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Resumes suck for hiring engineers

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Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#161

Post by sueders101 »

Bahamut wrote: post #125
vonmoltke wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When hiring, you are not really concerned about letting a good candidate go. With that attitude, I hope you aren't complaining about how hard it is to find talent. > It is far more dangerous to let a poor candidate in. This gets parroted a lot around here, but with no supporting evidence other than highly improbable hypotheticals or black swan events. On the other hand, I know plenty of companies that have had to d…

I've seen many negative consequences from poor software engineers being brought into companies first hand. I saw a junior engineer try to add a patchwork of libraries just because he was not confident in his ability to do something correctly, leading to a lot of maintenance overhead that grew very quickly. Many of the previous frontend engineers got fired from my current company because they did not produce at all -…

>I saw a junior engineer try to add a patchwork of libraries just because he was not confident in his ability to do something correctly, leading to a lot of maintenance overhead that grew very quickly.

That's why they're called junior and they get paid less. They're meant to be supervised to some extent. If the problem is only caught long after the damage is done then the issues run deeper than the capacities of a single junior engineer. Junior is just a nice way of saying inexperienced. Experienced != good, but inexperienced almost always means some degree of bad.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#162

Post by civilian »

mangrish wrote: post #101
CmonDev wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Treat CV writing as a SEO task: "JavaScripted the JavaScript scripts using the JavaScript MVC framework Angular.js (JavaScript)." instead of "Implemented using Angular.js".

I've recently written a resolution engine for keywords when matching cv's to job descriptions. it also helps finding patterns in other skills that may be transferrable. i hope to show HN as soon as i finish some performance improvements (which includes writing a brand new db driver :'()

Add me to the list of people to notify when your project is done, plz.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#163

Post by galfarragem »

hw wrote: post #54
itsdrewmiller wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think about the writing sample idea in the article? Doesn't seem crazy to me.

I think having the candidate speak to his favorite project or past work is a great gauge of passion and communication skills. I always ask that, albeit in the face to face interview. It might be good to bump that step further up the funnel, but a lot of 'passion' gets lost in translation when it comes to writing vs talking.

I hate to talk on the phone (aka talk without seeing the other person) so I hate phone screening.

To complicate the situation, most of phone screenings I did were made by young recruiters that don't understand anything of what they are asking about, making all this thing silly and awkward. A skype interview is much more relevant but probably scary for the (non technical) recruiter.

By the other hand if I can get a face to face interview, normally I'm in.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#164

Post by vonnik »

hessenwolf wrote: post #80
vonnik wrote: post #42

The startup where I serve as in-house recruiter, FutureAdvisor, recently ran an experiment in hiring without resumes. It was called StaffupWeekend. The Chronicle's careers blogger wrote about it here: http://blog.sfgate.com/gettowork/2014/10/31/staffup-offers-a... We recognized that resumes were poor indicators of performance. In fact, we believe that the only thing that correlates with performance -- is performance.…

You root through 15 candidates for a job. All equal, I have a 1 in 15 chance of getting a job from an individual interview. 15 weekends of hard work just to change job? Yes, very efficient. The arrogance of your approach makes my blood boil.

Your blood is boiling because your reading comprehension is low.

We had several positions to fill, and we helped good candidates whom we couldn't hire get in touch with other employers. The chances of an interview were much higher than 1 in 15. In fact, we made eight interview offers.

The weekend was totally voluntary, not cheap for us, and everyone knew exactly what they were getting into. It was one weekend, not 15 weekends.

If you think weekends like that are inefficient, consider the job market as it operates currently. If you can think of a more efficient way for it to work, I would love to hear it.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#165

Post by raverbashing »

ElComradio wrote: post #117
codingdave wrote: post #85

Resumes are just a tool to decide whether or not to start a conversation. When hiring, you are not really concerned about letting a good candidate go. There will always be others. It is far more dangerous to let a poor candidate in. And poor candidates tend to be poor due to cultural and subject matter issues more than basic technical chops. I'm not making any hiring decisions at this point - just weeding a huge list…

"When hiring, you are not really concerned about letting a good candidate go. There will always be others." ... but STEM shortage! ;)

This REALLY gets into my nerves

Interview like candidates are a dime a dozen, then come whine about not being able to find good candidates

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#166

Post by terranstyler »

ghaff wrote: post #104
terranstyler wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you hiring right now? I wrote exactly these two tags "fast thinker" / "quick learner" in my CV / cover letter / LinkedIn profile and I removed them a few months later because from my experience it looks like they drive recruiters away or scare them.

I can only speak for myself but terms like that set off my BS meter and probably make me think at least marginally less of whoever sticks them on their resume. They're vague and unquantifiable. They're of a class with words like acclaimed, industry-leading, and so forth in copy describing products.

Yes, for that reason I took it off, still the question is how can one communicate that one is? Should you write "constantly programmed faster and leaner and with less errors that his colleagues?". I don't think there is a way to communicate this but I still think it matters.

You can easily determine if some one is a BS guy in a technical interview anyway, so I don't think, BSers are very frequent in IT and much less so in programming.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#167

Post by hessenwolf »

LordHumungous wrote: post #150
hessenwolf wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But can we have technical interviews instead of brain-teasers? Maybe it is just me, but I don't do puzzles. I solve big problems, and I have a track record of being very successful at it. I juggle people, and tools, and objectives, and timelines, and get things done. I like projects, and I am not afraid of hard work. If I like the objective of a project, I will wade through human vomit to get it done. Brain teasers a…

Most companies don't do brain teasers any more. That was a fad from the 00's.

Google offered me one two weeks ago. Meanwhile, another company expects me to have a presentation on how I will bring a statistical modelling framework to capital optimisation, making sure to mention big data for marketing purposes.

The presentation is quite manageable. The brain teasers I said no thank you to, because I would probably just make a balls of it and feel bad for two days.

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#168

Post by hessenwolf »

wallflower wrote: post #111
hessenwolf wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But can we have technical interviews instead of brain-teasers? Maybe it is just me, but I don't do puzzles. I solve big problems, and I have a track record of being very successful at it. I juggle people, and tools, and objectives, and timelines, and get things done. I like projects, and I am not afraid of hard work. If I like the objective of a project, I will wade through human vomit to get it done. Brain teasers a…

https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3660-the-person-theyll-become

Interesting, and a point I agree with, but I don't see how it relates to the above?

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#169

Post by hessenwolf »

vonnik wrote: post #164
hessenwolf wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You root through 15 candidates for a job. All equal, I have a 1 in 15 chance of getting a job from an individual interview. 15 weekends of hard work just to change job? Yes, very efficient. The arrogance of your approach makes my blood boil.

Your blood is boiling because your reading comprehension is low. We had several positions to fill, and we helped good candidates whom we couldn't hire get in touch with other employers. The chances of an interview were much higher than 1 in 15. In fact, we made eight interview offers. The weekend was totally voluntary, not cheap for us, and everyone knew exactly what they were getting into. It was one weekend, not 15…

If you are trying to sell that it was not an arrogant approach, the last two paragraphs make sense.

The bit where you call me stupid...

Re: Resumes suck for hiring engineers

#170

Post by hessenwolf »

vonmoltke wrote: post #121
codingdave wrote: post #85

Resumes are just a tool to decide whether or not to start a conversation. When hiring, you are not really concerned about letting a good candidate go. There will always be others. It is far more dangerous to let a poor candidate in. And poor candidates tend to be poor due to cultural and subject matter issues more than basic technical chops. I'm not making any hiring decisions at this point - just weeding a huge list…

> When hiring, you are not really concerned about letting a good candidate go. With that attitude, I hope you aren't complaining about how hard it is to find talent. > It is far more dangerous to let a poor candidate in. This gets parroted a lot around here, but with no supporting evidence other than highly improbable hypotheticals or black swan events. On the other hand, I know plenty of companies that have had to d…

I've seen bad employees come in and slaughter morale, stirring up conflicts between all other employees, and causing a wave of staff attrition. Twice.
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