Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

691–700 of 794 posts

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#691

Post by edem »

anon291 wrote: post #139
corrral wrote: post #21

> Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's choosing If I can get a similarly-paying job at a place that doesn't do this, I'll skip you. Many seniors ( actual seniors, not 3-years-of-experience seniors) have a network and can say "hey I'm looking" and instantly have multiple options that won't have them do more than talk to the team and manager for an hour or two. If that.

The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture applies to more senior people than juniors. I used to do these assignment. Now I simply don't sorry. My schedule is 6:30 AM wake up with youngest daughter, to let wife sleep in (she takes care of her all night) 9:00 AM hand off youngest daughter to wife, who takes both girls the rest of the day. I go to m…

I have a similar schedule with 2 kids so I totally agree with this.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#692

Post by imetatroll »

lbrito wrote: post #192
corrral wrote: post #21

> Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's choosing If I can get a similarly-paying job at a place that doesn't do this, I'll skip you. Many seniors ( actual seniors, not 3-years-of-experience seniors) have a network and can say "hey I'm looking" and instantly have multiple options that won't have them do more than talk to the team and manager for an hour or two. If that.

>have a network and can say "hey I'm looking" and instantly have multiple options that won't have them do more than talk to the team and manager for an hour or two. Wow. I have 10 years of work experience, the last few being "senior". I have a few friends and many recruiters I could reach out to, but absolutely expecting a full fledged 30-round interview like anyone else. I envy you!

Same boat but a bit worse: 15 years and a "network" that consists of two people from my very first job as a developer. It is a bit rough knowing that I am so intrinsically bad at networking.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#693

Post by lr1970 »

Your interview process is very one-sided. It is quintessential "we interview them". Even meeting your team is framed as "Presentation of technical assignment to the team". In reality, it should be more like dancing tango. They are also interviewing your company and your team to gauge your culture and how do they fit in. More so with senior candidates.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#694

Post by grepfru_it »

electrondood wrote: post #605
grepfru_it wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actors must audition before they are chosen for a role. Sometimes several times..

Yeah, these are called technical interviews, and they usually take an entire day. I spend at least a two weeks studying for these before every job search. If I have 4 jobs in my pipeline that assign me 4 hours of homework each, that's 16 hours of bullshit I have to slog through in addition to my study time, prep work, and a solid week or two of whiteboarding. This doesn't include the recruiter's technical trivia scre…

If no thanks then why complain about 4 hours each? You are going to pick and choose the interviews you are going to do so what exactly is the problem if you say no any or all of them?

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#695

Post by ironick09 »

anon291 wrote: post #139
corrral wrote: post #21

> Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's choosing If I can get a similarly-paying job at a place that doesn't do this, I'll skip you. Many seniors ( actual seniors, not 3-years-of-experience seniors) have a network and can say "hey I'm looking" and instantly have multiple options that won't have them do more than talk to the team and manager for an hour or two. If that.

The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture applies to more senior people than juniors. I used to do these assignment. Now I simply don't sorry. My schedule is 6:30 AM wake up with youngest daughter, to let wife sleep in (she takes care of her all night) 9:00 AM hand off youngest daughter to wife, who takes both girls the rest of the day. I go to m…

I don’t know, I’m single, in my 30s and there is just no way in hell I’m taking a 4 hour take home assessment. I guess my only exception to this would be if was a job & company I had always dreamed of working at ever since I was a child (extremely unlikely). If I did take a 4 hour assessment and got the job, I would require an additional sum to my signing bonus for the time taken on the initial assessment (something like 1-5k depending on the role/industry/negotiating power I have).

A four hour assessment is just absurd. When I’m job searching (I’ve been fortunate to only have to do this a few times in my lifetime, and am in a position to be very selective in the opportunities I pursue), I’d more or less be open to a quick 1hr take home assessment, but nothing more.

In my experience companies typically take one of two paths when engagement with a potential candidate: a 1ish hour take-home assessment or a 1ish hour interview with a recruiter where they typically ask a number of basic job-relevant basic questions - IMO both methods just serve as a way to weed out the people who liter their resumes with buzzwords one line and actually are not qualified for the position at all.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#696

Post by pinum »

mike_hearn wrote: post #687
pinum wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a lot of people who have degrees have no clue how to code I don't understand how this is possible. I know CS != coding, but every CS degree syllabus I've looked at does involve plenty of programming classes, practical programming projects, etc. How is it possible to graduate from that without being reasonably comfortable writing non-trivial stuff in a couple of major languages?

It works like this: Step 1. The academics are themselves not that good at coding or teaching, and/or aren't interested in them. This might sound contradictory for a CS course, but at my university (as an example) the CS dept was run by a guy whose actual background was in mathematics. He loved hiring graph theory researchers and didn't like hiring people who knew programming. Step 2. They try to teach programming to…

In that case I think we really do need the software engineering equivalent of the bar exam, as another commenter suggested.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#697

Post by ShamelessC »

TameAntelope wrote: post #585
ShamelessC wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like we're tired of having to "prove we know something" to people who have no clue what they're talking about (most recruiters). Further, there are probably lots of software engineers that have _never touched_ your framework of choice and will be able to learn and become proficient with it in a manner of weeks.

Having just gone through this with yet another developer who couldn't learn the framework in a couple of weeks, I am sick and tired of hiring people I have to coddle for months on end, only to end up having them quit because I didn't screen them correctly.

There are definitely a lot of bad candidates out there these days but I still find that I'm able to filter this by ignoring overly-hyped resumes and giving them a chance to talk about something that excites them as an engineer. If the answer is "learning new tech, becoming a better programmer, getting better at continuous integration", or something similarly encouraging, they're probably good to go in a few weeks to a couple of months. particular if they talk specifics and aren't talking out of their ass. If you can't discern that yourself then I don't know what to tell you ha. I'm aware that lying/cheating during interviews can be really common in enterprise. One approach that might work there is to try to meet candidates out at meetups in the area - this acts as a sort of self-filter and you can chat in person before the interview even gets extended.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#698

Post by rmars527 »

If you have a candidate with 15+ years of experience and you can't decide their value by their resume, references and a couple conversations, it speaks volumes about your company and or your process.

I don't consider a person senior until they hit 10 years and even then they are just starting their senior journey.

You don't get 15 years in if you can't code.

I've got 30 years in a career I love, writing code and architecting solutions.

I've been on a bunch of shitty interviews and have done countless interviews myself. It's difficult for everyone.

With senior people you are being interviewed as much as you are interviewing them.

Tests and take home coding projects work for guys under 15 years, but I hold them for a last resort if I'm on the fence with someone.

Senior guys have a lot of options, are looking for the right fit. A one size fits all interview process is the worst thing you can do to attract that level of talent.

Once you are past the "is this person a team player, easy to work with" part. Then look at their work experience. That should tell you a lot about their coding chops.

Really for senior people it's more about their level of expertise and problem solving abilities. For this I ask probing questions, based on their resume. Starting with easy, general questions. If they nail each question I get recusively, progressively more technical as I drill down into their last answer until they satisfied me or I've identified where their expertise ends. You very quickly see if the person just studied the topic or lived it.

There is alot to interviewing people and should only have your best people doing them and you should get them some training if possible.

Elon Musk says, he knows if he has a real candidate infront of him if they can talk about the details of their work. The deeper you go, the more detail they can give you because they actually did the work. People who speak ambiguously or can't explain the details didn't do the work.

The fact that you are asking the questions proves you know your process might not be working. That is a strong indicator that you are on the right path to fixing it.

Remember senior guys have options you have to win them not vet them.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#699

Post by pcthrowaway »

absove wrote: post #669
anon291 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture applies to more senior people than juniors. I used to do these assignment. Now I simply don't sorry. My schedule is 6:30 AM wake up with youngest daughter, to let wife sleep in (she takes care of her all night) 9:00 AM hand off youngest daughter to wife, who takes both girls the rest of the day. I go to m…

Why is it people with kids can handle a 2-3 hours long interview on-site + travel that probably required taking time off work but can't handle a 4 hours assignment that they can do whenever?

I don't have kids, but I feel like solo coding comes out of a different pool of mental energy (more introverted, flow state) that I only have so much of. If I do a take-home for a potential employer, it's likely taking it out of the energy I have for my current one

Interviews where you're discussing your history or even coding challenges are different. I don't know what it is about having another person there to bounce things off of and explain the process, but it doesn't feel as exhausting.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#700

Post by ryathal »

pjungwir wrote: post #211

Post the salary range. From what I can tell DevOps is the hardest thing to hire for right now, and it commands the highest salaries. It's tough to find someone who can code and troubleshoot code problems, but also has all the skills of a sys/net/cloud/k8s admin, and is willing to put up with the higher stress of that role. Most qualified people have already done their best to get a job they're happy with. Personally…

if you are expecting a DEvOps guy to know C#/Java/C++ and all the Jenkins/sys/k8s/cloud stuff, you want a unicorn. That person is also definitely not going to put up with a 4hr test.

If you want a senior DevOps person that knows the Jenkins/sys/k8s/cloud stuff write a basic test for that and don't test them on stuff they don't really need to know.

Post reply on HN