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What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

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Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#91

Post by cuddlypsycho »

cuddlypsycho wrote: post #49

"EQ and self awareness" What a crock of sh*t!! This is what happens when you pack HR departments with humanities and gender studies majors. Personally I do not read any resumes, all the hiring I've done was either by referral or through online websites like angelList. This is my process: - Check your linkedIn, look at your experience and education. Catchy schools and companies is good BUT also that you are not a bran…

Guys who are downvoting, please explain what is it about the post that you find objectionable. I am genuinely curious.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#92

Post by laum »

cuddlypsycho wrote: post #91
cuddlypsycho wrote: post #49

"EQ and self awareness" What a crock of sh*t!! This is what happens when you pack HR departments with humanities and gender studies majors. Personally I do not read any resumes, all the hiring I've done was either by referral or through online websites like angelList. This is my process: - Check your linkedIn, look at your experience and education. Catchy schools and companies is good BUT also that you are not a bran…

Guys who are downvoting, please explain what is it about the post that you find objectionable. I am genuinely curious.

I would guess it's the condescension towards humanities/gender studies.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#93

Post by daveslash »

tashi wrote: post #75
alkonaut wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they would gripe about that technology all day long; if they can't complain about its shortcomings and pitfalls, they didn't use it. I have literally baited people I interview with this type of thing. Asked about things I know everyone who has come in contact with has cut themselves on and been upset about.

Some candidates, depending on their backgrounds, may be wary of being thought of as complainers or being "difficult." Something to look out for.

A question that I've been using lately is to ask a candidate to pick some technology (anything) that they have strong feelings about - positive or negative. I'll then throw out a couple of examples: "I really like A about B thing" and "In language X I really dislike Y because Z" -- I'm looking to see that they've really thought critically about some technology. Anything.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#94

Post by falcolas »

commandlinefan wrote: post #71
falcolas wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My current resume has approximately 6 different fonts, left and right justified fields, bullet points, and tables just so it looks just good enough to get past the HR drones (many of whom are wonderful people despite being a resume gatekeeper). It was an agonizing process, but the end result is something that recruiters recognize as being well designed. I hate having to maintain it. That's what I mean by pretending.

> 6 different fonts Dear God, is that really what they're looking for? Tech hiring gets more ridiculous every day.

It's what was needed. And my use of the word fonts is a bit incorrect, it was a total of 6 different font faces (bold, italics, different sizes, different fonts). Sorry about that.

- Name - largest on the page, picked a font that looked good at that size

- Email address - monospaced font, colored to appear as a link (which seems silly, but helps pull attention to it since it's the primary contact method for me)

- Physical address - Small font, so it, my phone number, and email address occupy roughly the same visual space as my name. Also, a different font to fit the reduced size without impacting readability

Per job:

- Company name and title - Larger than the description

- Dates - Small so they can exist on the same line as the company name, but a different font to be legible.

- Descriptions and duties (also used for summary) - The baseline for font and size.

A quick glance at my resume won't show the design choices made; it's supposed to be subtle while retaining legibility through a fax machine (you wouldn't believe the lack of quality of some of the resumes which I've been handed over the years). That subtlty/readability is what took the longest.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#96

Post by cuddlypsycho »

laum wrote: post #92
cuddlypsycho wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guys who are downvoting, please explain what is it about the post that you find objectionable. I am genuinely curious.

I would guess it's the condescension towards humanities/gender studies.

Thanks for your feedback.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#97

Post by jaredhansen »

Note that what "technical recruiters" want is not guaranteed to match what the hiring firms themselves want.

There may not be a great solution to this problem from an applicant's perspective (because if you fail to impress the recruiter, you may forfeit the opportunity to impress a manager in subsequent practice). Still, it's worth keeping in mind, not least because your ultimate success at the company depends more on what happens after the hire than before.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#98

Post by ken »

amorphid wrote: post #84
ken wrote: post #78

> It may seem like common sense, but having a deep, enthusiastic, and genuine interest in some aspect of the company (whether it’s the company’s mission, product, technical challenges, or its work environment) is important. This frustrates me so much. What if I can't find a company that offers any such thing? This seems like anti-common sense to me. If you have skills at carpentry, and do a professional job, you can…

The way I think of it is that we haven't yet figured out concrete ways to assess whether someone can or can't be an effective developer on a team. So if you want me to hire you, and I can't directly measure your skills (because I'm a suboptimal interviewer?), then I need data points that increase my confidence that you are more likely to work out. This is a 100% contrived, but here's an example... - I run a dev team…

I agree wholeheartedly with your first paragraph! As an industry, we still don't have the first clue how to hire. It's not just you.

Where I differ is with your (admittedly contrived) example. I've interviewed dozens (hundreds?) of people over the years, and I can't say I've seen any correlation between passion and professionalism/competence/longevity.

I think "Hiring for passion" is the new "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". It's the CYA response. We have no clue if a hire is going to work out, but if they spend their weekends writing C# for fun, and they don't work out at our company, we can at least tell our bosses "They came across as so passionate during the interview -- we couldn't have known they would turn out to be a bad hire!"

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#99

Post by ownagefool »

falcolas wrote: post #66
s73v3r_ wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"and we have to pretend we're designers to work around people like this who have no idea how to hire actual technical people." I honestly don't know what you mean by this.

My current resume has approximately 6 different fonts, left and right justified fields, bullet points, and tables just so it looks just good enough to get past the HR drones (many of whom are wonderful people despite being a resume gatekeeper). It was an agonizing process, but the end result is something that recruiters recognize as being well designed. I hate having to maintain it. That's what I mean by pretending.

Mines is just literally a list of techs categorised by bulletpoints under a job without any context. It doesn't look terrible, but it was hardly really well designed.

The basis that the HR drone/recruiter (wonderful people or not) is only actually interested or capable of matching buzzwords (when hiring engineers, specifically, but possibly in any field) and thus will pass the resume based on meeting a Ctrl F hit percentage critera.

Once the actual hiring manager get the CV, they ask for the context and we discuss it. This largely gives me a reason to talk and thus make people like me, I feel less awkward because I'm not regurgitating my CV, and the hiring person is less bored because they haven't read this. This seems to give them enough context to move to the hiring stage, few ask me any technical questions at this point.

I'm a contractor in London with a very high success rate in landing gigs. Your mileage may vary, but try to think about the people who read your CV.

> They're busy and have a lot of CVs, thus they want to skim for relevance.

> They want 1-2 pages, they're not going to look past this.

> If they ask you about a tech on your CV and you don't stand up to scrutiny, they'll feel you're dishonest and you've wasted their time.

A little bit of empathy goes a long way.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#100

Post by bitwize »

EADGBE wrote: post #80
mitchty wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sooo glad I've not encountered this. When I go drinking I tend to accumulate drinking buddies that are entirely outside of programming. Lawyers, skater bros, confectioners, people that know way too much about the chemistry of post it notes (true story) I love tech and all, but, when I'm out drinking its more fun asking people what they do and just getting out of the stupid tech scene in general. Maybe I'm the we…

Agreed, I don't find myself wanting to be around people like that outside of work. They're... kinda boring. I always laugh when a recruiter reaches out looking for people and asking if I know of anyone. LOL! No, all the ones I know I currently work with, and I try not to know them past that. > I don't want to join a cult when I join a job. My feelings precisely.

> I always laugh when a recruiter reaches out looking for people and asking if I know of anyone. LOL! No, all the ones I know I currently work with, and I try not to know them past that.

I love how they get snippy when you tell them you don't know anyone. "Well! I guess EVERYONE you know already has a job!"

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