Tech hiring: is this an inflection point?
blog.pragmaticengineer.com
Tech hiring: is this an inflection point?
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Re: Tech hiring: is this an inflection point?
#2The power of referrals is going through the roof. It solves both the "1800 resumes and AI generated cover letters" problem, as well as "LLMs during the interview." It helps the HR screener who can justify the interview if it doesn't go well, and gives a lot of data that doesn't appear in interview.
2 impacts to people looking for a job:
1 - The first job just got a lot harder to find.
2 - You have to be proactive about finding someone in the company you want to work for.
Re: Tech hiring: is this an inflection point?
#3Referrals for a long time were a solid way to get high quality candidates but many companies did away with them for DEI reasons, believing that those who have unearned privilege were more likely to have connections that lead to being referred. Companies started forcing all candidates into filters controlled by external recruiters to prevent referrals from having an impact. It's interesting to see how quickly all the social messaging around that instantly vaporized and no one wants to acknowledge it anymore after promoting it so strong for so long.
As for the rest, most of it comes are a result of past bad practices of wanting to sift for unicorns using various forms of automation that now is being gamed. Several smallish tech companies in my area are doing fine with recruiting because they remained focused on doing in person events at the universities in the region instead of hiring a bunch of external recruiters to filter on all manner of non-technical nonsense and then shove what little made it through into an endless HR pipeline full of leaks. The excesses of the tech industry, most driven by a combination of MBA greed trying to squeeze every last fraction of a percent out of labor costs combined with fashionable luxury social beliefs are why the "crisis" exists.
There's plenty of talent. Some of it on the sidelines, much of it rapidly leaving the industry, most probably forever. There's a very dark winter of talent coming and no amount of open borders to global labor markets is going to undo the damage that's been done.
Re: Tech hiring: is this an inflection point?
#4One thing we've done at our company is limit the interviews to a max of 3 times.
1. Initial (phone or in-person).
2. In-person longer interview with some "can you solve problems" questions
3. Final interview to make sure of culture fit
Anything that exceeds 4 interviews is unnecessary. I am unconvinced that it is beneficial to anyone.
Re: Tech hiring: is this an inflection point?
#5Referrals for a long time were a solid way to get high quality candidates but many companies did away with them for DEI reasons, believing that those who have unearned privilege were more likely to have connections that lead to being referred. Companies started forcing all candidates into filters controlled by external recruiters to prevent referrals from having an impact. It's interesting to see how quickly all the…
Another issue I’ve noticed with referrals is a trend away from referring people you can personally vouch for.
When the referral pipeline is full of strangers who asked for a referral on teamblind.com, it too ceases to be a useful signal.