Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

91–100 of 226 posts

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

#91
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…

sorry but your employer should go throw themselves under a rolling donut.

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

#92
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 your evaluation parameters and ask them to explain their code/solution

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

#93

Related question: how many recruiters actually look at GitHub pages? Does this number change if one is linked in the resume they’re looking at?

Yes, please put your GitHub, GitLab, etc, profile on your resume. When interviewing, being able to see someone's code quality is golden.

But actually a breach of contract in most places - you know "gross misconduct" as HR call it.

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

#94

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?

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).

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

#95
post #94

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).

As a former recruiter, I just assume all resumes are complete shit. I never saw much of a correlation between a quality resume and a quality candidate. Screening for the stuff one uses on the job is what I prefer to do. It's also nice to focus on the job requirements, too, because it removes any need for someone to impress me with what the have done. When you can walk into an interview with "hey, I really want you to get this job, but we need to find a way for both of us to envision a scenario in which we're working together successfully", it's amazing how well that usually turns out.

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

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many places seem to require a github profile in their form.

There is never anything wrong with writing "n/a" in any kind of form. There was a long overlap during which any form that took contact details already had fields for email address and mobile phone number, but before either of those were as ubiquitous as they are today; nobody processing those forms ever ignored one with "n/a" for email address. Granted, it might be less prudent to skip some fields than others, of cou…

"error: n/a is not a valid URL"

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

#97
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ostensibly, you put your code on Github for others to read, use, and maybe even contribute to. If you have a project that you didn't care enough to write cleanly, or even document in the most bare minimum of ways (a helpful README to contextualize the code) then why are you even putting it online? It's just going to reflect poorly upon you. If all your Github repos are as described above, people are going to (rightly…

I've been programming for years and I've had a GitHub account for about as long. Almost every piece of code I've ever written that wasn't for an employer or a school assignment has gone into a public GitHub repository. It goes online because that's what I do. It's the easiest way for me to share code with friends and others, to manage it across multiple machines, etc. There's no reason to put it in a private reposito…

That's well and good, but the thing people seem to keep missing is that git != github. Github is first and foremost a social network. You may keep your personal projects there, but they are still public and on a social network, and that means anyone who reads them will judge them.

The question before us is, how do recruiters judge them?, and the answer one has given is he or she looks at style and clarity in code. Others have come back responding that's not fair or relevant, but that's the reality of putting things into the public sphere; you are judged whether you like it or not on terms that you don't get to dictate.

Look at it this way: when you go out and about to meet someone, you might get all gussied up to present yourself in the best way. But when you go to the grocery store, you might not have done your hair and makeup, maybe you might be wearing day old sweat pants. If someone catches your eye at the grocery store when you're looking like a slob, your chances don't improve just because you put your best foot forward last week at the club.

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

#98
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is never anything wrong with writing "n/a" in any kind of form. There was a long overlap during which any form that took contact details already had fields for email address and mobile phone number, but before either of those were as ubiquitous as they are today; nobody processing those forms ever ignored one with "n/a" for email address. Granted, it might be less prudent to skip some fields than others, of cou…

"error: n/a is not a valid URL"

how about www.idonthaveaninterestinggithub.com

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

#99
Like other people in this thread have said, I definitely look for projects or contributions that look interesting, or are job related, to start out having a conversation.

However, there is one thing I look for that will, usually, be a huge negative against the candidate. I have run into many candidates where their github projects are just 100% clones of various tutorials. When a github profile is only full of such projects it doesn't tell me anything different than what is on your resume, and my trust in the candidate goes down.

Other than looking at code quality, I actually look into their commit history and see if they are using the various best practices of git.

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

#100
I was approached by an Amazon recruiter that seemed to have used some sort of algorithmic tool that had keyed on specific information about in my github profile. Specifically, it mentioned that I had more than 1 public repository with 'stars' from more than 2 people and 1 or more forks. I asked the recruiter about this and she mentioned that she used a tool like this to find potential recruits. It didn't sound like it was a company-wide thing, though.
Post reply on HN