61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience • Hacker News Board

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#361

Post by bartread » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 1:48 PM UTC

clappski wrote: post #360

bartread wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EVEN AS A COLLEGE STUDENT I'm not going to do your coding assessment for free. There are plenty of workplaces that skip such bullshit and instead they talk with people and take a quick look at Github/past experience. I have more important things to do and recruiters keep emailing me about interviews every week. Great: I'm really pleased for you, and I hope you have a fulfilling career. But all you're telling me is…

I think software developers have a very interesting relationship with the hiring process - there's an unspoken attitude that our skills are highly in demand, so therefore companies should be trying to hire us rather than us trying to get a job with a company. In reality, while software development skills are in high demand, there's also a very high supply segmented across different skillsets and industries (and yes,…

Definitely. I don't think there's a one size fits all solution to hiring. Hopefully my suggestions will be helpful to those feeling swamped by applications, but it's certainly not the gospel.

At the moment we get few enough applicants that I'm fortunate enough to be able to talk to all of them. What has surprised me is that a relatively high proportion simply don't respond to that invitation. The numbers aren't yet anywhere near high enough to feel confident here, but it does seem - at least superficially - like there might be a correlation with weaker applications here.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#362

Post by bartread » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 1:52 PM UTC

Thiez wrote: post #357

bartread wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine. What you've just told me is you don't want the job I'm advertising ; you just want a job. And you can get one. That's cool. I wish you luck, and I'm sure you'll do well. What I'm interested in is candidates who really want this job. Those people are the ones who will put in the effort. With all of that said: "You can #### off if that’s is your first contact response." I suggested this in response to your…

> Nevertheless, taken at face value, that remark perhaps demonstrates something of a sense of entitlement. Many people feel entitled to being treated respectfully by their (prospective) employer. Asking people to invest hours doing useless work (which, as others have indicated, they may not even receive feedback on, just a rejection) just to get a chance at an interview, can easily be taken as a sign of disrespect: c…

Clearly that is not what I'm suggesting since I already said that anyone who submitted a completed assessment would receive personalised feedback from me.

I'm really not sure how you've made the leap from me trying to help people who are swamped with applicants (by taking action that gives every single one of those applicants a fair chance) to a suggestion that I'm not treating people respectfully.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#363

Post by Thiez » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 9:18 PM UTC

bartread wrote: post #362

Thiez wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nevertheless, taken at face value, that remark perhaps demonstrates something of a sense of entitlement. Many people feel entitled to being treated respectfully by their (prospective) employer. Asking people to invest hours doing useless work (which, as others have indicated, they may not even receive feedback on, just a rejection) just to get a chance at an interview, can easily be taken as a sign of disrespect: c…

Clearly that is not what I'm suggesting since I already said that anyone who submitted a completed assessment would receive personalised feedback from me. I'm really not sure how you've made the leap from me trying to help people who are swamped with applicants (by taking action that gives every single one of those applicants a fair chance) to a suggestion that I'm not treating people respectfully.

> Clearly that is not what I'm suggesting since I already said that anyone who submitted a completed assessment would receive personalised feedback from me.

Sure, you know that you're going to put in some effort to look over the solutions and provide feedback (but even then you probably won't spend nearly as much time on giving that feedback as the interviewee spent on their "audition"). As others have indicated, not all employers will put in that effort, and as the applicant you can't tell in advance whether you will. Or perhaps you will look at the code, but will instantly reject their code based on indentation (tabs or spaces?) or brace style, or choice of language ("lol Python, real programmers use Ruby"). Because you aren't yet invested in the candidate (after all, you've only sent them the same email you've sent the other 499 applicants) you lose nothing when you're an asshole, while the applicant loses the time they invested (and they won't be able to reuse that code assessment on their next job application).

> I'm really not sure how you've made the leap from me trying to help people who are swamped with applicants (by taking action that gives every single one of those applicants a fair chance) to a suggestion that I'm not treating people respectfully.

Telling applicants to send you a picture of themselves dressed as a clown and selecting the funniest 10 for an interview would also be an effective way to weed down applicants (many wouldn't respond, so clearly they didn't really want the great job you're offering), and one could even argue that it would give every single one of those applicants a fair chance. Would you agree that such a thing might nevertheless be seen by some as disrespectful?

I'm not saying requesting a coding assessment as part of a job interview is always disrespectful, and I think most people would agree with that. But, as you may have noticed from the reactions to your original post, an unpaid coding assessment that must be performed before the applicant gets a chance at an interview is a bit more controversial.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#364

Post by 52-6F-62 » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 3:54 AM UTC

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #346

52-6F-62 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> especially when random company HR wants 10 years of NodeJs and its been around for 2 years. My bane! I swear. I've been doing some form of programming since I was a kid, and as a hobby and moonlighting for more like 10 years, and professionally for a notable company for a few years and I still get automatic responses (* rejections) from HR within hours or a couple of days with 99% of the applications I send out wit…

Thankfully, my current place did exactly the opposite. They stated what technologies they used, and had a distinct understanding that you would not know their inhouse app. They also wanted to see your experience. So the first thing they do before an interview is a audition. You're sat down, on prem, (sys ad job) with Windows 2012 server, IIS, MSSQL, and a toy app. You have to make it work. They record the screencap,…

That's an interesting approach. I also don't mind the idea of a take-home project if it's not, say 6+ hours. The performance anxiety that can set in when someone is peering over your shoulder or going to review your recording later could be a bit of a handicap for some. Still, it's a fresh, and more realistic take.

My problem has been getting past the gatekeepers to get to that point—any face-to-face.

Though in my current role, I'll say they were happy after speaking to me and discovering I had heard and was familiar enough with their solution to have fiddled around with the platform outside of a professional context. In spite of my amateur knowledge of it, it seemed to be the distinguishing factor in my interview... just not until I actually got past the gatekeepers— in what increasingly seems like a game of chance! :P