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What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

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Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#171
post #90

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?…

Partially, this is based on a disconnect between engineering and hiring. For example, the people who are writing the job descriptions got a 1-line email, "We need to expand the engineering team; could you take care of it? Thanks!", and so they're basically having to come up with all this on their own. Their first stop is probably a Google search: "example job description software engineering" Then, they replace the b…

> Partially, this is based on a disconnect between engineering and hiring. For example, the people who are writing the job descriptions got a 1-line email, "We need to expand the engineering team; could you take care of it? Thanks!", and so they're basically having to come up with all this on their own.

And to think that hiring will have one of biggest impact on the engineering team.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Considering how many of their target audience will parse it too literally, perhaps it is the message that is wrong. It's not purely on us to learn to communicate, the business and recruiters must learn to communicate with us as well.

On the other hand, I think recruiters take it way to literally too. The will quiz candidates and their experience on everything in the list and drop people that don't know 1 or 2 of them (and the liars will get through).

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#173
post #90

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?…

Partially, this is based on a disconnect between engineering and hiring. For example, the people who are writing the job descriptions got a 1-line email, "We need to expand the engineering team; could you take care of it? Thanks!", and so they're basically having to come up with all this on their own. Their first stop is probably a Google search: "example job description software engineering" Then, they replace the b…

> Partially, this is based on a disconnect between engineering and hiring.

I have the feeling many see this as malicious by employers. But it's already hard to find good developers, employing them as recruiters is a waste of resources. You'll try to find recruiters who have some idea what to look for and then only include engineers in the last stage. Having every application for a senior dev scanned by other senior devs won't work.

As for the recruiter, they can only learn so much about the job because the company probably has 20+ roles to fill where they need to know the basics for all. They can't be expert in all domains.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#174
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…

> If I didn't know any better, I'd say it sounds like you're searching for people with passion so you can get them to work unpaid overtime for you. I don't know why else it would matter.

Ding ding ding. Also in this category

* We still shitcorp want the company to be a family * Believing in our vision * Want our employees to be caring about the customer * Have fun and pizza in the office

Unless

a) there are hard cash+ benefits b) there is equity c) there exists a formal incentive structure reaffirming the officially started desires

It's all consciously or subconsciously a way to sucker people in and exploit them without pay. And some people go in knowing that and not caring they get exploited (nurses, some people better than me I know), some don't notice (mostly junior devs/consultants). But for both exploited they get

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#175
post #149
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Is that so?

Yep.

This may not be 100% right, but: think about this -- imagine you're a recruiter who is a partner in a firm, not someone just starting out and getting paid very little. Let's say you place people with average salaries of $100K. Your firm may take 20% of that. Meaning that $300K would only require placing 15 people per year -- that's a little over 1 per month.

Of course, you'd have to share the revenue, pay your share of expenses, etc.

But let's say you can place 2 or 3 per month on average. Or 4, whatever. At some point soon, no matter the expenses and revenue-sharing, your cut should reach $300K.

It may not be so easy to place one person every week or two. But you're working with other people and maybe you have some low-paid people to do the drudge-work of sifting through resumes and so on.

*

An interesting point, though, about making those big bucks: the first $300K recruiter I met, some years back, told me this -- yes, you could do well working with him...but he would only hire you if you got yourself trained elsewhere. Meaning, that you'd have take a much lower paying job to start (the number $30K comes to mind, but I don't know how accurate that is -- maybe there are commissions too for successful placements? --- and, in any case, it was a while ago).

So, for at least your first job, you'd probably be working at a large outfit with a lot of people, which might be competitive, with a lot of turnover, perhaps because people wash out or whatever -- whenever I talk to a recruiting firm locally that I've dealt with for a while, most (or all) of the folks I knew previously have moved on.

In other words, you might not make it through the prerequisite needed to get to the $300K guy's firm (and I'm assuming you probably wouldn't start at $300K, or anywhere near that, since you'd be a junior hire).

*

The second guy I met who told me he was getting $300K was more recent. He was an internal recruiter -- which struck me as a bit odd, given that he was working for a startup that wasn't very large, so, unless they were to suddenly grow fast, I don't know why they'd need a recruiter that expensive around on a long-term basis, even a very good one.

(It appears he moved on after being there close to a year, so maybe they reached this conclusion too...or perhaps that's the gig -- you stay as long as you're needed then move on -- or perhaps he just found a better position elsewhere).

*

But what do I know? I mean, if I really understood recruiting, maybe I, too, would be making $300K as a recruiter.

And, if recruiting occasionally proved to be less interesting than writing software, I'm sure I could come up with ways of amusing myself, such as, say, trolling my candidate-developers by scoffing at the existence of server-side JavaScript and seeing how long I could keep a straight face arguing with them :-)

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the most important question I ask in every interview. The goal isn't to get someone to piss and moan about every little thing, it's to see if they can identify any downsides to the tech they use. IME >80% of candidates have never even thought about it, treat every tool/dependency as free, and whatever tech they happen to use was written by the second coming of tech Jesus and contains no faults.

It's a great direct question. However, what I read was that this person asks candidates broadly about X technology and expects them to divine the knowledge that they need to start complaining about X if they want a job.

When a job interviewer asks about X technology, often they actually _want_ to see you hedge your bets. They think of this in terms of you understanding both the upsides and the downsides of technology (and business) decisions.

I aim to answer by listing: a high-level business benefit of X, a time I saw X delivering such a benefit, a time I saw X being a hindrance or failing to completely deliver the purported benefit, something an alternative of X does differently and why, then wrap up with a conclusion that the benefits are situation-dependent.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

That is true. But there is a huge variability in degree, both on the side of the candidates and on the side of the jobs. I think most people would agree that saying "we need an efficient programmer" is insufficient detail. The same is true for a requirement like "needs to be able to communicate and work effectively alongside other humans."

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#178
post #32

I was going to write a long and detailed post about how so many of these things are so very wrong from a technical standpoint, but basically, let me sum up the recruiting industry in a single quote from this material: > Watch for spelling and grammar. [..] After conducting my own A/B tests on this matter, the data showed that candidates who had untidy resumes faired less (sic!) than those with well written ones. Edit…

>sume, then write four damn pages of resume. A one-page resume that drops three pages of relevant stuff will put you in the same basket as someone who can barely fill that page. It's not ballast, it's stuff I can ask you about in an interview. To me 4 pages is a CV not a resume. You might prefer 4 pages, but in my experience most people won't bother reading past the first page.

> in my experience most people won't bother reading past the first page.

Those people should not be involved in hiring. I know it sucks to read page after page of seemingly irrelevant stuff until you find that one good candidate, but that's literally your job. Complain all you want, then do it. I, too, hate dealing with poor code from irresponsible vendors, undocumented libraries or legacy applications, but I don't stop reading past the second file of source code.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#179
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and No. A great GH and SO reputation is something you build over a period of time. It shows passion and consistency. That's what separates people who love to code from the ones who just want the paycheck. Also, what is "office hours"? We are plugged in 24/7.

If only all hiring managers were this honest during the process, everyone would be better off. The candidate, for example, could just walk out of the interview and go for a beer, while the hiring manager could get on with the business of finding a gullible new grad to hire.

I'm not the hiring manager. We are a startup, we don't have any bureaucracy.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#180
post #107

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?

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.)

Yes this is fair, I just havent seen any occasions where this was necessary.

You usually have a senior person (or a few) that knows everything and calls the shots anyway.

Heck, even when I had to pick up the pieces of a mess, I found the code easy enough to pick up.

Btw I think frameworks are a far bigger deal than a language. Languages look similar enough and it seems like the biggest challenge is using libraries.

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