4 ms·

I think this article gets close, but glosses over one of the major issues in software dev hiring: the filtering process is all wrong. Front line recruiters ten

I think this article gets close, but glosses over one of the major issues in software dev hiring: the filtering process is all wrong. Front line recruiters tend to be non-technical, and can't pattern match for good candidates outside of very narrow criteria. (ex: They won't know that a person with strong C# skills will likely be just fine with Java.) Just getting your resume in front of actual people doing the hiring is hard. My experience is that if you want to make it easier to hiring talented software engineers you need to make it easier to get the right candidates in front of the actual hiring team.

firebird84 5y ago
I think this is part of why getting hired through connections is even more important in this field, and why it's also interesting that so many members of the field look down on that very process. I agree it's not very meritocratic, but it DOES get people in front of people more qualified to pattern match their qualifications more quickly. The problem with getting more people in front of the actual hiring team is the "charlatans" other people have mentioned in this thread will effectively waste the (very expensive) time of said team. Using a (less expensive) recruiter as a first stage seems rational until you discover the high rate of false negatives. I've mulled this problem a lot and I still come up empty on a new, more effective way to solve it.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  > getting hired through connections (...) it's also interesting that so many members of the field look down on that very process. I think the explanation is quite obvious. People who gravitate to this industry are not as social as those who gravitate to other industries, hence the disdain for (or rejection of) the process that leans heavily on something that doesn't easily come to them, that feels like something they shouldn't have to be dealing with.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I'm not sure it's so much a case of social vs. not-social though some of it probably boils down to that. I think it's more of a rationalist viewpoint that the "best" person should be hired rather than a merely "good" person who knows someone who may put their thumb on the scale.
dntrkv 5y ago
> Front line recruiters tend to be non-technical, and can't pattern match for good candidates outside of very narrow criteria. (ex: They won't know that a person with strong C# skills will likely be just fine with Java.) Sounds like a problem with the job description, rather than the recruiters. Sometimes you really do want an expert in a narrow domain, using a specific framework/language. Other times you don't. This needs to be communicated to the recruiters. Engineers love to lay the blame on the recruiters. In my experience, the recruiters are usually just a mirror for what the hiring managers are asking for. If the hiring managers do a poor job of defining the role, then how do you expect a recruiter to find good candidates for that role? If Java and/or C# experience works, communicate that to the recruiter. Don't just assume they will know. Even as an engineer, if someone asked me to find a Java candidate, I would find a Java candidate. I would not make assumptions about what other experience would fulfill the requirements. As far as filtering being the problem, I highly doubt it. Most of the complaints I hear from people are about the interview process. I know a few engineers that can't get hired, and it's not because of a lack of interviews. They just can't pass the interviews.
jstrH 5y ago
I’ve just interviewed at 4 places. None had technical recruiters; I was contacted and went through the process with the hiring manager. Same nonsense though; here’s some random leetcode problem; sure our company hasn’t made anything novel or proven itself in the market but we Googled how to do a tech interview and this is what we found. Getting a job is hard because people are lazy. They’re just regurgitating what popular companies are doing, whether it’s good for them or not.
moksly 5y ago
Recruiters are non-technical in every business though, why would we need special recruiters for programmers when we don’t need special recruiters for neurosurgeons?

firebird84 5y ago

I think this is part of why getting hired through connections is even more important in this field, and why it's also interesting that so many members of the field look down on that very process. I agree it's not very meritocratic, but it DOES get people in front of people more qualified to pattern match their qualifications more quickly. The problem with getting more people in front of the actual hiring team is the "charlatans" other people have mentioned in this thread will effectively waste the (very expensive) time of said team. Using a (less expensive) recruiter as a first stage seems rational until you discover the high rate of false negatives. I've mulled this problem a lot and I still come up empty on a new, more effective way to solve it.

selfhoster11 5y ago
> getting hired through connections (...) it's also interesting that so many members of the field look down on that very process. I think the explanation is quite obvious. People who gravitate to this industry are not as social as those who gravitate to other industries, hence the disdain for (or rejection of) the process that leans heavily on something that doesn't easily come to them, that feels like something they shouldn't have to be dealing with.
- ghaff 5y ago
  I'm not sure it's so much a case of social vs. not-social though some of it probably boils down to that. I think it's more of a rationalist viewpoint that the "best" person should be hired rather than a merely "good" person who knows someone who may put their thumb on the scale.

dntrkv 5y ago

> Front line recruiters tend to be non-technical, and can't pattern match for good candidates outside of very narrow criteria. (ex: They won't know that a person with strong C# skills will likely be just fine with Java.) Sounds like a problem with the job description, rather than the recruiters. Sometimes you really do want an expert in a narrow domain, using a specific framework/language. Other times you don't. This needs to be communicated to the recruiters. Engineers love to lay the blame on the recruiters. In my experience, the recruiters are usually just a mirror for what the hiring managers are asking for. If the hiring managers do a poor job of defining the role, then how do you expect a recruiter to find good candidates for that role? If Java and/or C# experience works, communicate that to the recruiter. Don't just assume they will know. Even as an engineer, if someone asked me to find a Java candidate, I would find a Java candidate. I would not make assumptions about what other experience would fulfill the requirements. As far as filtering being the problem, I highly doubt it. Most of the complaints I hear from people are about the interview process. I know a few engineers that can't get hired, and it's not because of a lack of interviews. They just can't pass the interviews.

jstrH 5y ago

I’ve just interviewed at 4 places. None had technical recruiters; I was contacted and went through the process with the hiring manager. Same nonsense though; here’s some random leetcode problem; sure our company hasn’t made anything novel or proven itself in the market but we Googled how to do a tech interview and this is what we found. Getting a job is hard because people are lazy. They’re just regurgitating what popular companies are doing, whether it’s good for them or not.

moksly 5y ago

Recruiters are non-technical in every business though, why would we need special recruiters for programmers when we don’t need special recruiters for neurosurgeons?