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I wouldn't dismiss certs that fast as from my experience hiring for technical roles, it's a wash. I've had people with more certs than braincells, and people wi

by csydas 4y ago

I wouldn't dismiss certs that fast as from my experience hiring for technical roles, it's a wash. I've had people with more certs than braincells, and people with certs that I loved and wanted on my team immediately. It at least gave me something to talk about more directly because I can have some expectation on tech they've worked with. I personally don't chase certs for myself because I don't see the point, but I find them as fairly okay talking points on a CV. And it's hard to argue any interview unfairness since the cert should imply certain levels of familiarity with a technology. Edit: I do need to add that the cert concern was a real thing in our company but after some analysis, we sadly found some biases from the interviewers as they only considered certs for certain candidates to be a negative signal. I put a stop to that fast reminding people of candidates from more western countries with gobs of certs, and they legit didn't know their ass from their head, much less how to do anything besides press the button the manual said to press.

btown 4y ago
To this point, occasionally you'll come across candidates who have obtained certs in part because that is the way they were trained to learn in their specific personal & cultural context - but the reason why they chose to learn so much in the first place? It might be indicative of a true, passionate, focus-seeking curiosity that would make them a fantastic team member. And perhaps they hadn't had the opportunity to work in a place that treats learning and growth as a holistic part of the job. These people can become culture carriers in a tremendously positive way. It's part of the reason I try to make "cover paragraphs" (not necessarily full cover letters) an important part of every application - it's important to give people the opportunity to let their passion shine through at the earliest parts of a process.
- csydas 4y ago
  I get what you're saying and I think this is true for a lot of people, but hear me out. I actually rarely read too deeply into the CV except as a source for some talking points. I have a phenomenal recruitment team so I rarely need to "guess" on a candidate from a CV (truly, they are exceptional and they really get what my team is looking for and our candidates love them also cause the recruiters took a lot of time to learn enough to talk competently about our tech scope) If my recruiters pass me a candidate, the candidate is at least good enough to bullshit fairly competently. We structure our interviews to be very conversational -- the same points are always hit and we have a loose grading structure, but mostly the goal is to get the candidates to talk about problems and explain their thoughts really well. I do feel bad, because I can tell some put a ton of effort into their CV, but I rarely pay that much attention to it besides ctrl+f for some subjects I want to talk about or looking for a few keywords outside of our core competencies just to see how they talk about these edge cases. Passion is good, but for me, passion shines through during the interview and the conversation and how they love to talk about what they work on. Even with the most nervous candidates, we've taken a lot of time to practice just being approachable and interested, which helps even the shyest candidates really open up. I know I had one candidate pretty recently where they were quite shy (and also interviewing in a second language, not their primary so lots of stress there). It took a little bit, but by the end of the interview, they were blushing red with pride and smiling uncontrollably with how proud of themselves they were for answering really tough questions and scenarios we had for them. (and they knocked it out of the park for a DevOps position, I don't think I've been so happy with a candidate in awhile) I wish we got this for every candidate; their passion gets tapped and just suddenly I see someone gushing about their favorite topic.

by csydas 4y ago

btown 4y ago

To this point, occasionally you'll come across candidates who have obtained certs in part because that is the way they were trained to learn in their specific personal & cultural context - but the reason why they chose to learn so much in the first place? It might be indicative of a true, passionate, focus-seeking curiosity that would make them a fantastic team member. And perhaps they hadn't had the opportunity to work in a place that treats learning and growth as a holistic part of the job. These people can become culture carriers in a tremendously positive way. It's part of the reason I try to make "cover paragraphs" (not necessarily full cover letters) an important part of every application - it's important to give people the opportunity to let their passion shine through at the earliest parts of a process.

csydas 4y ago
I get what you're saying and I think this is true for a lot of people, but hear me out. I actually rarely read too deeply into the CV except as a source for some talking points. I have a phenomenal recruitment team so I rarely need to "guess" on a candidate from a CV (truly, they are exceptional and they really get what my team is looking for and our candidates love them also cause the recruiters took a lot of time to learn enough to talk competently about our tech scope) If my recruiters pass me a candidate, the candidate is at least good enough to bullshit fairly competently. We structure our interviews to be very conversational -- the same points are always hit and we have a loose grading structure, but mostly the goal is to get the candidates to talk about problems and explain their thoughts really well. I do feel bad, because I can tell some put a ton of effort into their CV, but I rarely pay that much attention to it besides ctrl+f for some subjects I want to talk about or looking for a few keywords outside of our core competencies just to see how they talk about these edge cases. Passion is good, but for me, passion shines through during the interview and the conversation and how they love to talk about what they work on. Even with the most nervous candidates, we've taken a lot of time to practice just being approachable and interested, which helps even the shyest candidates really open up. I know I had one candidate pretty recently where they were quite shy (and also interviewing in a second language, not their primary so lots of stress there). It took a little bit, but by the end of the interview, they were blushing red with pride and smiling uncontrollably with how proud of themselves they were for answering really tough questions and scenarios we had for them. (and they knocked it out of the park for a DevOps position, I don't think I've been so happy with a candidate in awhile) I wish we got this for every candidate; their passion gets tapped and just suddenly I see someone gushing about their favorite topic.