6 ms·

But it doesn't fail. I've been recruiting solid teams who deliver software for a decade now. The right current skills and the ability to learn future skills ar

But it doesn't fail. I've been recruiting solid teams who deliver software for a decade now. The right current skills and the ability to learn future skills aren't incompatible. After all, how do you think those people got those current skills? I don't have to choose one or the other and I've rarely met anyone in IT who isn't willing to learn new skills. Generally I have two or three core skills I'm looking for for a role for and the rest are nice to have. To me it's a given you'll basically be smart and that you'll need to learn stuff but I also know from experience I can get smart people who have a core set of knowledge which will make them productive early on. I certainly have no interest in someone who can copy and paste keywords and if that's all you'd done you won't get past first interview. All I'm asking is that you present your experience in a way which is most relevant to me to help me understand.

Retric 12y ago
You have little idea what your opportunity costs are. However, it’s unlikely that the best fit is going to have your ideal background and be willing to spend much time jumping through your hoops.
- couchand 12y ago
  ...probably because your best fit already has a job they're happy with.
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
  My hoops? Did you read what I wrote? I suggest 5 minutes of CV tailoring. You think that's jumping through hoops?
  - Retric 12y ago
    Yes, my last job search consisted of posting my resume on one and only one job board. I then received a deluge of phone calls and multiple job offers soon after that. In the end if you’re depending on people reading a job posting you’re already missing out on a lot of highly qualified applicants. If you then want tailored resumes your mostly excluding the type of people you actually want working for you. PS: And no I will not show up to an interview if you don't list a salary range.
    - Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
      CVs posted to job boards (in the UK at least) aren't looked at by companies but by agencies. Those agencies call you and do all the pre-screening (and CV tweaking) before they send the CVs to people like me. When I've looked for a job I'll always say to the agent I'll tweak my CV myself because I'd rather I did it than them (I've seen some horribly butchered ones come through - in those cases I can normally tell it was the agency and don't hold it against the candidate but sometimes that may not be the case). Essentially I suspect everything I asked for happened with you, it just may not have been done by you. Salary I totally agree on - I post a salary range for the role (usually a range but also dependent on experience) and want to know candidate salary expectations before hand. If we're not happy with what the candidate is looking for based on what their rough level of experience I wouldn't interview.
  - logfromblammo 12y ago
    Yes, actually. I'd love to have my resume show that I have successfully automated work for other software developers, small business owners, photojournalists, hospital physicians and nurses, corporate attorneys, military pilots, and rocket scientists, and that all of it was done in a manner that is largely invisible to the beneficiaries. Throwing a bunch of keywords tailored to a specific job ad is completely pointless, from my perspective. I have successfully learned the work of several different skilled professionals and reduced large portions of that work to computer programs. What you ask, and is mirrored at hundreds of other companies, is roughly analogous to someone in the construction trade building residential homes, commercial office space, retail buildings, and municipal buildings over the course of their career, and then having someone suggest that they ought to list "hammer" and "screwdriver" on their resume. Never mind if the person actually uses pneumatic nail guns and power drills for the nails and screws, the magic keywords are "hammer" and "screwdriver". Never mind if the person is actually smart enough to be a general contractor and halfway to being a civil engineer. If that resume doesn't say "hammer" on it, he doesn't get called back. What you are asking is irrelevant, gratuitous, and counterproductive--thus, hoops to jump through. My skills are not Java and C#. My skill is making other skilled workers more productive, by any means necessary--though usually with the help of a computer. Part of that is recognizing that when thousands of people are each wasting their time on unnecessary steps every time they perform a task that may be repeated several times every day, the situation may be improved dramatically by eliminating that waste. There are several potential solutions. One is to tell you, and everyone else in a similar position, that your expectations are ignorant and counterproductive, and show a cavalier lack of respect toward potential hires. You are asking that they invest five minutes of time specifically into your company, rather than into their own general job search, just so that you will not arbitrarily toss their application into the trash. This is in addition to the 20-60 minutes the typical HR gatekeeper already requires to re-type every single datum from that resume into a non-portable custom form in their candidate tracking system. If I'm going to spend even more time on your company, I'd like the potential return to be worth the effort. Until you actually talk to me, I won't know that. And as long as we're talking, we can just skip the resume and spend that extra five minutes on the way to "yes", instead of just evading "no".
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  I imagine Kernighan, Ritchie, or Dijkstra talking to an HR drone. They say, "I see from your resume you have a lot of experience with C and C++, but we're really looking for someone with more recent $MAGIC_KEYWORD experience." The legend laughs, says "thank you," and then hangs up the phone. Meanwhile, everyone behind the HR firewall that has actually earned a CS degree is blissfully unaware of the sheer magnitude of idiocy that one sentence represents. The image is hyperbole, but that is a fraction of what you might be doing when you focus on specific experience rather than aptitude and adaptability. What you are looking for is someone who can solve complex problems by reducing them to smaller sub-problems that can be automated. Anyone with a knowledge of how computers operate can use any higher-level language to perform the actual automation. Focusing on candidates who already advertise specific skill keywords will save you, at most, a few days, as the new hire acclimates to new syntax and keywords. If your business involves spatial positioning, for instance, it is far more useful to learn whether the candidate knows the difference between 4x4 matrices and quaternions, or between geodesic and geodetic coordinates, than it is to know whether they can describe the math in Lisp or C# or Javascript or reverse polish notation. Your initial bozo filter should undoubtedly be a simple trapdoor function that takes candidates several minutes to solve, but takes you (or a less qualified underling) only seconds to verify. Then, if they pass it, make a more concerted effort to determine whether the developer is a match for your team's development style, without resorting to keyword-based prejudices, or relying upon people with little or no technical capacity to filter your candidates.
  - couchand 12y ago
    The image is hyperbole... Unfortunately, it's not. I recently heard about a conversation DHH had with a recruiter, who asked him how many years of experience he had with RoR. His answer: "all of it."

Retric 12y ago

You have little idea what your opportunity costs are. However, it’s unlikely that the best fit is going to have your ideal background and be willing to spend much time jumping through your hoops.

couchand 12y ago
...probably because your best fit already has a job they're happy with.
Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
My hoops? Did you read what I wrote? I suggest 5 minutes of CV tailoring. You think that's jumping through hoops?
- Retric 12y ago
  Yes, my last job search consisted of posting my resume on one and only one job board. I then received a deluge of phone calls and multiple job offers soon after that. In the end if you’re depending on people reading a job posting you’re already missing out on a lot of highly qualified applicants. If you then want tailored resumes your mostly excluding the type of people you actually want working for you. PS: And no I will not show up to an interview if you don't list a salary range.
  - Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
    CVs posted to job boards (in the UK at least) aren't looked at by companies but by agencies. Those agencies call you and do all the pre-screening (and CV tweaking) before they send the CVs to people like me. When I've looked for a job I'll always say to the agent I'll tweak my CV myself because I'd rather I did it than them (I've seen some horribly butchered ones come through - in those cases I can normally tell it was the agency and don't hold it against the candidate but sometimes that may not be the case). Essentially I suspect everything I asked for happened with you, it just may not have been done by you. Salary I totally agree on - I post a salary range for the role (usually a range but also dependent on experience) and want to know candidate salary expectations before hand. If we're not happy with what the candidate is looking for based on what their rough level of experience I wouldn't interview.
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  Yes, actually. I'd love to have my resume show that I have successfully automated work for other software developers, small business owners, photojournalists, hospital physicians and nurses, corporate attorneys, military pilots, and rocket scientists, and that all of it was done in a manner that is largely invisible to the beneficiaries. Throwing a bunch of keywords tailored to a specific job ad is completely pointless, from my perspective. I have successfully learned the work of several different skilled professionals and reduced large portions of that work to computer programs. What you ask, and is mirrored at hundreds of other companies, is roughly analogous to someone in the construction trade building residential homes, commercial office space, retail buildings, and municipal buildings over the course of their career, and then having someone suggest that they ought to list "hammer" and "screwdriver" on their resume. Never mind if the person actually uses pneumatic nail guns and power drills for the nails and screws, the magic keywords are "hammer" and "screwdriver". Never mind if the person is actually smart enough to be a general contractor and halfway to being a civil engineer. If that resume doesn't say "hammer" on it, he doesn't get called back. What you are asking is irrelevant, gratuitous, and counterproductive--thus, hoops to jump through. My skills are not Java and C#. My skill is making other skilled workers more productive, by any means necessary--though usually with the help of a computer. Part of that is recognizing that when thousands of people are each wasting their time on unnecessary steps every time they perform a task that may be repeated several times every day, the situation may be improved dramatically by eliminating that waste. There are several potential solutions. One is to tell you, and everyone else in a similar position, that your expectations are ignorant and counterproductive, and show a cavalier lack of respect toward potential hires. You are asking that they invest five minutes of time specifically into your company, rather than into their own general job search, just so that you will not arbitrarily toss their application into the trash. This is in addition to the 20-60 minutes the typical HR gatekeeper already requires to re-type every single datum from that resume into a non-portable custom form in their candidate tracking system. If I'm going to spend even more time on your company, I'd like the potential return to be worth the effort. Until you actually talk to me, I won't know that. And as long as we're talking, we can just skip the resume and spend that extra five minutes on the way to "yes", instead of just evading "no".
logfromblammo 12y ago
I imagine Kernighan, Ritchie, or Dijkstra talking to an HR drone. They say, "I see from your resume you have a lot of experience with C and C++, but we're really looking for someone with more recent $MAGIC_KEYWORD experience." The legend laughs, says "thank you," and then hangs up the phone. Meanwhile, everyone behind the HR firewall that has actually earned a CS degree is blissfully unaware of the sheer magnitude of idiocy that one sentence represents. The image is hyperbole, but that is a fraction of what you might be doing when you focus on specific experience rather than aptitude and adaptability. What you are looking for is someone who can solve complex problems by reducing them to smaller sub-problems that can be automated. Anyone with a knowledge of how computers operate can use any higher-level language to perform the actual automation. Focusing on candidates who already advertise specific skill keywords will save you, at most, a few days, as the new hire acclimates to new syntax and keywords. If your business involves spatial positioning, for instance, it is far more useful to learn whether the candidate knows the difference between 4x4 matrices and quaternions, or between geodesic and geodetic coordinates, than it is to know whether they can describe the math in Lisp or C# or Javascript or reverse polish notation. Your initial bozo filter should undoubtedly be a simple trapdoor function that takes candidates several minutes to solve, but takes you (or a less qualified underling) only seconds to verify. Then, if they pass it, make a more concerted effort to determine whether the developer is a match for your team's development style, without resorting to keyword-based prejudices, or relying upon people with little or no technical capacity to filter your candidates.
- couchand 12y ago
  The image is hyperbole... Unfortunately, it's not. I recently heard about a conversation DHH had with a recruiter, who asked him how many years of experience he had with RoR. His answer: "all of it."