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Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?

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Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?

#151

Post by jordan801 »

Edd314159 wrote: post #10

As a hiring manager, I glance at it and take a brief look at anything interesting. It’s good for talking points at the interview, perhaps to ask the candidate to expand upon and explain the work. If the profile is empty, I close the tab and find something else to talk about. I will never, ever penalise a candidate for an empty GitHub profile. So many people just do not have time for open source and that’s totally fin…

I've been super concerned about my empty stackoverflow and github accounts. This is reassuring. Thanks for sharing!

Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?

#152

Post by chillacy »

akerl_ wrote: post #49
solarkraft wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% disagree. Even just saying that it was hacked together gives some context for 1) Why the code looks so unconventional 2) What you do in your spare time.

Context for whom? My target audience for my personal projects is myself. Any company that assumes their recruiting org is the target audience for my personal projects is setting themselves up for disappointment.

Tell us in the readme if you make it public. You gotta think, who is reading this? That goes beyond documentation to code itself and any communication you do.

Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?

#153

Post by chillacy »

beardedwizard wrote: post #29
Novashi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that's a huge groan and turn off and you lose tons of strength (credibility) as a candidate. Toxic and off putting. You put too much weight on relatively minor things. It’s preventing you from fairly considering the rest of the candidate. You could be the one to teach them to do READMEs well.

Wow. This comment is deep. People who call themselves managers, read that last sentence 20x. This is what we need to do, can you?

Most big companies no longer believe in training but selecting. This is popularized in “strengths based” training sold by a handful of consultants.

Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?

#154

Post by chillacy »

wccrawford wrote: post #3

I'm not convinced that the Github profile is for recruiters alone. As someone doing hiring at the company, I want to see it myself. So what am I looking for? Clean code that's more than just boilerplate. Comments, good logic, some sense of purpose. There can be garbage repos in there, too, but I expect there to be some that show off who you are. In short, they want to see who you are. If your Github isn't showing who…

I do this too, just to find stuff to dive into in the first 10 mins. The worst was when somebody’s github was full of tutorial projects that were done in 2-4 hours a piece by following detailed instructions.

Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?

#155

Post by scarface74 »

gregmac wrote: post #94
travisjungroth wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I penalize people slightly for an empty GitHub if they put it on their resume, just out of annoyance. Why did you put this url for me to follow if there's nothing here but a half started React tutorial from 3 years ago?

Yeah, this is just like any other thing you call out by putting on your resume. Nobody is a expert in everything, of course, but if you specifically put "TCP/IP" or "OOP" on your resume, you better be able to explain TCP vs UDP or class vs interface (both real examples from real phone screens I've done).

I’ll go even further. Don’t put any language, framework, technology on your resume that you don’t want to talk about or that you don’t want to do.

I took C and C++ off of my resume years ago even though I did both for 12 years and I still know all of the ends and outs of C. There is going to be that one old geek (I’m 45) who wants to ask me some obscure question just to prove how smart he is. I definitely leave PHP and Perl off. I don’t want to show up on recruiters search results looking for WordPress developers (I never did WP).

I want to keep the conversation and the interview focused.

Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?

#157

Post by ModernMech »

Aeolun wrote: post #150
ModernMech wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Until very recently, you couldn’t do that and keep your code private on github without paying. Ok, but now you can. > people dump stuff there for reasons other than explicitly wanting to share it with the world or show it off. Maybe, but that doesn't change the fact you are sharing it with the world and you are showing it off, and if you put a bunch of sloppy inscrutable code on your GitHub, people are going to ass…

> That's just the reality of it. Given that I don’t, and am in a position to hire people tells me this isn’t as hard and fast as you present it.

This whole thread started because people claim that they do exactly what I'm describing. I'm not telling you it happens, they are. Just because you don't doesn't mean others do don't as well.

Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?

#159

Post by scarface74 »

sl1ck731 wrote: post #144
gregmac wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is just like any other thing you call out by putting on your resume. Nobody is a expert in everything, of course, but if you specifically put "TCP/IP" or "OOP" on your resume, you better be able to explain TCP vs UDP or class vs interface (both real examples from real phone screens I've done).

If recruiting software didn't penalize for keywords I think it would be less of an issue. Its a struggle trying to figure out what to put in the "list of technologies" type section. I have to put them somewhere to get past crappy HR screening software since explaining every tech in a job description would create paragraphs but just listing it doesn't represent the level of aptitude. For example, I might use Chef dail…

The secret is don’t base your job search on blindly submitting resumes to applicant tracking systems.

When I am looking for a job, I send my resume to my curated list of local recruiters followed up by a phone call. We talk about what they have available and what I am looking for. I have enough of a history with them that they make sure that my resume shows up on top of the hiring managers stack.

My success rate from submitting my resume to being invited to an in person interview is 100% unless the req was closed. My non rejection rate is close to 100% (I’ve taken myself out of the running because I found a job.)

Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?

#160

Post by humbledrone »

As a hiring manager, I am careful to avoid drawing any negative conclusions from looking at a personal GitHub profile, because I believe that sloppiness or "bad" code is actually just fine in the context of random personal projects. And of course not everyone programs for fun in their free time, so a lack of a meaty profile is not something I worry about. (I would sure hate for someone to judge me for a lack of comments in some random code I wrote a 2AM 8 years ago for giggles.)

But sometimes I can get a really strong positive signal from a GitHub profile. All else being equal, if a candidate has a meaty personal project, or has been an active contributor to other projects, etc, I can greatly increase my confidence that they're a good hire by reading through their code. It can sometimes show me that they're really capable in some dimension that's hard to assess otherwise.

In other words, a GitHub profile is not a make-or-break thing for me, but hiring is always based on information that's more limited than one would like, and sometimes a GitHub profile can provide enough extra signal to make a hiring decision easier.

I will say that one specific thing that is really helpful is the presence of simple README files for original projects that describes what they are and who the author is.

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