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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?

#51

Post by beager »

cimmanom wrote: post #17
beager wrote: post #11

I would hazard a guess that most pure recruiters aren't looking at your GitHub profile other than ensuring that you've provided one. The hiring manager or interview team, however, might be interested in it. Here are some things that I check for in a GitHub profile, as a hiring manager and as a recruiter (hooray startup roles!): 1. Repos that aren't just forks. I've seen plenty of profiles where the majority or entire…

What’s wrong with not having a profile photo? FWIW, as a woman, I leave my photo off github to avoid the assumptions people make when they know someone’s gender. In fact, there’s research to back that up: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/data-...

That’s a fair criticism. Having any kind of profile image I think is preferable to the default, because then it distinguishes you from someone who signed up a day ago. So it doesn’t have to be a photo of you, it could be a photo of your city, pet, some hobby etc.

Just something to humanize the profile, even if it doesn’t gender the profile.

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

#52

Post by amitport »

zepolen wrote: post #37
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.

So choose between: 1. A developer who doesn't respect himself first and foremost to write a README/maintainable code so that his future self and others can have an easier time. 2. A developer who cares about communicating his work to himself/others and making the environment easier for everyone to work for the future. Right.

You're choosing between a person who didn't write a readme and a person who did.

Anything beyond that is unfounded bias IMHO.

(I have a lot of personal projects and I've conducted interviews)

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

#53

Post by zepolen »

beardedwizard wrote: post #47
zepolen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So choose between: 1. A developer who doesn't respect himself first and foremost to write a README/maintainable code so that his future self and others can have an easier time. 2. A developer who cares about communicating his work to himself/others and making the environment easier for everyone to work for the future. Right.

Are developers only male? Your biases are really showing in these comments.

Yes developers are only male, women belong in the kitchen. /s

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

#54

Post by beager »

detaro wrote: post #20
beager wrote: post #11

I would hazard a guess that most pure recruiters aren't looking at your GitHub profile other than ensuring that you've provided one. The hiring manager or interview team, however, might be interested in it. Here are some things that I check for in a GitHub profile, as a hiring manager and as a recruiter (hooray startup roles!): 1. Repos that aren't just forks. I've seen plenty of profiles where the majority or entire…

It feels kind of weird that large parts of the world have stopped to do profile photos on CVs for fairness reasons, but then you expect people to have photos in the links they put on said CV? EDIT: and re forks: surely regular PRs against other projects would also tell you something?

I definitely would expect real photos of the person on LinkedIn, and everyone I know who hires will look on LinkedIn as a confirmation of the resume. Not sure if this is a vector to enable bias or not, but it’s a reality of hiring for many.

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

#55

Post by futureastronaut »

Gasp0de wrote: post #32
linuxlizard wrote: post #23

I am not a recruiter but help with software/firmware interviews where I work. When interviewing someone, any and all signals are very useful. For someone fresh out of university, they can show me their student projects. But an experienced engineer, their contributions are usually property of their previous employer and can't be shown. To me, being able to see an interviewee's code is like being able to see an artist'…

Noob question: Why is it bad to use for i in range(len(foo))? Because you can just use for bar in foo?

It's mostly a bikeshed and a signaling thing. Only a "noob" wouldn't know about enumerate(), right? The program could be brilliant in much higher level ways, but mid/senior only-knows-Python hot shot will jump on your anti-idiom like a dog on a dropped hamburger. Including such anti-idioms in your public code can filter out people like that.

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

#56

Post by zepolen »

Novashi wrote: post #50
zepolen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So choose between: 1. A developer who doesn't respect himself first and foremost to write a README/maintainable code so that his future self and others can have an easier time. 2. A developer who cares about communicating his work to himself/others and making the environment easier for everyone to work for the future. Right.

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 ;)

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

#57

Post by Novashi »

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 ;)

>But hey talk is cheap and you seem to know a lot - so how about you link an open source project you've published ;)

I wrote tech docs explaining the jungle of IT systems that we were relying on at a hospital I worked at, and sometimes that included diving into old code. These were usually much longer than READMEs.

Having a README wouldn't have saved this code from needing to be refactored. Nor would it have really changed my opinion of the code. It hasn't been a reliable signal.

The hard part about documentation is keeping it up-to-date and accurate and not filling it with extraneous details and going off on tangents. A lot of the READMEs are written for quick bootstrapping and that isn't going to reflect much on your code quality. I care more about good documentation and that's harder to write than a README and a much better signal.

I don't have time to work on open source but it's clear my experience has been vastly different than yours and I doubt either one of us are going to come up with a peer reviewed reason for either side.

Turn this around and say "this repo has a README! surely it's really good and so is the code" and it makes no sense to give that much credit for something that really isn't impactful beyond the first few days of using something.

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

#58

Post by systematical »

Aeolun wrote: post #4
gargarplex wrote: post #2

As a recruiter I can answer this! I do not speak for all recruiters. As a recruiter who is also a programmer, my approach may be nonstandard. * I want to see thoughtful README files. If the README is whatever was generated default by the framework and not edited at all, that's a huge groan and turn off and you lose tons of strength (credibility) as a candidate. * I want to see your code looking pretty. Consistent ind…

I really don’t see why these things are relevant at all. It’s a personal Github profile. Why would anyone add thoughtful readme’s or a clean coding style if they’re the only contributor? I mean, those things are great of course, but not sure if I’d expect it on Github.

I write verbose readme files with examples of how to use my libraries because it's what I expect of other engineers. I do the same for private repos.

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

#59

Post by ddebernardy »

beager wrote: post #11

I would hazard a guess that most pure recruiters aren't looking at your GitHub profile other than ensuring that you've provided one. The hiring manager or interview team, however, might be interested in it. Here are some things that I check for in a GitHub profile, as a hiring manager and as a recruiter (hooray startup roles!): 1. Repos that aren't just forks. I've seen plenty of profiles where the majority or entire…

> Conversely, when I don't see a profile photo, that's concerning.

Ever considered how women or non-whites feel about this?

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

#60

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

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.

Sure, but we're in a discussion of what recruiters look for. If you only code something for yourself, that's fine, but if you want it to be taken well when job-hunting, you should make it at least minimally presentable (i.e., a recruiter can tell what they're even looking at).
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