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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

#161

Post by PainfullyNormal »

justrudd wrote: post #128
AndyNemmity wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure. The majority of comments from Seniors with 20 years of experience so far (including myself) are of the same type. Friendly meet and greets that are informal, no coding test or take home assignment. My best guess is your job referrals aren't from senior level people, while ours are. The CTO is the one who wants me. Or the top Senior who has control of the process. But I'm just guessing. The norm for me is in…

For me (20+ year club): 1.) Senior Dev referred me, and they had a remarkable relationship with management - informal chat and offer that afternoon 2.) Senior Dev referred me, and they had a normal relationship with management - regular interview 3.) CTO referred me - informal chat with them and the CEO, offer letter handed to me at the end of the chat with the CEO. So I've found that it really depends on who is refe…

1) Senior Dev referred me to his hiring manager. Regular job interview from there.

2) Hiring Manager I worked with for a few years prior agreed to give me a job. Ghosted me a week later.

3) A guy I worked closely with for 2 years later became a medium-sized startup CTO. I asked him for a job. He said yes, then referred me to the hiring manager. Normal interview from there on out.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Just to clarify: I'm not complaining. I have no problem going through job interviews to prove myself. But, it would be nice if I could figure out what I'm missing and not have to do that. Maybe it's a difference in reputation? I'm not seen as the hotshot. I'm the go to guy.

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

#162

Post by noasaservice »

> - Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's choosing

I refuse to do this since I don't do unpaid work.

And frankly, you want me to sink .5h+1h+4h = 5.5h unpaid on your demands? Nope. Not going to happen.

And I work as a senior AWS & Azure cloud/systems engineer. My resume speaks for itself. And if that's not good enough, I'd be glad to have a sit-down with a few of your own system engineers. If that's not adequate for you, then the problem is you.

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

#163

Post by higeorge13 »

lewispollard wrote: post #155
anon291 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture applies to more senior people than juniors. I used to do these assignment. Now I simply don't sorry. My schedule is 6:30 AM wake up with youngest daughter, to let wife sleep in (she takes care of her all night) 9:00 AM hand off youngest daughter to wife, who takes both girls the rest of the day. I go to m…

I don't know what exactly OP is assigning to applicants, but in my experience a "four hour" coding assignment can be completed in an hour or two - and they don't have to be consecutive hours, it just means four hours is your limit and you have a few days or a week to complete it in.

I had a 4-hour assignment requiring a full weekend (10 medium to difficult queries on an unknown 20 table database and document with business analysis for the query results + additional code to extract from api and save to db with your own schema + additional queries on top of this).

I also had an 1-hour where i couldn't build the provided code and had to go through maven repos and older versions of the major test component to make it work after a couple hours and then lost any motivation to write the simple exercise.

I also had an honest one once, where the instructions were clear, you will need a full weekend to do it. I liked the job and i completed it, only to be rejected because they didn't like my scala syntax.

Sorry, but i won't take home test again and have to gamble whether it's an actual 1h test or a full weekend one, or some random guy will spend 1 minute only to reject me.

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

#165

Post by carapace »

dancocos wrote: post #37

"Take-home technical assignment (~4h)" I've got 20 plus years of tech, I've been out of college since 1997 and you want to give a 4 hour homework assignment. If get you want to get a feel for someone's ability but this is more easily done by stating a problem during one of the interviews and asking the person "How would you approach this?" Listing for how they anticipate problems and tradeoffs.

This was my first thought as well. "If you want me to do homework to prove I'm not incompetent that means your interview process is garbage." and it's an automatic pass on that company.

My second thought was noticing that OP didn't actually ask for feedback from senior talent, the questions are addressed to other people hiring, so I figured I'd keep quiet.

But then I couldn't help myself. ;)

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

#166

Post by b112 »

lostdog wrote: post #40
mattbee wrote: post #26

Nobody can help unless you show us your actual ads, your company site etc. There could me a million little signals that are putting people off. You've also not said what your pipeline looks like - is there nobody coming in at the top? Or are the "great people" not as great as you think? Or the "really deep knowledge of the platform" is in fact less reasonable or badly paid than you think? If you're stuck, find a good…

Yeah, the real answer is "something is less good than you are describing." Ask a senior engineer you've worked with in the past to take a look at your job posting and give you some honest feedback about what the problem is. There are yellow flags in your post, but it's unclear whether they are problems without details. For example: > the work requires a reasonably deep understanding of the underlying platforms which…

> the work requires a reasonably deep understanding of the underlying platforms which a lot of people seem to dislike.

Why?

Willing to bet the 'dislike' is "we have lots of mismashed, disorganized stacks, and expect seniors to have 20 years experience with all of them." coupled with "Even though some tools/stacks/etc have only been around 3 years."

And... even though a senior can pick up a stack in a few days, the expectation is to find someone already skilled.

....

Here's the truth. When I walk onto a new jobsite, I typically don't even know the tech. I've worked for EDA companies, government departments, startups, geospatial corps, all sorts of new and antiquated stacks and tech.

I'm a senior, and I can walk in, and become the subject expert extremely fast. I do so all the time, it's why people hire me.

That's what being an actual senior means. Loads of market experience, which makes that learning curve flatten.

$5 says the 'dislike' is an expectation that stuff can't be learned fast. I'd scoff.

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

#167

Post by AussieWog93 »

bonzini wrote: post #157
anon291 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture applies to more senior people than juniors. I used to do these assignment. Now I simply don't sorry. My schedule is 6:30 AM wake up with youngest daughter, to let wife sleep in (she takes care of her all night) 9:00 AM hand off youngest daughter to wife, who takes both girls the rest of the day. I go to m…

> perhaps pay people to complete the assignments. Assuming this is legal at all according to current employment contracts, it's a huge pain for the new employer's payroll and more stuff to keep track for the employee's income tax.

>Assuming this is legal at all according to current employment contracts, it's a huge pain for the new employer's payroll and more stuff to keep track for the employee's income tax.

Is it actually? I run a small business, and have trialled people a few times. I normally just transfer them the $x and report it as a business expense, same as you'd do with a contractor.

Maybe it's not technically 100% compliant, but I'd be incredibly surprised if the tax office kicked up a stink about something so petty.

(Then again, maybe it's just a "she'll be right mate" attitude that permeates even government departments here in Australia)

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

#168

Post by Humdeee »

valbaca wrote: post #126

Post the salary range. It's 2022, you can't just say "Benefits and salary are good " That is absolutely meaningless. You're wanting ~6hrs investment (30 call, 1hr interview, and 4hr+ assignment) for an offer? NO thank you. Why the scare quotes around "DevOps"? Is it DevOps or not? These words do mean things and matter.

Exactly this. I can't think of a better way to punch yourself in the groin as a recruitment activity. Be transparent because it's respectful.

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

#169

Post by rantallion »

> Benefits and salary are good (though salary isn't posted in the ad)

Even before seeing your hiring process (and I agree with the other comments about that), not listing a salary means I've already scrolled past your ad.

We're in an employee's market right now, and there are plenty of opportunities out there that are transparent about the comp package (and have shorter hiring processes).

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

#170

Post by shadowofneptune »

I do not work in software, so I find how hiring works in it really odd. The amount of weight put on the interview compared to accreditation is unusual, and people in this thread consider that normal. There's no certification or examination for minimum competency. Looking online, there were attempts at making one, but they failed. How did it come to be this way?
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