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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?

#211

Post by hhmc »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #120
JshWright wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you don't actively penalize folks, it's worth pointing out that candidates with an active GitHub profile often _do_ have an advantage in the scenario you describe.

I like to think people who are further into their career and keeping up with development have a github with lots of stars... the github doesn't make the developer, the developer makes the github.

Your statment is built upon the pernicious idea that all good developers should write code in their spare time.

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

#212

Post by lildoggo »

plibither8 wrote: post #207
raviolo wrote: post #46

I’ve been writing code for over 20 years yet I don’t have anything that I can share in a public repo. My employer would sue me immediately. I don’t imagine I will be looking for a job via the “normal process” with recruiters and all, but if I did, would I need to put out stuff to github? Would I need to spend 6 months just writing random but nice-looking code so I’m not rejected due to not having github profile? I th…

> My employer would sue me immediately. This is the first time I'm hearing about something like this. Why would your employer sue you?

Probably because of an NDA the OP signed. Companies don't like it when their employees share the company's profitable code with the world.

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

#213

Post by scarface74 »

hhs wrote: post #209
scarface74 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is interesting. How did you build your list of local recruiters - through trial and error? And did you use services other than LinkedIn?

It happened over many years. But basically, I respond to every recruiter if I don’t already have a contact with the recruiting company and they have local offices.

Mostly LinkedIn these days. I only got really serious about my career about 10 years ago. Before that I was your typical “dark matter developer” working at one job for almost a decade.

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

#214

Post by hhs »

scarface74 wrote: post #213
hhs wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting. How did you build your list of local recruiters - through trial and error? And did you use services other than LinkedIn?

It happened over many years. But basically, I respond to every recruiter if I don’t already have a contact with the recruiting company and they have local offices. Mostly LinkedIn these days. I only got really serious about my career about 10 years ago. Before that I was your typical “dark matter developer” working at one job for almost a decade.

Good to know, this is useful info, especially with respect to working with every recruiter and sticking to LinkedIn. Thanks.

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

#215

Post by scarface74 »

hhs wrote: post #214
scarface74 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happened over many years. But basically, I respond to every recruiter if I don’t already have a contact with the recruiting company and they have local offices. Mostly LinkedIn these days. I only got really serious about my career about 10 years ago. Before that I was your typical “dark matter developer” working at one job for almost a decade.

Good to know, this is useful info, especially with respect to working with every recruiter and sticking to LinkedIn. Thanks.

On that note. My ususl response when a recruiter reaches out to me has been.

“Hey, I am not looking to make a move right now/I’m looking to make a move in $x months. What are the trends you are currently seeing and what are the salary ranges? Send me a list of open reqs. I might know some people who are looking”.

This will also let me stay up on market trends and know which projects to focus on and what to emphasize on my resume.

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

#216

Post by hhs »

scarface74 wrote: post #215
hhs wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good to know, this is useful info, especially with respect to working with every recruiter and sticking to LinkedIn. Thanks.

On that note. My ususl response when a recruiter reaches out to me has been. “Hey, I am not looking to make a move right now/I’m looking to make a move in $x months. What are the trends you are currently seeing and what are the salary ranges? Send me a list of open reqs. I might know some people who are looking”. This will also let me stay up on market trends and know which projects to focus on and what to emphasize…

That's quite neat, shifting from being passive to engaging actively with them, I like that, thank you.

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

#217

Post by rinchik »

jitix wrote: post #92
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.

“meaning that I will have to do more work during the interview” Isn’t that your job as a hiring manager? Also how do you know that their github projects actually work in production? Do you do a through code analysis to evaluate performance bottlenecks or do you do a build-deploy-test do figure that out? IMO if you want to evaluate candidates on complete end to end projects you should give them assignments based your…

Depends. Depends. No. In some cases.

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

#218

Post by rinchik »

cbg0 wrote: post #188
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.

1. No. 2. No, read my comment again.

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

#219

Post by detaro »

WorldMaker wrote: post #210
detaro wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Also, though limited and sometimes not great, "Pinned Repositories" is an easy tool to manage (easier than bouncing things between orgs and pseudo-orgs like `$username-forks`) and typically a strong signal for "I contribute to this".

Right, I forgot those are a thing now (and just pinned a few repos). They certainly help a lot with that.

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

#220

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

hhmc wrote: post #211
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to think people who are further into their career and keeping up with development have a github with lots of stars... the github doesn't make the developer, the developer makes the github.

Your statment is built upon the pernicious idea that all good developers should write code in their spare time.

I said 'stars' meaning they at least follow the market trends.
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