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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?

#181

Post by dang »

zepolen wrote: post #56
Novashi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False dichotomy, and if you actually witness this first hand and only have two options in your candidate pool, you might need to spread your net a bit further. Also the original post was about READMEs only, so if they have unmaintainable code, the README really doesn't matter that much, does it? Developers are at various stages in their expertise when they go looking for jobs. READMEs are nice but try not to let your…

> README quality is a pretty weak signal. It's a fantastic signal of what the quality of the code will be. Lack of a README indicates many things, including unmaintainable code either via lack of experience or rushed work. But hey talk is cheap and you seem to know a lot - so how about you link an open source project you've published ;)

That crosses into personal attack, which is a bannable offense on HN. Please don't do this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#182

Post by alchemism »

travisjungroth wrote: post #69
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 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?

In the rare case that they have an empty GitHub, save for a fork of https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode, I hire them immediately.

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

#183

Post by johnfn »

zZorgz wrote: post #111
johnfn wrote: post #63

From experience, not much. I have an open source project with millions of downloads and thousands of stars on the top of my profile. Never once got asked about it across at least 10-15 interviews with both startups and large companies.

It should be on your resume or you may not be giving the attention it deserves on your resume.

It was in fact the top personal project on my resume (though below work experience). Dunno how I can give it more attention than saying the millions of downloads and stars.

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

#184

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#185

Post by gabrielblack »

In my experience they don't look your Github profile at all. I think mainly because the average recruiter have no competence to read it (sad but true). I had two so called independent recruiters pretending to read it, but when I asked what repository preferred and why I obtained an embarrassing silence. Worst, the same happened with a couple of programmers during the final interviews. Recently I had a letter from a big software house, declaring they was interested to my projects on Github, I asked some questions discovering that that someone else ( maybe some kind of automatic system) give him a suggestion, but that wasn't his direct examination.

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

#186

Post by philihp »

bradleyjg wrote: post #27

As someone doing interviews, most of the github profiles I’ve seen have a bunch of forked repos with little to no added code. I don’t understand why people include a link to that. A couple of times I’ve seen real code and it certainly didn’t hurt.

GitHub doesn’t do a good job with this. IMO they’re sometimes just a fork with the intention of a PR. Gotta see what they committed on top of it. When it’s nothing, I’d love to see them hidden or downplayed on the default view.

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

#187

Post by detaro »

philihp wrote: post #186
bradleyjg wrote: post #27

As someone doing interviews, most of the github profiles I’ve seen have a bunch of forked repos with little to no added code. I don’t understand why people include a link to that. A couple of times I’ve seen real code and it certainly didn’t hurt.

GitHub doesn’t do a good job with this. IMO they’re sometimes just a fork with the intention of a PR. Gotta see what they committed on top of it. When it’s nothing, I’d love to see them hidden or downplayed on the default view.

Some people seem to make an organization (e.g.forks-by-$username) and put their "unimportant" forks in there as a workaround.

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

#188

Post by cbg0 »

rinchik wrote: post #15

When interviewing devs, I always check GH profile. If its empty it's usually a read flag (meaning that I will have to do more work during the interview). Coding samples, contributions graph, personal projects can push a candidate forward very fast. Worth to note: GitHub itself does NOT matter, the contents your profile and you contributions do. Prefer GitLab? awesome! Just don't forget to put it in your resume.

So any candidate that doesn't have open source contributions can basically take a hike because they'll be viewed as lesser? Many folks have full time jobs working on closed source projects and don't do software engineering as a hobby, so if you're really putting them down because of that you will be missing out on a lot of talent.

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

#189

Post by zrobotics »

drdaeman wrote: post #168
peruvian wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past year we grew our team from 6 to almost 30 and counting. About 10 of those 30 are senior engineers (between 8-15 years of experience). So far everyone's been very skilled and great to work with. We work in GitHub, and of those who use their personal profile for work, all of them have "empty" profiles and no meaningful OSS contributions. They spend their free time with their family and in other hobbies. Peo…

I didn't mean hacking OSS side projects for fun, on free time. Why everyone reads it like that? I meant, using FLOSS libraries for the actual job, during normal work hours. Depends on the industry, of course, I guess.

The trouble is, many of the people who respond

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

#190

Post by jve »

user5994461 wrote: post #170
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).

>>> class vs interface This is java specific, that's not OOP.

Interface is a means to achieve OOP. 2 more languages pops off my head:

C#: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/language-refe... TypeScript: https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/interfaces.html

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