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Avoiding the audience paradox when writing job descriptions

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Re: Avoiding the audience paradox when writing job descriptions

#41

Post by saimiam »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #40
saimiam wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ask candidates to list three blog posts that they recently read and enjoyed. Seems to be an easy way to filter out non-serious candidates and script kiddies. This has worked with roughly 60 to 70% of the candidates I have interview since I implemented this rule.

Does whether or not they are relevant blogs to the role or industry matter at all to you? My gut feeling is that you would get a better read on the personality of a candidate when they send you links that have little or nothing to do with the job they're applying for. All three links to industry-relevant blogs will tell me is that this candidate aims to please for obvious self-advancement reasons.

I do get blogs linking to random stuff and I discuss those posts on merit. E.g., someone I was interviewing for a web dev intern position sent me a post about a woman coming out as bisexual. This post resonated with him because he felt that in our country, we need to discuss sexuality more freely. So I tried to probe how deeply they had thought about the topic or were they sharing it for its shock value.

You're right that it gives me a read on the candidate based on what they share. It's a good filter - if the candidate picks something really basic to share, it shows how well they know their tech. If they choose something more advanced but can't contextualise it, that's a sign that they are faking it to make it.

Three industry related posts isn't automatically a red flag to me because the posts may cover different sub-topics.

Re: Avoiding the audience paradox when writing job descriptions

#42

Post by mint2 »

908B64B197 wrote: post #9

The trick to writing a great job description is not to write it at all. I've seen HR depts with spreadsheets and lists of acronyms and frameworks and really none of that matters. and "very competitive salaries" but absolutely no numbers anywhere. You want to find the person you're going to hire, then write the job description. You're looking for fast learners and innovators, they can learn a framework in a few days a…

To many HRs “competitive salary” means nearly the median.

And now HR is perplexed why the customer reps are leaving because HR claims to believe the comp is competitive.

Re: Avoiding the audience paradox when writing job descriptions

#43

Post by darkerside »

perl4ever wrote: post #23
darkerside wrote: post #3

Most effective way I've found of keeping out the noise is to put a few screening questions in place. Easy ones, maybe even a three line code sample (something that's almost fun to write).

A lot of people froth at the mouth about take home tests. I liked the idea originally, but the only people who I've encountered that give one, require candidates to run the technical gauntlet in the in-person interviews anyway , so then I feel like it was a total waste of time. If you're afraid of people cheating, fine, just don't do it.

I don't think it comes off as a gauntlet, but we do a take home test, review it with the interviewee at the in person, and then pair program on adding a couple of extra features to it. It's worked extremely well.

Re: Avoiding the audience paradox when writing job descriptions

#44

Post by edmundsauto »

908B64B197 wrote: post #17
edmundsauto wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This probably works well for smaller scale hiring. At a medium org, you want to make sure to source diverse candidates and hire without bias. (We all have biases!)

Medium org just means you can fly in-out folks/reach other target schools. Diversity and biases are great, but ultimately what matters is finding out candidates that can scale the business and help it grow.

That comes off similar to "what matters in the stock market is to buy low and sell high". Sure, it's true enough, but not really valuable insight.

The trick in hiring is how do you identify and hire those individuals. Diversity is one way to reach those outcomes - it's not a side quest, it's how to increase your odds on the main quest.

Re: Avoiding the audience paradox when writing job descriptions

#45

Post by AdrianB1 »

perl4ever wrote: post #25
AdrianB1 wrote: post #10

4 pieces of anecdotical data: 1. I stopped writing good job descriptions when hiring because HR always killed it: they cut mine to half and add their crap all over. I had open positions for SQL DBAs for 9 months, all candidates were developers in the best case and BI in the worst 2. From time to time I receive calls on LinkedIn with X years of experience required, where X was even 15. When I asked about it (I had mor…

>I had open positions for SQL DBAs for 9 months, all candidates were developers in the best case and BI in the worst Do you think the latter two categories of people could learn the job in nine months?

Yes, if they would be interested. We hired one developer and 3 weeks later he said it is not what he was looking for (and I was very open upfront on what the work is, a combination of production DBA and development DBA).

Re: Avoiding the audience paradox when writing job descriptions

#46

Post by cutemonster »

pedalpete wrote: post #24
thrill wrote: post #5

You know how a cool job description is written? Salary and equity first, very short list of mandatory technologies second, nice to have third, and nothing about how cool the company is. If the first three items attract someone then they're going to google the place and figure that out.

I think you are a good data point counter to what many people do. I think it shouldn't be about "how cool the company" is, but you should know what is the character of the company. We're not trying to be "cool", we want to hire people who will come here and do their best work, and want to see the impact they can have (we're in health tech). That's not for everybody. People probably went to work for places like Uber b…

> > Salary and equity first

> I disagree that every company needs to only ire missionaries

Shouldn't that be "mercenaries"

Re: Avoiding the audience paradox when writing job descriptions

#47

Post by cutemonster »

thrill wrote: post #5

You know how a cool job description is written? Salary and equity first, very short list of mandatory technologies second, nice to have third, and nothing about how cool the company is. If the first three items attract someone then they're going to google the place and figure that out.

> nothing about how cool the company is

I think there can be a paragraph about the company at the end, optional reading

Otherwise I like your job ad

Re: Avoiding the audience paradox when writing job descriptions

#48

Post by cutemonster »

ye_olde_gamer wrote: post #21
xboxnolifes wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say the jobs were alike, I said the job listings were alike.

Not the ones I've applied to. If a company can't even tell you about itself without hyperbole, why bother?

Because they might pay lots of money and the coworkers can be nice and talented (they didn't write the job ad) among other things

Re: Avoiding the audience paradox when writing job descriptions

#49

Post by cutemonster »

makeitdouble wrote: post #33
ye_olde_gamer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would hate to work for a company that treats me as commodity labor, bidding for my time but none of my values or interests. That's not to say salary should be secret (dear god, no), but how cool a company is IS an important metric in and of itself.

I interpret parent's point in a context where your company has a page where it describes its values, how it sees its impact etc. Companies with strong values usually have them publicly exposed somewhere, for instance for Cookpad: https://www.cookpadteam.com/careers If you already have a page about how cool you are, it doesn't need to be repeated in every posting, and candidates for who it matters the most will have m…

I don't see much interesting or unusual on that Cookpad page.

"You face up to reality, knowing that you can change it" -- things like that can be said about almost any job. And the rest of the things on the page too I think.

What would the opposite to facing up to reality be?

"Here, we don't accept reality. And if something is bad, it has to stay so."

They write:

"There’s a big difference between saying that you’re making good in the world and actually doing it. "

They're a recipe sharing site.

(Nevertheless, seems like maybe a nice place to work at)

Re: Avoiding the audience paradox when writing job descriptions

#50

Post by cutemonster »

saimiam wrote: post #36
jstx1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Filtering out people based on a question about the blogs they read sounds kind of horrible. You'll get all noise and no signal. I spend some time on HN and other places reading about stuff related to my field or about software in general. If you asked me that question, I would have zero chance recalling the last things I read. And it would raise a big red flag about whether you know what you're doing. Just because yo…

I also discuss the posts they read and shared with me during the interview. If they’re simply sharing random posts without understanding it in context, it becomes obvious very quickly. This seems to work to filter out people who don’t like their work enough to read anything related to it and people who like to fake their way thru such tasks by sharing the first three Medium articles they find on the homepage. What ma…

Also, getting good blog post suggestions seems nice :-)

I imagine starting the interview with talking about one of the blog posts can be a good "warming up" / getting to know each other thing

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