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What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

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Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#151

Post by querulous »

cuddlypsycho wrote: post #89
arthev wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Personally I do not read any resumes" >"Check your linkedIn, look at your experience and education. Catchy schools and companies is good BUT also that you are not a branch hopper" So... you read resumes?

It is different. An applicant is free to put whatever they want on a resume and I will have no way of verifying it without devoting a ton of time to the process. On LinkedIn they are less likely to make stuff up. The public nature of the process keeps people a bit more honest. So yes, if I get a .pdf/.txt/.word/etc resume emailed to me I will not read it.

my linkedin profile has me listed as an oscar winning actor

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#152

Post by paulcole »

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…

> but I see you spending a lot of time writing C# in your personal time, or somehow demonstrating a passion for you, I'm more likely to think you'll be a fit.

Do you ever worry that you’re overlooking talented people who have a life outside of programming?

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#153

Post by carlmr »

john_moscow wrote: post #134
alkonaut wrote: post #55

If someone has insight into recruiting, can you explain why contacts sound like sales pitches with vague language? “You’ll work with the core of our digital strategy” “You’ll work close to the systems” “You’ll have a central role” What systems? What is the company even doing ? What about fundamental things like - where is this? - exactly what is the work I’m supposed to be doing here? - What’s the team? 4 beginners?…

Sales funnel + psychology. Imagine you are using PHP4 and, 100 candidates out of your pool will totally hate it. As You know that in a face-to-face talk you have about a 10% chance to convince a PHP4 hater to still go ahead and take the offer. Now consider 2 strategies: A) Write "we use PHP4" in the job description. In this case, 98 candidates will nope out when they read this (say 2% won't notice PHP4 or will be des…

I'd say this is true, but only if you're working with terrible technology.

If you're working with Elm or some other cool language/technology I'm sure strategy A would fare much better.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#154

Post by carlmr »

rohan_ wrote: post #102
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...

I'm glad Apple brought fonts to the computer world as well.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#155

Post by carlmr »

ryanmcbride wrote: post #39
danesparza wrote: post #6

I would absolutely love to see a thoughtful 'what engineers want from technical recruiters' post.

1) Don't bait and switch Recruiter: "Hi you seem like a perfect fit for can I set you up with them?" Me: "Yeah sure why not" Recruiter: "Actually you aren't a good fit for that role but how about " What's most annoying is that between the bait, and the switch, I've not talked to anyone new or given them any new information about my skills or technical past. They knew what they were gonna do from the beginning.

>What's most annoying is that between the bait, and the switch, I've not talked to anyone new or given them any new information about my skills or technical past. They knew what they were gonna do from the beginning.

It's less of a bait and switch, and more that they have like a 1% response rate on their spam. So they spam first and then see if it actually fits you. It's more efficient that way.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#156

Post by icebraining »

Eridrus wrote: post #124
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…

> 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 back-end services. He was convinced JavaScript only runs on browsers and I was full of shit. I mean, when NodeJS first came out, I thought it was a joke too :p

JS on the server-side is actually pretty old; Netscape implemented it on their web server way back in '95, right after the language was released on their browser.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#157

Post by carlmr »

john_moscow wrote: post #73
mkirklions wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

HR first and foremost needs to justify their own existence to the company they work for. And the easiest way of doing that is basically showing how they look through hundreds of candidates only to find those rare ones with the correct buzzword in the CV.

If they only found the rare ones that are competent and nice to work with instead.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#158

Post by toomanybeersies »

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…

I had a recruiter insist on Rails 5 experience, at the end of last year. Rails 5 had been out for less than a year.

Luckily I was able to talk sense into him that Rails 5 has like 1 new feature.

Then the company that put up the listing was dragging its feet, and I ended up choosing another offer that got back to me before I even got an interview with the first.

Anyway, not all recruiters are deaf to the voice of reason.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#159

Post by flukus »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #158
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…

I had a recruiter insist on Rails 5 experience, at the end of last year. Rails 5 had been out for less than a year. Luckily I was able to talk sense into him that Rails 5 has like 1 new feature. Then the company that put up the listing was dragging its feet, and I ended up choosing another offer that got back to me before I even got an interview with the first. Anyway, not all recruiters are deaf to the voice of reas…

I've had many insist on knowing how much experience I have with HTML 5, as though my previous experience with HTML 4 has no relevance. I don't know why the talk about HTML at all, a half decent programmer that's never done web development could learn all they need to know about HTML in a day.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#160

Post by repolfx »

carlmr wrote: post #153
john_moscow wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sales funnel + psychology. Imagine you are using PHP4 and, 100 candidates out of your pool will totally hate it. As You know that in a face-to-face talk you have about a 10% chance to convince a PHP4 hater to still go ahead and take the offer. Now consider 2 strategies: A) Write "we use PHP4" in the job description. In this case, 98 candidates will nope out when they read this (say 2% won't notice PHP4 or will be des…

I'd say this is true, but only if you're working with terrible technology. If you're working with Elm or some other cool language/technology I'm sure strategy A would fare much better.

I think you radically over-estimate the number of people who want to learn Elm in order to apply for a job.

I've done a lot of hiring and we use a "cool" language (Kotlin). We don't mention the language to recruits although it's not a secret (discussed on our website), because we want to hire people with many different platform backgrounds.

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