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Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

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Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#41

Post by GiorgioG »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19
AndyNemmity wrote: post #18

We've been unsuccessful finding senior roles lately. The job is slightly underpaid, but the technologies, team, and everything else are amazing. It's difficult to communicate that in a job rec. I'd never leave for a much more higher paying role because the weight of being on a team of real experts working on real challenges far outweighs additional money. Just the way it goes out here. For the same reasons you wouldn…

> job is slightly underpaid, but the technologies, team, and everything else are amazing I would be sceptical of someone describing themselves as senior who falls for this. Pay them properly. If you can’t afford cash, make it up in stock and responsibility and flexibility and be open that you’re proposing that tradeoff from the start. You’ll filter out everyone with a mortgage or kids close to college or a lifestyle…

> I would be skeptical of someone describing themselves as senior who falls for this. Pay them properly.

100%. Seniors are likely to have families, kids, etc. I'm not leaving a job for "dream tech, or dream team" if I'm taking a step down, or for a lateral compensation move.

Given the current economic/inflationary environment "slightly underpaying" is massively underpaying them.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#42

Post by the_only_law »

jhot wrote: post #36

I'm someone who is likely your target candidate and I just went through the hiring process so here are my thoughts without seeing an example ad post (which you should link to): - There are a ton of job openings right now in DevOps and similar roles. I spent about 2 days applying to as many as I could and that filled my entire next couple weeks with interviews/tasks. I went through interviews, received offers, and cho…

> no offense to those who like it, I started out my career in the .NET world and ended up feeling trapped there and I'm not going back

I actually think C# is pretty decent for a big general purpose language, but I understand this sentiment. No one wants to talk to me about anything other than .NET positions. I can usually squeeze a decent raise out of it, but I'm approaching my ceiling.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#43

Post by [deleted] »

lostdog wrote: post #33
corrral wrote: post #21

> Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's choosing If I can get a similarly-paying job at a place that doesn't do this, I'll skip you. Many seniors ( actual seniors, not 3-years-of-experience seniors) have a network and can say "hey I'm looking" and instantly have multiple options that won't have them do more than talk to the team and manager for an hour or two. If that.

It looks like the take-home replaces a full day of 1-1 interviews. That does seem reasonable (though I personally think it's the wrong trade, and the 1-1 interviews are more informative).

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#45

Post by zo1 »

My best guess is the take home assignment. Not going to happen if you ask me. You want credentials? Then look at my degree/diploma, my portfolio, experience and whether I know what I'm talking about in the interview. That's it. You don't ask a senior experienced surgeon to perform an op for you to prove he can do the job, and neither should you for this.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#46

Post by throw1138 »

jhot wrote: post #36

I'm someone who is likely your target candidate and I just went through the hiring process so here are my thoughts without seeing an example ad post (which you should link to): - There are a ton of job openings right now in DevOps and similar roles. I spent about 2 days applying to as many as I could and that filled my entire next couple weeks with interviews/tasks. I went through interviews, received offers, and cho…

Remote is in the title of the post and mentioned multiple times throughout the post.

I dare say we're not posting frequently enough, that's a good point.

It's against company policy to put the range in the ad. Very very stupid, but probably nothing I can do about that.

We have three languages mentioned in the ad. But any senior candidate can be introduced to new technologies so they're not in the "requirements" section.

We could probably improve turnaround time, but the lack of applicants alongside natural attrition is making that even harder to make happen.

Thank you jhot!

Copypasta: This is a throwaway because I'm just an engineer on the team wondering if there's something obvious we're doing wrong, and I don't imagine this would be considered desirable attention by management.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#47

Post by AndyNemmity »

GiorgioG wrote: post #41
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> job is slightly underpaid, but the technologies, team, and everything else are amazing I would be sceptical of someone describing themselves as senior who falls for this. Pay them properly. If you can’t afford cash, make it up in stock and responsibility and flexibility and be open that you’re proposing that tradeoff from the start. You’ll filter out everyone with a mortgage or kids close to college or a lifestyle…

> I would be skeptical of someone describing themselves as senior who falls for this. Pay them properly. 100%. Seniors are likely to have families, kids, etc. I'm not leaving a job for "dream tech, or dream team" if I'm taking a step down, or for a lateral compensation move. Given the current economic/inflationary environment "slightly underpaying" is massively underpaying them.

I literally meant slightly underpaying. I'm sorry, if I realized people weren't going to use the words I said with their own meaning, I would have said it differently.

I'm not marketing a job to you, I'm just saying that it doesn't pay as high as the highest offers I get for roles which I wouldn't take to replace it.

Edit: Let's just make this literal, it's 200k without considering stock, benefits, etc. I consider that slightly underpaid, but the idea you can't raise a family on it is mind boggling.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#48

Post by thrill »

Having just spent 3 weeks on 4x hour long interviews and completing a day long coding problem along with a "code while I watch" to get to the point that "we're tabling this for a few months" I suspect many of us senior types are just tabling the job seeking process ourselves until we seem to be in actual demand.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#49

Post by GiorgioG »

AndyNemmity wrote: post #47
GiorgioG wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would be skeptical of someone describing themselves as senior who falls for this. Pay them properly. 100%. Seniors are likely to have families, kids, etc. I'm not leaving a job for "dream tech, or dream team" if I'm taking a step down, or for a lateral compensation move. Given the current economic/inflationary environment "slightly underpaying" is massively underpaying them.

I literally meant slightly underpaying. I'm sorry, if I realized people weren't going to use the words I said with their own meaning, I would have said it differently. I'm not marketing a job to you, I'm just saying that it doesn't pay as high as the highest offers I get for roles which I wouldn't take to replace it. Edit: Let's just make this literal, it's 200k without considering stock, benefits, etc. I consider th…

Thanks for the update (with the numbers), I was about to reply that without a number it's hard to gauge what 'slightly underpaying' means.

It would be interesting to see if you added a pay range if you got any additional hits. I'm not a devops guy, so I can't say whether it's underpaying or not. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#50

Post by username314159 »

I'll just add on the technical assignment: it can be very different, and in many cases a 4-hour one is unlikely to be interesting. I do like interviews and test tasks, but if it's just another CRUD app, I won't be able to start: it's painfully boring.

Add that need to present the already boring result, and you need something really amazing to make it worth the time. I doubt it is.

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