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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

#301

Post by rajman187 »

As others have pointed out, a possibly less-than-exceptional comp plus a 4-hour assessment will ensure many people opt out of applying. Given that folks could get anywhere from $400 to $1200+ / day for contracting gigs, you’re asking them to give up $100-$300+ worth of time for the chance at a role that in all likelihood pays less than what they can land at many other places. That may not be a lot of money for some people, but if I were to part with it for little to no upside why not just buy way OTM calls/puts and see if they print later?

A lot of other pertinent comments re: time commitment trade-offs for people with families or even having to decide between burning some PTO for this

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

#303

Post by codenesium »

When I see a job posting with no salary all I think is what are they scared of? Must be low. A 4 hour project for a senior? For DevOps? I could spend those 4 hours pinging people in my network and probably have interviews scheduled.

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

#304

Post by gwnywg »

I wonder, how often people would check candidate public repo and hire based on that? I have not seen this to happen to my network, people are asked to do homework assignment or algo coding in front of somebody but had never been hired based on their github. I'd imagine public github repo to the programmer is like portfolio to the artist, should be good indication?

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

#305

Post by wizofaus »

anon291 wrote: post #139
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.

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…

"The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids"

Is 4 hours the amount of time the candidate is being given to complete it, or roughly how long the employer expects it will take? In the past I've generally come up with tests I know can be done in an hour or so (2 tops), but allowed 24 hours, exactly because not everyone is going to be in a position they can dedicate those 2 hours to it right there and then. Sure, those that did take the full 24 hours to complete I tended to apply higher expectations towards when judging, but at the end of the day it didn't make much difference - the tests were only to weed out those that had clearly made a poor career decision (and there were surprisingly many of those, to the point we switched to testing before interviewing).

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

#306

Post by bspear »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #244

I am going to add one thing that I haven't heard here. You probably need to raise the cash in your offer by a lot. Most mid-size companies think that they can get away with offering equity at a ridiculous valuation and attract people who aren't true believers. Most people aren't true believers in miscellaneous DevOps that doesn't involve a lot of code. I have spoken to a few series-C and D companies that wanted to gi…

Yes, valuations have gone through the roof, but the equity grants have not kept pace. This is a huge disservice to candidates. Got especially bad in 2021. Really important for people to research startup pay before signing: https://topstartups.io/startup-salary-equity-database/

To the OP: if you believe your comp bands are competitive, why not share in the posting itself?

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

#307

Post by wizofaus »

geekbird wrote: post #260
lewispollard wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 one take-home "4 hour" assignment that required me to install two different, poorly documented, third party packages on my computer before I could even begin to write the code. The Java-loaded piece of junk that I needed didn't work with my existing setup, and I wasn't going to rebuild my entire system just for some arbitrary assignment. It might have been "4 hours" if I already had an environment with all the…

I actually asked a company that had already offered me a position recently if they had a technical test. The one they sent me was clearly stated and it was easy to configure everything needed. If it had been otherwise I very likely wouldn't have accepted the offer.

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

#308

Post by jen20 »

stevetron wrote: post #182

I won't do 'assignments'. I understand the reasoning, but I'm just plain burnt-out on test-taking of any-kind after I left grad school. I also don't want my 'test' answer to actually get used to solve a problem they actually had. To me, that is work-product-for-free. Most of the code I've previously written is considered proprietary and I'm restricted to not disclose. That leaves me with only being able to show-off s…

If I were to ever do a take home test, I would absolutely attach an AGPL 3.0 license to it.

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

#309

Post by fxtentacle »

Most likely, your offer is just too low.

Senior developers almost by definition have experience with their own market value and plenty of offers from their network. If you're going to offer less than what a friend's company offers, you'll need to have insanely amazing tech to compensate. And I'm always assuming that companies pay badly if they are cagey about naming the salary. I mean you also didn't say if you were offering $100k or $300k annually.

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

#310

Post by tluyben2 »

Many people said it already but actual good seniors have networks they get offers from and won’t/don’t do homework. I can see myself apply to your offer, but with decades of enterprise experience, up to date skills and such I cannot see where homework fits. That is why, as a senior, I do not apply but get asked for things and those jobs don’t have homework or tests as they are referrals. I would take a look at your concrete offer but I do not know the actual offer or company; feel free to mail me, I have a lot of highly skilled friends who might be interested, minus the homework.
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