How to overcome “years of experience” requirements when applying for jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: How to overcome “years of experience” requirements when applying for jobs

#71

Post by microtherion » Wed, May 30, 2012, 1:06 PM UTC

gavanwoolery wrote: post #22

I remember when I thought I was a badass programmer. Now, after almost two decades of it, I realize how little I know. IMHO, humility is the best sign of experience. That said, asking for a hard number (like 5 years of experience) is no guaranteed filter, but it probably will get you way better application results than putting the threshold at 2 years.

I fully agree. For most of my 3 decades in programming, I've considered myself a badass programmer, but in retrospect, there are always glaring mistakes that were not evident to me at the time.

One concrete benefit of requiring N years of experience, with N greater than 2, is that one of the major career learning experiences is to deal with one's own code in "maintenance mode", and you can only experience that if you have a number of years of distance from when you originally wrote the code.

Of course, requiring N years of experience is no guarantee that the candidate has dealt with this situation, as there are people who (consciously or not) structure their careers to avoid ever retreading their own code.

Re: How to overcome “years of experience” requirements when applying for jobs

#72

Post by dasil003 » Wed, May 30, 2012, 1:31 PM UTC

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #42

dasil003 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this have to do with my comment? My point was there is nothing to be gained by calling attention to and arguing about job requirements.

How is there not? There's an entire discussion going on about it here, and I don't think the conclusion to be drawn from it anywhere is that it's an entire waste of time. It's just another symptom of how it can be difficult to hire well and how miserably misplaced some efforts are to improve it by cheap metrics that can be both positively and negatively misleading.

I meant for the job applicant, not in general discussion.

Re: How to overcome “years of experience” requirements when applying for jobs

#73

Post by Karunamon » Wed, May 30, 2012, 1:33 PM UTC

xsmasher wrote: post #12

What the employer means in the context is that they want someone with practical experience with the tech; not just book-learning. All you have to do is display the experience that you have, or get some if you don't have it. "We covered this in class" is generally useless, given the gulf between theory and practice. "I have app X in the app store" is priceless. Github profile, history of helpful posts in a related for…

>The experience requirement is also used to weed out applicants who intend to read one book on the tech/language and learn the rest on the job. In some positions that is appropriate, in others it is not.

I'd go one further and say that almost every position is appropriate for this, it all comes down to the person's willingness and ability to learn quickly. Given the mindset of an average HR drone though, you almost have to fake it. I've found that being a quick learner doesn't mean much of anything when it comes to getting through the process, as it's not something you can readily prove.

Re: How to overcome “years of experience” requirements when applying for jobs

#74

Post by wickeand000 » Wed, May 30, 2012, 2:15 PM UTC

stfu wrote: post #69

tokenadult wrote: post #47

The original StackExchange thread is an interesting read. For the job applicant (any job applicant), the problem is always how to make an affirmative case that an employer ought to offer the job to you and not to someone else. The commenters on StackExchange and here on HN are mostly commenting from that perspective, that the job applicant has to figure out how to excel over other job applicants in making a strong ca…

I am still skeptical about the IQ tests and job-skill tests. They both seem to look at things at a very narrow timeframe. One could potentially have a high IQ and be great at a specific task, but it seems to say very little how this person is going to perform in future tasks - i.e. a brilliant mind, facing a challenging job skill task, might become highly bored or sloppy when settling in the day-to-day work frame. Bu…

I agree with you, but you can see that this test only had a moderate correlation with successful hiring. In the same way that screening for free-throw percentage doesn't provide the best catch-all way of hiring basketball players, an IQ test isn't going to be a perfect (or even nearly perfect!) way of hiring employees. The point was that it is one of the best ways we currently know how.

Re: How to overcome “years of experience” requirements when applying for jobs

#75

Post by ChuckMcM » Wed, May 30, 2012, 3:09 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #57

hysan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real answer, which is alluded to in your post, is that the years requirement is simply a mechanism to reduce risk and blame for the person hiring you. There are a few things to consider in these situations: 1. He is already being interviewed despite satisfying the years experience requirement. This means they are willing to ignore that requirement. (or I misread this and he never made it to an interview) 2. All n…

Do hirers give feedback? When I was suddenly dropped from dropbox's interview process, and asked for feedback, I didn't get a response until my friend working there went and bugged HR, and then the response that did get sent was "we have no comment".

"Do hirers give feedback?"

Generally no. All it does is open up the possibility of lawsuits and invite an argument. If you tell someone they were dropped from consideration for reason X then you invite the applicant to rebut that reasoning. But the truth is that the company has decided not to proceed and there is nothing the applicant can do about it. Thus folks who have been around the block a few times simply say, "We've decided not to proceed" and leave it at that.

That is a sad thing but I don't think it will change.

Re: How to overcome “years of experience” requirements when applying for jobs

#76

Post by xsmasher » Wed, May 30, 2012, 4:32 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #73

xsmasher wrote: post #12

What the employer means in the context is that they want someone with practical experience with the tech; not just book-learning. All you have to do is display the experience that you have, or get some if you don't have it. "We covered this in class" is generally useless, given the gulf between theory and practice. "I have app X in the app store" is priceless. Github profile, history of helpful posts in a related for…

>The experience requirement is also used to weed out applicants who intend to read one book on the tech/language and learn the rest on the job. In some positions that is appropriate, in others it is not. I'd go one further and say that almost every position is appropriate for this, it all comes down to the person's willingness and ability to learn quickly. Given the mindset of an average HR drone though, you almost h…

I'll stand by my statement - smarts and experience are two different things, and some jobs require both.

When I need an iPhone or C++ expert, and Android guy who read a book or two will not fit the bill. I need someone with the fine-detail, nitty-gritty knowledge that only comes from working with a platform over time.

Re: How to overcome “years of experience” requirements when applying for jobs

#77

Post by pyre » Wed, May 30, 2012, 4:48 PM UTC

msellout wrote: post #55

pyre wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that everyone can claim to have companies beating down their door.

If you write code and you don't have recruiters contacting you through LinkedIn, then you probably live in a city with a bad market (and you should move) or you don't have a thorough LinkedIn account.

I'd take that with a grain of salt if you (personally) only have worked in the Valley, where the job market is probably overflowing with developer positions, or NYC.

I've had one recruiter call me (at work no less!) and:

- He told me that he knows my company is a PHP shop, which it's not. We are almost 100% Perl and have never worked in PHP.

- He tried to entice me to pass the offer along to other people in the company, which I find very tactless.

- It was only for a 3 month Python job at ADP.