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If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

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Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#71

Post by PeterisP »

mrfusion wrote: post #31
dagw wrote: post #15

On the flip side I recently interviewed for a programming position at a civil engineering company and at no point in the process did anybody ask any questions that would in any way test if I actually knew any of the things I claimed to know. The entire "programming" part of the interview was essentially: "We use quite a bit of python. I see from your CV you've used python". "Oh absolutely, I consider python the langu…

We all deserved to be treated with that kind of dignity. I'm not sure where our industry went wrong. You'd never ask a doctor medical school trivia during an interview.

I believe that it started during the dotcom boom, when a lot of unqualified people tried to join the industry despite having no skills - once you get bit by hiring people who claim (and have) job experience but turns out can't code at all, not even on a basic junior level; you need some process to filter them out.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#72

Post by megamindbrian »

jordanpg wrote: post #20

When I read articles like this, I tend to assume that they are exaggerations written by people who feel burned because they didn't get the job they want and that the reason was unfair interview questions. In other words, I simply don't believe that interviewers are, as a group, so stupid that they regularly ask obscure Excel questions when they are plainly not relevant. To continue with the recruiting example, I susp…

Nice. Actually, like me, they feel burned because it took 100 senseless conversations (1 hour each) just to get a likable job.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#73

Post by throwaway8686 »

Time is the most valuable resource which can be saved tremendously if really competent recruiters/interviewers are involved in the recruitment process.

I was recently interviewing for a position with a company behind pushcrew/vwo, it took me roughly 55+ hours (cumulative) to work on their assignment, attend interviews, company/business analysis etc.

I knew the the assignment which I had created was really good given the time constraint on it. Even recruiters acknowledged it (!), but at the end the decision was made on basis of team diversity!! They wanted to have a diverse set of team. I'm not against their decision, it's their company and their team. But to come to this conclusion, there's no need to make a candidate spend this much amount of time.

Just by glancing over resume and previous history, they could have rejected me straightaway OR maybe on the very first call! Both of my interviewers were good, I think, but I doubt they weren't sure what exactly they were looking for? It is simply another set of people, who I believe are from tech background but lack experience in recruitment.

The equation should be managed properly: Tech knowledge + People Skills/Management = Good Recruiter.

A good recruiter should be skilled equally in tech + his/her people reading skills. It saves a lot of time, money and efforts for both of the parties involved in the process.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#74

Post by protomyth »

dsr_ wrote: post #24

I am, now and on occasion, a hiring manager. Naturally, every freelance recruiter wants to be my friend. They often start cold calls with a description of a person's technical abilities, and then ask if I would be interested in interviewing that person. When that happens, I ask them to define one of the buzzwords that they have just used. "Could you tell me what 'big data' means?" or "What's the difference between AW…

I had a recruiter who called me in the mid-90's. It was pretty obvious I wasn't ready to leave yet, but we struck up a conversation and she called back a couple of times. She did have a basic grasp of the technology, but there were a lot of technologies, much like today, and understanding if an OWL programmer could adapt to a place using MFC was a challenge to recruiters. HR and the computer industry loves buzzwords, so its no surprise recruiters end up using them with about the same understanding.

I guess I always preferred teaching to help enhance the relationship from my side. My being a nice guy and teacher, did help when I wanted to leave.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#75

Post by beager »

nulagrithom wrote: post #59
beager wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny because in a different context, that's exactly a sequence of questions that I as an engineer would ask: > Do you have experience with React? > Okay, do you have experience writing pure, vanilla JavaScript? Absent a framework like jQuery or Backbone or Angular? The second question can often screen out people who simply maintain framework apps rather than those who actually know JS.

Are you assuming that people who haven't maintained a vanilla JS app don't actually know JS?

Not at all. I'm getting at the fact that many frontend devs don't know JavaScript, they just know cut-and-paste jQuery or how to fiddle with/maintain React/Angular components in a large app.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#76

Post by xenihn »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #44
mrfusion wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all deserved to be treated with that kind of dignity. I'm not sure where our industry went wrong. You'd never ask a doctor medical school trivia during an interview.

Doctors take a test and go through a verifiable apprenticeship period. If Dr. Nidal got his MD from Johns Hopkins and did his residency in pediatric oncology at Sloan Kettering where he is a fellow and has published 2 papers on Nueroblastoma you can safely assume he knows a thing or two about high risk pediatric solid tumor cancers. What do we have for programmers?

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Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#77

Post by aidenn0 »

mrfusion wrote: post #31
dagw wrote: post #15

On the flip side I recently interviewed for a programming position at a civil engineering company and at no point in the process did anybody ask any questions that would in any way test if I actually knew any of the things I claimed to know. The entire "programming" part of the interview was essentially: "We use quite a bit of python. I see from your CV you've used python". "Oh absolutely, I consider python the langu…

We all deserved to be treated with that kind of dignity. I'm not sure where our industry went wrong. You'd never ask a doctor medical school trivia during an interview.

I think it's at least partly because how averse many shops are to hiring people; even people who clearly lied on their interview/resume.

At one point in the past I worked with someone who was incapable of understanding pass-by-reference; something like:

   int getFoo(foo *out);
A colleague spent multiple hours per day for a week trying to explain this to them. After a week they still were unable to successfully make use of this interface.

Their resume claimed 5 years experience in C.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#78

Post by cr0sh »

dagw wrote: post #15

On the flip side I recently interviewed for a programming position at a civil engineering company and at no point in the process did anybody ask any questions that would in any way test if I actually knew any of the things I claimed to know. The entire "programming" part of the interview was essentially: "We use quite a bit of python. I see from your CV you've used python". "Oh absolutely, I consider python the langu…

I was once sent to interview (by a recruiter I've had who's placed me at a couple of great positions in the past) at a company for a web development position using php.

The interview lasted for a couple of hours. They had 3 or 4 of their developers in the interview as well as the hiring manager. At no point did anyone ask any questions about software development - of any kind. It was really bizarre.

After the interview I told my recruiter that the interview went well - other than not being asked any software development questions. He found that odd, but got back in touch with them.

They basically told him that the position was no longer available and wouldn't give him any more information. A very weird dead end. I would've like to have worked for the company (the web development was for their customer facing sites - they are a retail chain basically, and I have shopped at them in the past), but I think I dodged something there in the end.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#79

Post by dkersten »

quantumhobbit wrote: post #27
jordanpg wrote: post #20

When I read articles like this, I tend to assume that they are exaggerations written by people who feel burned because they didn't get the job they want and that the reason was unfair interview questions. In other words, I simply don't believe that interviewers are, as a group, so stupid that they regularly ask obscure Excel questions when they are plainly not relevant. To continue with the recruiting example, I susp…

Sure, but I've just had an interview with a recruiter who literally did the "Do you know Reactjs? Yes. But do you know JavaScript?" face-palm to me. Only with Angular instead of React. Not all recruiters are this dumb, but I promise you I have encountered plenty who are.

In fairness, I don't consider my javascript skills to be much good[1], but I know React quite well (because I've been using React from clojurescript since fairly early on).

[1] I can get by, but I'm far from a JS developer. I can read JS just fine, but mainly because I've used plenty of other languages, although when I write JS I need to google often and don't write the best JS code.

Re: If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

#80

Post by dkersten »

TamDenholm wrote: post #12

I get at least 5 phone calls from recruiters a week, being a contractor. The amount of times i get someone that asks me something like: Recruiter: "We're looking for someone with React experience, do you have that?" Me: "Yes" Them: "Ok, how about Javascript?" I want to explain to them but i end up just saying yes to every acronym on their list since they've no idea what they're asking for.

As I posted in another comment in this thread, I can actually truthfully answer that with "Yes, No". I've got plenty of React experience, but in Clojurescript and not Javascript.

I would obviously fail the interview, rightfully, since I wouldn't be much good on a Javascript team using React. But I do know React.

(Okok, in reality, I'd learn. Its not that I don't know any JS at all, I do, but I avoid it as much as possible so when I write JS, its pretty bad hacky JS, and I can read it)

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