111–120 of 182 posts
At my company we put engineers (instead of HR) in charge of job descriptions, resume review, and phone screens and saw a sharp increase in quality of candidates we interviewed.
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I’d never write a cover letter to get a job somewhere. It seems like such an antiquated holdover practice to me. In fact, if it were required I’d actively avoid it, which sounds like the effect you were going for. Especially now that I work for one of the biggest and most sought after companies in my country and they didn’t get two craps about a cover letter.
I disagree as hell. Yea, sure, cover letter for some JoeSoft writing crud apps may be weird but for fancier jobs I don't really see problem with cover letters where candidate can share something more human than CV's "i've did blabla" like passion, motivation, etc, etc. And highly motivated employee may be way more valuable than more skilled employee
Is there any evidence that writing a cover letter means they will be a motivated employee? What motivates me is the problem that I am solving on the job. I am extremely motivated to solve that specific task. If you ask me to write a cover letter about myself, I have zero motivation to do that because the evaluation criteria are unclear and half the companies don’t read them to begin with.
When I’m evaluating candidates, the only useful thing about a cover letter is as a disqualifying factor. If I see they’re bad at writing, I’ll likely reject their resume as well. Being well-spoken isn’t a positive, though.
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> if you can't tailor your CV to the job, and can't write half a page rationale There's "can't" and there's "won't." Programmers in demand won't spend the time, which leaves you with programmers who are desperate enough for work to jump through your hoops (unless you're FAANG or a unicorn). You're effectively filtering your candidate pool down to people you don't want to hire. Round and round we go.
Sure. But isn't what both sides should be aiming for a no-bullshit dialog where company explain what they need help doing, applicant explains that they can, how they can help get that done? At some point the candidate needs to invest some time on communication with the specific employer - why waste everyone's time synchronously in first first interview, when it's better for both to waste that time asynchronously?
It wouldn’t surprise me if this is a question of credentials. I don’t know any experienced people with solid skills who also have degrees who have been having difficulty. I know one good one, but without a relevant degree who is struggling. I also know lots of boot camp/recent grads in iffy masters programs who aren’t getting anywhere. I am aware of a few hiring processes that are just inundated with people who don’t…
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Work from home advocates clearly didn’t think through the fact that there are extremely talented devs in LatAm in the same time zone as them that can live like royalty on half their salary.
Lol. Time zones differences are the least of an employers concerns if they're interested in hiring internationally. Taxes / liability / language differences are far more of an issue. This is why you see tons of positions that state "Remote US only".
A couple weeks ago we put a advert out on Indeed and also listed it here on HN. Initially we didn't have any further qualifications beyond the job post, which did indeed go into details on the job and requesting a cover letter. After spending a couple days of 2-3 hours each on reviewing resumes that were "only ok", we started adding additional hoops for getting resumes in, and also tried to put in a gatekeeper to rea…
At my company we put engineers (instead of HR) in charge of job descriptions, resume review, and phone screens and saw a sharp increase in quality of candidates we interviewed.
We do the same. We also have a sane application process (no long series of interviews, no leetcode, no crazy "competency tests", etc.) And the devs on the team that has the open position have the most influential say as to whether or not we make an offer.
I had an SF-based startup to which I applied administer an IQ test as part of their interview process
It was really dumb--we're talking literally like 20 questions of "which shape comes next in the sequence", the kind of test administered to children to determine whether they qualify for advanced placement
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if you can't tailor your CV to the job, and can't write half a page rationale There's "can't" and there's "won't." Programmers in demand won't spend the time, which leaves you with programmers who are desperate enough for work to jump through your hoops (unless you're FAANG or a unicorn). You're effectively filtering your candidate pool down to people you don't want to hire. Round and round we go.
Sure. But isn't what both sides should be aiming for a no-bullshit dialog where company explain what they need help doing, applicant explains that they can, how they can help get that done? At some point the candidate needs to invest some time on communication with the specific employer - why waste everyone's time synchronously in first first interview, when it's better for both to waste that time asynchronously?
So, who applies to your open position? Programmers who don't have any other options and are desperate for a job. They probably won't pass your interview. You now have a sales funnel that is filtering out the candidates you want and only giving you the ones you don't want. Then you get to be yet another company that complains about how hard it is to find competent programmers.
The exception to all of the above is if you're one of the companies everybody wants to work at. Then you can require whatever you want and people will still apply.
A couple weeks ago we put a advert out on Indeed and also listed it here on HN. Initially we didn't have any further qualifications beyond the job post, which did indeed go into details on the job and requesting a cover letter. After spending a couple days of 2-3 hours each on reviewing resumes that were "only ok", we started adding additional hoops for getting resumes in, and also tried to put in a gatekeeper to rea…
This need for a cover letter is essentially asking candidates to tell you how much they love the company and how much they want the job. Why is this important beyond making the company feel loved? As a job applicant I’m not going to invest a minute in your company until you’ve read my resume and expressed an interest. Theres hundreds of companies out there employing who want your time but give nothing back. I know ne…
The result is a quickly scannable, pretty direct and memorable cover letter.