or even just one), assuming you have a preference. If not, make sure you say that too. Another thing is stating that you are looking for people with demonstrable learning skills rather than specific pre-existing knowledge. If you don't make this sort of thing as explicit as possible, potential candidates will mostly assume that your position conforms to their past experience (which is mostly bad). So much for improving your tactics in the job-posting approach. You should also examine shifting strategies to other channels such as job fairs to get candidates before they give up on the local job market, or referral bounties (which can get you good candidates that aren't actively looking), or even getting local media coverage by sending out press releases (I recommend the excellent book 'Bulletproof News Releases'). Heck, geotargeted Google ads might even work if you can figure out appropriate search terms.

flukus 6y ago

As someone who is probably much closer to the bank employees (assuming you mean developers from banks) but has considered transitioning to something like c at various times, the problem is there are no intermediate roles, everyone either want a c expert with years of commercial experience. To make the transition the only option seems to be to go for junior roles, which disregards the decades of experience that is relevant regardless of the language, and those junior roles are pretty few and far between too. The industry expects a constant supply of senior experienced devs but completely avoids any sort of training and development. It can somewhat work if you're in a mainstream field but it won't for anything specialized, which C is in my area.

908B64B197 6y ago

This could be the local market in which you operate or the timing when you advertised the position. College hiring is cyclical and the earlier you get to campus, the better. If you re-advertise the same position, especially after you interviewed a few fresh grads from the same university (who will talk to one another) and flunked them all, it's not surprising nobody bothered to apply. Also, keep in mind that it's not uncommon for college students to be offered full time position during their last internship (so 1+ year before they graduate). So by the time you try to hire new grads, some of the best are effectively already out of your local market.

webmaven 6y ago

> When asked why he didn't apply as a C programmer, high salary and consequently an expectation of very high demands were explicitly named as a demotivating factor. Keep in mind that this is a learned response (although imposter syndrome accounts for some of it) that you have to deliberately defuse in your job listing. Phrasing such as "The following is a list of nice-to-have skills. We do not expect candidates to have experience with all, or even most, of them." will help. You should also make it clear if you prefer candidates that have broad+shallow experience in more of the listed areas or narrow+deep in very few (or even just one), assuming you have a preference. If not, make sure you say that too. Another thing is stating that you are looking for people with demonstrable learning skills rather than specific pre-existing knowledge. If you don't make this sort of thing as explicit as possible, potential candidates will mostly assume that your position conforms to their past experience (which is mostly bad). So much for improving your tactics in the job-posting approach. You should also examine shifting strategies to other channels such as job fairs to get candidates before they give up on the local job market, or referral bounties (which can get you good candidates that aren't actively looking), or even getting local media coverage by sending out press releases (I recommend the excellent book 'Bulletproof News Releases'). Heck, geotargeted Google ads might even work if you can figure out appropriate search terms.