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Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

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Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#151

Post by [deleted] »

rpdillon wrote: post #99
fernandopj wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If she would have started her email with "We're looking for an algorithm expert," we would never have gotten any further and would not have wasted our time. Clearly, I'm not an expert in algorithms. This phrase precedes the one you mentioned. He's saying the process he has been through completely ignored his background and field.

The notion that traversing a binary tree requires expertise in algorithms seems questionable to me. I view basic tree traversal as table stakes for a developer with more than a year or two of experience (IIRC, it's discussed in Intro to Algorithms in most CS curricula). OP says that his field is object-oriented design, which links to a page where he announces that "We've started work on a new programming language". T…

[deleted]

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#152

Post by valuearb »

geodel wrote: post #19
utnick wrote: post #7

The worst part for me is how long the process takes, and how much time is invested for an interview process where the success rate is so low. My recent experience with AMZN was: - get contacted by recruiter, schedule a call with recruiter a few days later - take a take-home coding test a few days later - talk to the recruiter again a few days later to tell me I did well on the coding test - talk to another recruiter…

May be not for many people here on HN but for very large number of engineers job opportunity Google/Amzn/MS/FB etc are once in a lifetime type. I have not met people in my circles who would balk at interview process there.

Your best opportunity as a young engineer is always with a startup with smart leadership. You'll get to do far more and learn far more. Google/Amazon/FB/MS etc are full of smart people and offer a more 9-5 type job, but you will find it much harder to do interesting things.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#153

Post by lostcolony »

rpdillon wrote: post #99
fernandopj wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If she would have started her email with "We're looking for an algorithm expert," we would never have gotten any further and would not have wasted our time. Clearly, I'm not an expert in algorithms. This phrase precedes the one you mentioned. He's saying the process he has been through completely ignored his background and field.

The notion that traversing a binary tree requires expertise in algorithms seems questionable to me. I view basic tree traversal as table stakes for a developer with more than a year or two of experience (IIRC, it's discussed in Intro to Algorithms in most CS curricula). OP says that his field is object-oriented design, which links to a page where he announces that "We've started work on a new programming language". T…

But optimizing for them? I've been out of school over 7 years; I'm currently a tech lead. I can guarantee you that, while I can likely solve most binary tree related questions you'd care to throw at me, it will take a lot more work, thought, and likely mistakes on my part now than it would have when I first got out of school. It's not an area I've spent -any- part of my development career on, nor is it an area I find particularly interesting. Whereas when I left school, I had actively been dealing with such problems within the past couple years, -and- had boned up on them specifically to prep for interviews, since I had nothing else in my favor.

Hiring a junior with such criteria might make sense; hiring a more seasoned person, probably not so much. Because the seasoned person will just not be as compelling as the more junior person, due to having spent the past few years working on other things.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#154

Post by fecak »

Being an agency recruiter in 2017 is becoming impossible in that fewer and fewer people are even willing to talk to you, which is one reason I've diversified into resumes and coaching. I have almost 20 years in the industry, led a large successful users group for 15 years, have published tons of content for tech pros (often critical of recruiters), and have a pretty solid reputation in the industry, I write targeted and friendly approaches (no surprise calls at your desk), and I still have difficulty getting responses from people. I can't imagine how difficult it must be for people who don't have my 'cred' with developers, but the signal to noise makes most people filter out all messages.

So for the most part, I've stopped reaching out to new candidates. Outreach is mostly futile, so my time is better spent doing other things to try and get potential candidates to come to me instead. It goes completely against what recruiting is built upon (always be recruiting, recruit everybody, source, smile and dial, etc.), but when people approach me the outcomes are much more positive.

When I got into recruiting (circa 1998), the primary skill of a recruiter was just identifying potential candidates. There was no LinkedIn, nobody had websites, no social media. The skill was calling into a company and finding out who the Java developers were by navigating different people, and in my case I did this without lying to anyone (there was rusing, but no outright lies).

Now identifying people is ridiculously easy (identifying actual talent is a little different), and so easy in fact that we've turned into an industry of spammers. This model doesn't seem sustainable, and I expect agency recruiters will continue to be replaced by better systems. Nobody seems to have gotten it just right to this point, but some are getting close.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#155

Post by indeed30 »

drewrv wrote: post #77
ryandrake wrote: post #31

Unlike most of HN (it seems), I like hearing from recruiters, because despite the very low signal-to-noise ratio, there's always that remote chance that one of them could be able to set me up with a "dream job". It's zero cost to me to politely reply to a recruiter and ask for more info, and I try to at least respond to everyone. What I've found is that they must have a lot of candidates they're juggling because fall…

I've been responding with "Sorry I'm pretty happy where I'm at right now, but can I keep your email address and let you know when I do start looking for something new". My goal is to have a giant mailing list of recruiters when I do start looking for work again.

In my experience, recruiting is a fairly cut-throat industry with a very high turnover rate of staff, so once you come to use your list you may find that a fair proportion bounce (or are redirected to someone else). It can't hurt though!

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#156

Post by ng12 »

shmerl wrote: post #75
ng12 wrote: post #6

Yeah it kind of sucks, but from Google's perspective it's absolutely necessary. So many people talk the talk, run a blog, have a neat looking resume/website/GitHub and just cannot perform. Unless you're an undisputed rockstar in a specific area and they're hiring exactly for your expertise you can't expect anything else. It's a huge waste of time to custom tailor to each candidate when 90% won't receive an offer. > T…

You can't figure out if anyone can perform, by asking algorithms questions. That's rather a waste of time. Instead, they can be given a task to write some real code to solve a certain task, and of course not in 2 hours, but within a day let's say. And then evaluate the result. That can show how people perform. And not puzzle questions about problems that people were breaking their heads for years to crack.

Those are not at all the questions asked. They don't ask you to prove A*, they ask you to filter a binary tree based on some predicate. It's much closer to real life than people on HN like to admit -- your coworker wrote some code using some datastructure and you have to figure it out and modify it.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#157

Post by stcredzero »

tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #29

I think when a company reaches a certain size it is hard to expect that there is such a thing as "a manager looked at my github/qualifications and decided they need me so they will tailor the interview to my skillset". At this point it feels the interview process is becoming more of a combo between a hazing ritual and a lottery than something actually useful to ascertain if the person interviewed would be a good matc…

I think when a company reaches a certain size it is hard to expect that there is such a thing as "a manager looked at my github/qualifications and decided they need me so they will tailor the interview to my skillset".

Why? As a matter of fact, I have a friend who met a manager at Burning Man, then was hired into Google in just such a manner. He described the Google interviewing process as "a breeze!" My reaction: What!?

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#158

Post by legohead »

I find it hard to believe they simply disappeared. Recruiters will pester you until you give up or say you aren't interested. They even make promises they can't keep, in order to get you to the interview.

The last time I was looking for a job, I talked to recruiters from Facebook and Amazon, and the first thing I told them were my salary requirements. They told me it "wouldn't be a problem." Then later on, I found out I was going to be offered a lot less.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#159

Post by yeukhon »

jff wrote: post #141

> some programmers who didn't know a thing about my profile asked me to invent some algorithms on a white board for almost four hours. Yep. Did the phone interview after weeks of back-and-forth, told them what I was interested in, told them I was only interested in working on such-and-such, then they drop me in the standard "write memcpy for us" interview. The last interview was some dude with a weirdly confrontation…

Assembly, did you apply for some low-level embedded system job? For most software engineering jobs, I would drop my jaws and freak out if someone asks me to look at an assembly bug. I probably will look at it and try to figure the shit out, but oh lord.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#160

Post by pm90 »

stcredzero wrote: post #148

There is no point in giving me binary-tree-traversing questions; I don't know those answers and will never be interested in learning them. Let's presume this is out of preference and not ability. It's a pretty basic concept. If your preference stops you from learning something as basic as this as a programmer, then it doesn't seem likely that you will be motivated to keep up with even more abstruse concepts. Nearly e…

I think you got it right. The fundamental issue seems to be that the recruiter flattered the candidate and made him/her think that they had genuinely looked through their profile and determined that they would be a good candidate. Most recruiters will not do this, simply because their priorities are not aligned that way. I think the OP revealed a very important mechanism: recruiters' job is just to get bodies in the system, which needs more people continuously for replacement and expansion.
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