What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates • Hacker News Board

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#201

Post by repolfx » Wed, May 16, 2018, 6:25 AM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #200

repolfx wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was implied by context that they weren't. Obviously if you need advice of "don't be greedy" then such a person isn't simultaneously weighing up an offer from the top of Google's pay tier, otherwise that wouldn't be greed, it'd just be realism.

I don't think that was implied by the context at all. >that wouldn't be greed, it'd just be realism. I think that's the point. Startups routinely want to convince people to work for them for less than established companies. They often talk about wanting to hire people who care about solving the problems they are working more than money. When someone is being realistic by pointing out that they can make more money els…

When someone is being realistic by pointing out that they can make more money elsewhere, they say they are just "being greedy."

You're assuming the big paying tech firms will hire any programmer who applies to any startup. They won't.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#202

Post by repolfx » Wed, May 16, 2018, 6:30 AM UTC

ken wrote: post #188

repolfx wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is frustrating. I emphasise passion relatively little in my own interviewing process, but others in the firm can't quite get over the desire to do a "one last check" sort of interview. I don't stop them because, well, the harsh reality is that passion does help. Why? Because programming isn't carpentry. The difference between an average programmer and a great one is that the average one will build what you ask acc…

I notice that you focused in on my carpentry example, and ignored the industrial design one completely. Do you think ID is perfectly hierarchical, and doesn't involve changes to blueprints, and never looks like goofing off? Your hypothesis only fits 2 of the 3 data points I provided. Software is the only non-customer-facing job that I know of where passion is considered relevant at hiring time. The mathematicians I'v…

Your industrial design example was an anecdote. There are people who work for me who aren't passionate about the specific area we work in, they just like writing software. You seem to think passion is literally a job requirement, but I've never seen that. Employers like to see interest and keenness but they do hire people who don't have it, of course.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#203

Post by dapreja » Wed, May 16, 2018, 10:28 AM UTC

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…

You're giving these recruiters too much credit on their intelligence. They're vuage because they're ignorant and need to reach a certain word count to their pitch, and the same way they need to get a certain number of submissions. In short they're like monkeys incentivized is to give the minimum amount of vuage info in the shortest amount of time until the candidate agrees to continue with submission.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#204

Post by cuddlypsycho » Wed, May 16, 2018, 12:07 PM UTC

querulous wrote: post #151

cuddlypsycho wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are you an Oscar winning actor?

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#205

Post by jwhitlark » Wed, May 16, 2018, 7:25 PM UTC

latte wrote: post #198

bm1362 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a problem advertising Clojure, everyone showed up wanting to write Clojure but didn’t care about our product. As a series A company it was hard to get purist to focus on shipping and we started weeding candidates out that gave off a ‘I just want to work in Clojure’ vibe. Eventually new stuff got written in Java and we migrated off of it due to the hiring pipeline mostly but when we told candidates some honestl…

So can one say that you migrated off of Clojure because it attracts a wrong type of people?

I think advertising "work with X" is usually a problem if people don't care about your domain. Domain first, then the tech can be a nice to have.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#206

Post by learc83 » Wed, May 16, 2018, 7:53 PM UTC

repolfx wrote: post #201

learc83 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that was implied by the context at all. >that wouldn't be greed, it'd just be realism. I think that's the point. Startups routinely want to convince people to work for them for less than established companies. They often talk about wanting to hire people who care about solving the problems they are working more than money. When someone is being realistic by pointing out that they can make more money els…

When someone is being realistic by pointing out that they can make more money elsewhere, they say they are just "being greedy." You're assuming the big paying tech firms will hire any programmer who applies to any startup. They won't.

I'm not assuming that all "by pointing out that they can make more money elsewhere". In this case I'm talking about someone who can make more money elsewhere.

I've often heard variations on "don't be greedy" from startups and recruiters when I was working as a consultant.

I'd tell them "We'll I'm making X now, so you're going to need to at least meet that in total comp before I'll consider it."

The response is almost always something like "We're interested in programmers who are really passionate about Y and aren't primarily salary driven, so we only pay X/2 here."

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#207

Post by teachrdan » Wed, May 16, 2018, 11:52 PM UTC

carapace wrote: post #113

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…

There's this one recruiter company that calls me up every six months or so. We always do the same dance: First they ask me for my most recent updated resume. I send it to them. It's a text file. No fancy formatting, no fonts, not even any Unicode, just ASCII. They always ask me to reformat it, and they always send me the same example resume, and they always explain to me very nicely that they want my resume to make a…

Because you're not compliant, and a compliant candidate is easier for them to place. If you won't reformat your resume to look like pretty much everyone else's, how can they count on you to take a bunch of pointless phone calls for positions that may only vaguely match your skillset in the hopes that one is a match and they get their blood money?

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#208

Post by gt640k » Thu, May 17, 2018, 3:35 AM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #110

falcolas wrote: post #59

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…

Who do you think you're trying to hire? Of course there's going to be a large number of people who take it literally.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#209

Post by prrrush » Thu, May 17, 2018, 1:24 PM UTC

cuddlypsycho wrote: post #199

jtmcmc wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow you sound terrible to work with based on this post.

Well I'm not running for a popularity contest. A players like to work with other A players. My jobs is to make sure we maintain that environment. If that means being very selective and exclusive and hire based on merit only then so be it. You'd be surprised how many engineers actually find that approach a breath of fresh air in this age of diversity and inclusivity.

> Well I'm not running for a popularity contest. A players like to work with other A players. My jobs is to make sure we maintain that environment. If that means being very selective and exclusive and hire based on merit only then so be it.

I don't think anything you do would be able to hire or retain A players. I can quote some good lines from movies - it doesn't mean I'm a great actor or great write.

That, to me, is an analogy to your use of the phrase 'A players hire A players'.

Just because you know that phrase exists doesn't mean you're able to use it..because you are clearly not a competent manager

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#210

Post by hekfu » Thu, May 17, 2018, 1:46 PM UTC

mmirate wrote: post #182

hekfu wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> equity AFAICT equity is a lottery-ticket at best, and is usually bubkes. What novel information do you have about equity?

Two cases:

1. I'm talking about equity, not options. Aka, part of the company is yours. With voting rights, or in the case of e.g. Google, at least worth cash 2. In a startup, it is a lottery ticket. If the company is public, you can include it in compensation as there is a market value

If the company actually gives you a meaning number of shares, they can expect you to care about the company beyond the paycheck... because it's your company. If they are Google and the stock is a way to chain you via vesting...at least it's golden chains