Why I Won't Hire You

A couple of points:

- I don't get that he's asking for the moon. He just wants competent people who have a reason to work beyond money and aren't going to be a PITA to him and his team. That seems pretty fundamental to me. Why should it command double or triple an average salary? I don't get it.

- The market will decide. If what he's looking for is rare, he'll have to pay more to get it. If it's not, he'll pay the going rate. Uninformed speculation about what he may or may not be spending on talent seems pointless.

I'm not from HR, but my guess is that a question like that is for learning whether the candidate is goal-oriented or just goes by living day-to-day. I agree that it's a cliche question, and could be phrased more originally and/or specifically in most cases, but it is not _totallt_ useless.

For someone who said he doesn't want to a long resume that rambles on forever he sure had a long blog post that rambled on with very little content.

Attacking each point:

You send me a stupidly long resume

Some recruiters/HR desks look for resumes with specific keywords, and we need to tailor our resumes to get past those (admittedly retarded) filters. As an interviewee, I understand that and have made my resume longer to get past them to the people that actually look at it. As an interviewer, I've rarely looked at the resume until the interview, and only scanned over it to look for things that I can ask about, in addition to our normal quetions.

You can’t tell me why you like your current job

You don't have to like your current job. Especially in this economy, some people are glad to have jobs. Of course, it'd be nice if you like your job, but then again, that's why he's interviewing. Whether or not a person likes a previous job has nothing to say about whether or not he'll like his next job, unless, of course, you're looking for a spineless twit who will go with the flow regardless of how they treat him.

It's more important to recognize a cultural fit and find someone that will get along with the employees, but again, this can vary wildly. I worked at a startup and we interviewed a manager from a large corporate company to be our BA. We went into the interview thinking there's no way we'll like this guy, but it turned out he was awesome, and a great cultural fit too.

No career plans or vision

Not everyone has a long-term. Not everyone knows what they'll be doing in five years, especially when they're younger. My first two jobs, I told them I'd be gone within a year and a half. I don't remember saying it, but when I quit a year a half later, they aid I told them that during the interview and they just didn't believe me. The better question is what will it take to keep me here for five years, and what is your firm going to do for it as well? Of course, people most likely can't answer this question until they've had a few jobs under their belt, so they realize what they like and don't like.

No skills

There's really the primary thing that matters.

Answer my skills with conjecture

I didn't read this far, but it sounds like 'Don't BS me'. I'll agree there as well.

I agree with csomar. I probably wouldn't work for you.

>If I have to spend more than 30 seconds finding out what you have accomplished, forget it.

Well then, Don't expect me to even bother writing a cover letter or tailor my resume. In fact, if your only going to be scanning over my resume in 30 seconds why, on earth, should I even spend any time filling out your form to send you my resume? When I send people my resume, I at the very least expect them to read through it. If my skill set matches what you are looking for and you are thinking of an interview, I expect you to at the very least Google my name, or check out my website/github which I conveniently include as a QR code.

>The worst answers? “Well I like the challenge” or some other BS.

Well, Enjoy working with the worst developers possible. Most of the best guys I know will take a job with worse pay, less benefits, and further commute if the work sounds interesting (read: challenging). "I enjoy the challenge" is probably one of the best answers to why you want to work somewhere. Unless, of course the work you do involves mundane repetitive tasks every single day then you probably don't want developers that enjoy challenge, because they will leave very quickly.

You take this stance of "I have the elixir of life and you will bend over backwards to get it because you are desperate". So the only people that do end up bending over are the ones who are really desperate.

This works when you've narrowed down the candidates to single digits. When you have a pool of dozens, however, you need some way to screen them. He is sharing his screening methods, not his methods of attracting talent (eg, salary, health care, etc). That is an entirely different matter.