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What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

keyvalues.com

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Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#101

Post by iteriteratedone »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #30
falcolas wrote: post #22

In my opinion: - designing your resume - EQ - having a deep, enthusiastic, and genuine interest in some aspect of the company - Think of your resume like a poem - visual representation of their experience/resume These are great criteria for hiring a designer or marketing personnel, but these are TERRIBLE criteria for hiring a technical person. In my fantasy world, a technical resume is in a monospaced font and is emi…

A good balance between highly technical and creatively designed is to write your resume with TeX.

What is up with this bs... cant you guys read the content and decipher if the candidate is intervewable*. Whats up with american psycho business card routine

I have education , and job history ... im succinct with tech info and explain any management responsibilities. What does it matter if that is monospaced or in tex?

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#102

Post by rohan_ »

falcolas wrote: post #22

In my opinion: - designing your resume - EQ - having a deep, enthusiastic, and genuine interest in some aspect of the company - Think of your resume like a poem - visual representation of their experience/resume These are great criteria for hiring a designer or marketing personnel, but these are TERRIBLE criteria for hiring a technical person. In my fantasy world, a technical resume is in a monospaced font and is emi…

Had to nitpick on the monospaced font line. Proportional type preserves the shape of words which is a huge part of readability. I don't think I'd take a resume that looks like it was written in a code editor as a positive signal.

https://www.quora.com/Typography-Monospaced-fonts-what-are-t...

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#103

Post by amorphid »

ken wrote: post #98
amorphid wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

> 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.

Makes sense. I think I was trying to say we come up with seemingly arbitrary reasons to hire & reject people. Before getting into software, I had expected the opposite. As far as I can tell, hiring would be more effective if we asked candidates to roll a d20 to make a charisma check w/ a difficulty modified by how we're feeling that day.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#104

Post by t1o5 »

coldcode wrote: post #72
t1o5 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- And don't ask me if I know "Tomcat programming language"

I would like to here what they say when you say yes.

The recruiter said 'I will get back soon' after when I told 'Tomcat is not a programming language'. I never heard from that recruiter again.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#105

Post by qohen »

CryoLogic wrote: post #63

TBH I have never been impressed by any technical recruiter I've met. I remember interviewing for a place and the recruiter thought he was an expert coder since he knew some buzz words. He was saying they wanted someone with SPA experience AND was able to build REST API's. I spent thirty minutes trying to convince him that NodeJS runs on servers and I've been a back-end JavaScript developer writing large REST APIs and…

TBH I have never been impressed by any technical recruiter I've met.

You know what is impressive about (at least some) technical recruiters I've met? Despite not knowing much about tech, they can pull down $300K/yr (and this is not in SF or NYC).

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#106

Post by [deleted] »

CryoLogic wrote: post #63

TBH I have never been impressed by any technical recruiter I've met. I remember interviewing for a place and the recruiter thought he was an expert coder since he knew some buzz words. He was saying they wanted someone with SPA experience AND was able to build REST API's. I spent thirty minutes trying to convince him that NodeJS runs on servers and I've been a back-end JavaScript developer writing large REST APIs and…

[deleted]

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#107

Post by sidlls »

mkirklions wrote: post #46
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally in my linkedin messages right now: "Hi we're looking for a python/clojure/go/dart/react senior developer. We need 5 years of experience and a college degree in CS" "I have none of those but forward my resume if you think I'd be a good fit" "Alright, I'll get your resume over to them ASAP!" Several days later "Sorry, they said you wouldn't be a good fit" No fucking shit, I am shocked

>we're looking for a python/clojure/go/dart/react senior developer Tbh, most people dont even need an expert or senior developer. Unless you are expected to pick up everything within 1 week, its easy enough to learn a language or reverse engineer old code with enough time. I find this the most annoying thing in programming. Does HR not realize that once you can program, you can program?

What makes you think it's HR with those absurd requirements? Some places have very rigid tech stacks and aren't interested in new hires taking even a short amount of time to learn the basics of a new language or framework. (I wouldn't necessarily want to work at such a place, just saying they exist.)

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#108

Post by gaius »

chatmasta wrote: post #14
nikanj wrote: post #5

I'm surprised none of them mentioned the abominable "culture match". I've heard repeated complaints that it's much more important to be a brogrammer who likes craft beers, than it is to be any good at the actual programming.

I’ve been consulting the past year and a half. Recently I decided to contact some companies just to see what the landscape was like, and if I could maybe find an interesting opportunity that also paid well. On one of the first calls I had, the recruiter heavily implied that I was “not a culture fit” after I explained that I’m only interested in a job if it pays more than I currently make consulting (this particular j…

“we’re looking for people passionate about the problems we’re solving, even if it means taking a pay cut.”

We want people smart enough to program but not smart enough to think about compensation, in other words. I think there was a Dilbert about that!

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#109

Post by learc83 »

lynnetye wrote: post #12
nlstitch wrote: post #3

I think recruiters should actually start giving a shit about the lives of engineers before making demands. - Actually try to get to know and understand a person - Dont use fill-in templates - Have some actual knowledge of tech (java != .net) - Dont make offerings for positions I worked on 10 years ago during college. - Dont be greedy. To just name a few...

To be completely honest, I also felt a lot of frustration towards recruiters when I first started working on Key Values. (It might be one of the reasons why I built it...) In the last year though, I've met a wide variety of people with a wide variety of responsibilities, approaches, and backgrounds, yet they all share the same job title. There are certainly awful recruiters out there, but there are also some really f…

>Don't be greedy

That is hilarious. If the representative of a multi-billion dollar company (or a startup trying to become a multi-billion dollar company) every said something like that to me I'd probably laugh and walk out.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#110

Post by Consultant32452 »

falcolas wrote: post #59
Consultant32452 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us aren't on the cutting edge of technology. I've personally never worked on a team whose biggest problem was a lack of technical prowess, the problems are always social/cultural.

If I'm being frank, then you need to be up front about that in the job posting. "Cultural fit" and other PC BS won't cut it - be honest about what you need. "We need someone who can design and implement frontends alongside our product marketing group." Not, "Looking for a JavaScript, Typescript, Angular, React, Node.js, Mongo, and BerkleyDB rockstar." Because I've personally watched several people who were cultural f…

I've written and deleted this message a dozen times trying to get it right without it coming off as an attack. I hope you won't take it that way because I'm genuinely trying to be helpful. The way you parse "Looking for a JavaScript, Typescript, Angular, React, Node.js, Mongo, and BerkleyDB rockstar." sounds like the way I would expect an autistic person to parse it, too literally. Every job everywhere has an implied requirement that you will be able to communicate and work effectively alongside other humans. Since it's a requirement everywhere, hardly anyone will list it explicitly.

When I read:

>"Looking for a JavaScript, Typescript, Angular, React, Node.js, Mongo, and BerkleyDB rockstar."

I parse it as:

"We need someone who can design and implement frontends alongside our product marketing group. Our technology stack is JavaScript, Typescript, Angular, React, Node.js, Mongo, and BerkleyDB."

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