As a developer who has recently been through the hiring process, I think the problem is not a shortage of talent, but rather that companies are awful at hiring. Here are a few of the main issues: 1. Don't limit your potential talent pool to the miserable and the unemployed. In theory, any developer who is currently employed might be interested in leaving their job to work for you. Perhaps you will offer them more mon…
If (1) coding homework sucks, and (2) coding live sucks, how do you propose assessing a candidate's coding ability? Take their word for it?
Absent a large open-source repository or other public corpus of work, you generally have to rely on one or the other.
As a developer who has recently been through the hiring process, I think the problem is not a shortage of talent, but rather that companies are awful at hiring. Here are a few of the main issues: 1. Don't limit your potential talent pool to the miserable and the unemployed. In theory, any developer who is currently employed might be interested in leaving their job to work for you. Perhaps you will offer them more mon…
I'd estimate (without bothering to sit down and crunch the numbers) I've had a 30% success rate interviewing for programming jobs. I usually get about 2 rejections before I get an acceptance (and, of course, when I get accepted, I stop interviewing). Based on that, I'd be led to conclude that I was a _dismal_ programmer, probably not fit for the industry at all. If there was as tight a tech shortage as they keep insi…
The talent shortage is absolutely imaginary. The hiring process is run by incompetent internal recruiters and competitive developers with Aspergers whose goal is to reject as many people as possible in order to prove that no one is as smart as they are.
> only for candidates who don't have experience developing in our core stack If you're looking for top talent it wouldn't be measured against any singular tech stack. I tend to take positions on stacks where I'm unfamiliar, and no I wouldn't complete homework. Employers are competing for the good candidates and should have a process of identifying them without hoops.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the right process. We want to make it easy for the candidate too. Care to share your feedback/opinions?
When I'm interviewing senior candidates or being interviewed, my preferred first interview is a conversation about interests, past work, and areas of future work. Depending on the ability to communicate effectively and deeply about topics of shared knowledge and interests that will decide the next steps. It also gives a good idea of the candidate and the company in the process. The best use of time all around. I have yet to be 'duped' by an imposter by this process. Some may be slightly underwhelming but I've yet to regret a hire or being hired.
As a developer who has recently been through the hiring process, I think the problem is not a shortage of talent, but rather that companies are awful at hiring. Here are a few of the main issues: 1. Don't limit your potential talent pool to the miserable and the unemployed. In theory, any developer who is currently employed might be interested in leaving their job to work for you. Perhaps you will offer them more mon…
> There are tons of developers who are good at coding solutions to real world problems in real world situations but simply don't perform well in this type of situation. What do you propose instead to see whether one can do real world problems in real world situations?
You can learn a lot about what a developer knows and is capable of by talking to them about the projects they worked on. Ask them detailed questions about the particular problems they dealt with on projects and how they were solved. Ask them to explain core concepts that are intrinsic to the technologies they've worked with. You can also get a feel for their personality this way.
Remember, we're talking about a screening process. Once they come onsite for the real deal you can throw all sorts of stuff at them.
As a developer who has recently been through the hiring process, I think the problem is not a shortage of talent, but rather that companies are awful at hiring. Here are a few of the main issues: 1. Don't limit your potential talent pool to the miserable and the unemployed. In theory, any developer who is currently employed might be interested in leaving their job to work for you. Perhaps you will offer them more mon…
I'd like to talk more about (1). We do a homework assignment that in fact does takes a few hours, but only for candidates who don't have experience developing in our core stack. If you can code in the languages and frameworks we use, it's a step we bypass. It tells us if they can solve a problem well using the tools and setup of their choice. If we clearly see they did well at this, the on-site can then focus on the…
That's nice. If your recruiter called me I would pass unless I happened to be unemployed. And even if I were unemployed, I'd tell your recruiter that I'm interested but I'd prioritize all of the other companies I'm talking to that don't have a homework assignment. If I failed their code challenges, only then would I do your homework assignment. Most developers I know would do the same exact thing. You have to realize that you are NOT the only company the candidate is talking to. In fact, the candidate doesn't even know if they want to work for you. Their recruiter pitched a bunch of companies to them. Your company was one of those. They were like "okay, sure send me over there." Seriously, unless you're a famous company like Google, the candidate never even heard of you. You are one of many places they agreed to let a recruiter send your resume to. Your job is to sell them on why they want to work there, not give them a fucking homework assignment.
> If you can code in the languages and frameworks we use, it's a step we bypass. Curious; can you say more about how you judge this? Isn't that sort of the point of the homework in the first place?
Judge if they can code in our core stack? Well, if they're working with it in their current job, or in side projects. Assessing if they are good, we can do it in the on-site. Like I said, our on-site is based on knowing our stack, so we have to make sure they can work with it before we bring them in.
What is this 'core stack' you speak of, is it special in some way?
I once did an all day on-site pairing interview with Pivotal. The morning was Swift/iOS and afternoon was Java back-end. I didn't have experience in either except some Java desktop GUI from a while back. It was all fine, they wanted to see how I think, what code paths I think of, what tests I choose for coverage. The actual syntax of what's being written wasn't the main point. That translates quickly on the job from experience doing similar tasks in other environments. If on the other hand, you've never written a test, or discussed code with a colleague those are not as easy to pick up from somewhere else.
As a developer who has recently been through the hiring process, I think the problem is not a shortage of talent, but rather that companies are awful at hiring. Here are a few of the main issues: 1. Don't limit your potential talent pool to the miserable and the unemployed. In theory, any developer who is currently employed might be interested in leaving their job to work for you. Perhaps you will offer them more mon…
I'd like to talk more about (1). We do a homework assignment that in fact does takes a few hours, but only for candidates who don't have experience developing in our core stack. If you can code in the languages and frameworks we use, it's a step we bypass. It tells us if they can solve a problem well using the tools and setup of their choice. If we clearly see they did well at this, the on-site can then focus on the…
People willing to spend a few hours of their day doing a "homework assignment" will tilt towards the spectrum of people who have a lot of free time which might not intersect that well with the set of people you want to hire.
I'd like to talk more about (1). We do a homework assignment that in fact does takes a few hours, but only for candidates who don't have experience developing in our core stack. If you can code in the languages and frameworks we use, it's a step we bypass. It tells us if they can solve a problem well using the tools and setup of their choice. If we clearly see they did well at this, the on-site can then focus on the…
That's nice. If your recruiter called me I would pass unless I happened to be unemployed. And even if I were unemployed, I'd tell your recruiter that I'm interested but I'd prioritize all of the other companies I'm talking to that don't have a homework assignment. If I failed their code challenges, only then would I do your homework assignment. Most developers I know would do the same exact thing. You have to realize…
So in the above reply I completely ignored the fact that he said the homework is only given to people who haven't worked with their tech stack. I also swore and went on a rant. Sorry! It's still something that needs to be said though. Just not to that guy...
That's nice. If your recruiter called me I would pass unless I happened to be unemployed. And even if I were unemployed, I'd tell your recruiter that I'm interested but I'd prioritize all of the other companies I'm talking to that don't have a homework assignment. If I failed their code challenges, only then would I do your homework assignment. Most developers I know would do the same exact thing. You have to realize…
So in the above reply I completely ignored the fact that he said the homework is only given to people who haven't worked with their tech stack. I also swore and went on a rant. Sorry! It's still something that needs to be said though. Just not to that guy...
Haha thank you for not directing that at me.
Hiring and having a welcoming but selective process is rough :)
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the right process. We want to make it easy for the candidate too. Care to share your feedback/opinions?
When I'm interviewing senior candidates or being interviewed, my preferred first interview is a conversation about interests, past work, and areas of future work. Depending on the ability to communicate effectively and deeply about topics of shared knowledge and interests that will decide the next steps. It also gives a good idea of the candidate and the company in the process. The best use of time all around. I have…
I do that as well and that still doesn't tell you much. It's a good first screen filter but isn't always sufficient. For senior candidates though, I agree that a homework assignment is not the best qualification process.