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Avoiding the audience paradox when writing job descriptions
- ecshafer 5y agoI agree with a lot of these points. I hate how most job descriptions are written, a lot of people that want x years of language and y years of framework, which I think that should be relatively rare. What I want in a job description is "We work on X project with Y framework and Z back end", just say what you are working on and if I am interested in that. Then for the requirements make it X years of experience in domain, Y years of being a lead. Unless you are really needing that specific subject matter expert, having those requirements doesn't make sense. If I am hiring a senior developer for a Java position I don't really care if you have 5 years of Python, C#, C++, Ruby or whatever, but 5 years of backend experience could be helpful.
- darkerside 5y agoMost effective way I've found of keeping out the noise is to put a few screening questions in place. Easy ones, maybe even a three line code sample (something that's almost fun to write).
- perl4ever 5y agoA lot of people froth at the mouth about take home tests. I liked the idea originally, but the only people who I've encountered that give one, require candidates to run the technical gauntlet in the in-person interviews anyway, so then I feel like it was a total waste of time. If you're afraid of people cheating, fine, just don't do it.
- darkerside 5y agoI don't think it comes off as a gauntlet, but we do a take home test, review it with the interviewee at the in person, and then pair program on adding a couple of extra features to it. It's worked extremely well.
- saimiam 5y agoI ask candidates to list three blog posts that they recently read and enjoyed. Seems to be an easy way to filter out non-serious candidates and script kiddies. This has worked with roughly 60 to 70% of the candidates I have interview since I implemented this rule.
- jstx1 5y agoFiltering out people based on a question about the blogs they read sounds kind of horrible. You'll get all noise and no signal. I spend some time on HN and other places reading about stuff related to my field or about software in general. If you asked me that question, I would have zero chance recalling the last things I read. And it would raise a big red flag about whether you know what you're doing. Just because you're filtering some people out, doesn't mean that your filter is good.
- saimiam 5y agoI also discuss the posts they read and shared with me during the interview. If they’re simply sharing random posts without understanding it in context, it becomes obvious very quickly. This seems to work to filter out people who don’t like their work enough to read anything related to it and people who like to fake their way thru such tasks by sharing the first three Medium articles they find on the homepage. What makes you question the “knows what they are doing” abilities of someone asking you to name three posts they liked? Is it any different from asking someone what algos they like and why?
- cutemonster 5y agoAlso, getting good blog post suggestions seems nice :-) I imagine starting the interview with talking about one of the blog posts can be a good "warming up" / getting to know each other thing
- BeFlatXIII 5y agoDoes whether or not they are relevant blogs to the role or industry matter at all to you? My gut feeling is that you would get a better read on the personality of a candidate when they send you links that have little or nothing to do with the job they're applying for. All three links to industry-relevant blogs will tell me is that this candidate aims to please for obvious self-advancement reasons.
- buescher 5y agoFrequently the primary audience for a job description is recruiters.
- thrill 5y agoYou know how a cool job description is written? Salary and equity first, very short list of mandatory technologies second, nice to have third, and nothing about how cool the company is. If the first three items attract someone then they're going to google the place and figure that out.
- ye_olde_gamer 5y agoI would hate to work for a company that treats me as commodity labor, bidding for my time but none of my values or interests. That's not to say salary should be secret (dear god, no), but how cool a company is IS an important metric in and of itself.
- xboxnolifes 5y agoWhich is great, until every job application reads as the exact same mix of positive adjectives and power words and you learn to skip the first 1-2 paragraphs of every one.
- ye_olde_gamer 5y agoOnly if you limit yourself to a particular kind of company, I think? I've worked as a dev for decades, but not for proper, actual tech companies... mostly a mixture of small biz and nonprofits. No two orgs were alike, even though my job at each one was very similar.
- xboxnolifes 5y agoI didn't say the jobs were alike, I said the job listings were alike.
- ye_olde_gamer 5y agoNot the ones I've applied to. If a company can't even tell you about itself without hyperbole, why bother?
- amriksohata 5y agoCompany: we offer very competitive salaries Candidate: then why are you hiding the salary on your job description?
- r_c_a_d 5y agoBecause they don't want their current staff who are earning $X to know that they are hiring new people for similar jobs at $X + 10%.
- 908B64B197 5y agoThe trick to writing a great job description is not to write it at all. I've seen HR depts with spreadsheets and lists of acronyms and frameworks and really none of that matters. and "very competitive salaries" but absolutely no numbers anywhere. You want to find the person you're going to hire, then write the job description. You're looking for fast learners and innovators, they can learn a framework in a few days at most. For college hires, just sponsor a prize at your local school's hackathon. Anyone you meet there with an interesting project just bring onsite for an interview. For more experienced devs, better go with internal recommendations. Your top performers all have friends, and some of them might be bored right now. And be upfront with the numbers; You'll waste less time. I knew someone who wasted 5 rounds of interview with someone (this was outside the Valley) before revealing compensation. The candidate just flat out said he needed 3x or it just wasn't worth his time.
- edmundsauto 5y agoThis probably works well for smaller scale hiring. At a medium org, you want to make sure to source diverse candidates and hire without bias. (We all have biases!)
- 908B64B197 5y agoMedium org just means you can fly in-out folks/reach other target schools. Diversity and biases are great, but ultimately what matters is finding out candidates that can scale the business and help it grow.
- edmundsauto 5y agoThat comes off similar to "what matters in the stock market is to buy low and sell high". Sure, it's true enough, but not really valuable insight. The trick in hiring is how do you identify and hire those individuals. Diversity is one way to reach those outcomes - it's not a side quest, it's how to increase your odds on the main quest.
- mint2 5y agoTo many HRs “competitive salary” means nearly the median. And now HR is perplexed why the customer reps are leaving because HR claims to believe the comp is competitive.
- AdrianB1 5y ago4 pieces of anecdotical data: 1. I stopped writing good job descriptions when hiring because HR always killed it: they cut mine to half and add their crap all over. I had open positions for SQL DBAs for 9 months, all candidates were developers in the best case and BI in the worst 2. From time to time I receive calls on LinkedIn with X years of experience required, where X was even 15. When I asked about it (I had more, I was just curious) they said the real number is X/2, but they wanted to cut off people with very low experience that are rounding up. 3. No job description in Europe that I've seen included any useful info on salary. All the discussions in the past 2-3 years ended when I found they were offering below the market and below current level. All this time could have been saved on both sides if at least some range would have been offered. This applies even for positions where they made me 1 offer per week with increasing salary (a few percent) for 2-3 months in a row, which is incredibly stupid. 4. In the past 2-3 years I never saw a job description that looked really professional and interesting. The positions were more interesting than the descriptions.
- perl4ever 5y ago>I had open positions for SQL DBAs for 9 months, all candidates were developers in the best case and BI in the worst Do you think the latter two categories of people could learn the job in nine months?
- AdrianB1 5y agoYes, if they would be interested. We hired one developer and 3 weeks later he said it is not what he was looking for (and I was very open upfront on what the work is, a combination of production DBA and development DBA).
- cutemonster 5y agoWhat's "BI"? Business intelligence?
- AdrianB1 5y agoYes
- kthejoker2 5y agoFour practical "exercises" when writing JDs to help prioritize the knowledge and experiences you expect this person to bring: 1) Pretend you only have 100 words. Simple stuff, but getting ruthless is a good way to prioritize. 2) Write an "anti-JD": the type of person you don't want for the role. A tip: focus on unconscious competencies - things you expect the person to know on day 1. 3) (Similar to Aline's litmus test in the article of "Can most companies say this about the work they’re doing") If you can write "Only an idiot wouldn't ... " in front of the line, it's not a good differentiator. 4) Imagine you were going to ask the person you hire for this role to give 5 lunch and learns their first week on the job. What would the topics be and to what depth would you expect them to go? Also, at least in my experience, the easiest way to deter "noise" from unqualified applicants is to be clear what the first interview will consist of and how it will be passed/failed. "We expect you to come prepared to discuss the pros and cons of the following, citing previous work as much as possible: (insert relevant topics from exercises above e.g. computer vision, DevOps, Redux, recent famous papers in your field, etc) Candidates without experience or evaluated below an intermediate level of knowledge will not proceed."
- JeffRosenberg 5y ago> And of course we’re always hiring engineers. If you have an interviewing.io account, you can take a look.) Wait, you need to have an account just to see their open jobs? That seems like more of an antipattern than anything you could put in a job description.
- sokoloff 5y agoI agree with you, but I suspect that is exactly what makes it a great filter for them to include.
- neilwilson 5y agoHow many word article was that without mentioning once "how much are you paying"? I have a thousand open source projects I could use my time on if paying the mortgage and putting food on the table wasn't an issue. So let's cut the jabber and get the turkey bit out of the way first. Then we can discuss how 'cool' you think you are.