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My company has sort of been doing this, and I (engineer) have been trying to get us to stop. We do have a couple of open slots, but we're doing intake for much

My company has sort of been doing this, and I (engineer) have been trying to get us to stop. We do have a couple of open slots, but we're doing intake for much much more than we need. I can offer this bit of perspective on the practice, without justifying it because I do think it's bad. We (again, engineers) spent a long time pushing for hiring to move away from the desperate search because we need someone immediately model to keep our lanes open for whenever someone awesome is looking for a job. Management finally bought into the idea...kinda. Basically, what we're doing is the mixed up interpretation of a that idea, after it passed through the bureaucracy. Instead of keeping just a line open, we're still trawling with big nets, scooping up way too many resumes and letting those people down. The root of the problem as far as I can see is that screening is atrocious. The people at the front end of the process, the actual recruiters, have no idea what we are looking for, and the output may as well be random. I still don't know how to fix it. :/

gumby 5y ago
> The root of the problem as far as I can see is that screening is atrocious. The people at the front end of the process, the actual recruiters, have no idea what we are looking for, and the output may as well be random. I still don't know how to fix it. :/ One is to have the hiring manager or someone who would be working alongside the new hire write the job description and not allow the recruiter to write it (no “17 years of experience in Airflow”). Another is to have an engineer do a phone screen after the recruiter has screened them. Having the recruiter listen in is good as they will hopefully learn more about what is wanted. Another is to carefully set the recruiter comp to take into account not only hires but percent that fail a phone screen. Your recruiters aren’t your enemy but they are recruiting, not programming (you probably couldn’t do their job either) so there will always be a mismatch to some degree.
- kragen 5y ago
  These are some really interesting ideas! Have you implemented them at one company or another? What were the results?

gumby 5y ago

> The root of the problem as far as I can see is that screening is atrocious. The people at the front end of the process, the actual recruiters, have no idea what we are looking for, and the output may as well be random. I still don't know how to fix it. :/ One is to have the hiring manager or someone who would be working alongside the new hire write the job description and not allow the recruiter to write it (no “17 years of experience in Airflow”). Another is to have an engineer do a phone screen after the recruiter has screened them. Having the recruiter listen in is good as they will hopefully learn more about what is wanted. Another is to carefully set the recruiter comp to take into account not only hires but percent that fail a phone screen. Your recruiters aren’t your enemy but they are recruiting, not programming (you probably couldn’t do their job either) so there will always be a mismatch to some degree.

kragen 5y ago
These are some really interesting ideas! Have you implemented them at one company or another? What were the results?