The current recruiting process in IT is a mess.
There is no standardized definition of positions. The same position in different companies can assume two different skill sets.
There is no single approach to the hiring process, so each time this is a surprise for the candidate. All ask different questions from "dog or cat" to "rebalance red-black tree on the whiteboard".
Because the hiring process is so chaotic often happens that decision is random or biased. Often there is no feedback, so no hope for improving the situation.
Recruiters struggle to understand if a person is a good fit for the position, for the team. The risk for them is that one bad hire can "destroy" the team. It is easy to hire someone and harder to fire.
Applicants struggle because the interview is a stressful process. And often they don't get an explanation of why they were rejected.
Both sides lose a lot of time.
It doesn't have to be that way. In my opinion, the hiring process is about finding a match. The company wants to find the person who will fit into the team and will get the job done. The applicant wants to find a good team and place where they will get compensated for the work.
There are a lot of good people. There are a lot of good companies. Can't we make it easier for everybody?
Note: There are bad actors e.g. people who don't care about their job or team (toxic people) or companies who don't care about their workers and simply want to extract as much as possible value and don't want to build a healthy relationship. I'm talking about the ideal situation. Can we improve the process for good actors?
The project
I started the "awesome" list to collect links about the hiring process. Please help by sharing your links and ideas.
stereobooster
/
awesome-hiring-process
Collection of links and ideas about the hiring process in the IT industry
Awesome hiring process
Hiring may refer to Recruitment of personnel (usually called hiring in American English)
-- Wikipedia a.k.a. the most authoritative source
What?
Collection of links and ideas about the hiring process in the IT industry and related subjects, like, education.
I collect those resources for my small research.
Why?
The current recruiting process in IT is a mess.
There are no standardized definitions of positions. The same position in different companies can assume two different skill sets.
There is no single approach to the hiring process, so each time this is a surprise for the candidate. All ask different questions from "dog or cat" to "rebalance red-black tree on the whiteboard".
Because the hiring process is so chaotic often happens that decision is random or biased. Often there is no feedback, so no hope for improving the situation.
Recruiters struggle to understand if a person is a good…
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash
Top comments (3)
The link to the clean your desk story (Amazon) is definitely worth a read.
A lot of my friends from university are consultants and guess how they got their current job? They worked together on a client's project with the guy who's now their boss. Every one of them. And it totally makes sense - imagine you're working together with people from other companies for several months on the same project. It's like a trial period. And at the end, when the project is finished, you ask the guys you liked to work with the most, if they want to switch to your company. No interviews, no coding tests, no brain teasers, some of them even had no official trial period after switching.
Smells like nepotism? Not at all! None of their bosses knew them before, they didn't study together and were not in the same sports club - it's all based on the experience of how working together worked out for them. And isn't that the most important aspect in our jobs?
Unfortunately we developers are rarely being sent to clients, working on projects together with other companies... :-(
Most consultancies forbid this kind of thing. I know I was not allowed to work with any clients for 2 years after I left. Everything sucked about consulting except that I learned a lot from working 80 hours a week.
Awesome initiative, the tech industry really needs a neat process for hiring!
A good video about hiring is this one:
youtube.com/watch?v=NJjGh7_5dDE
TL;DR, Hire someone by looking at these 4 stuff:
Character: he's nice, and he won't spoil the company culture.
Intelligence: you don't want stupid solutions after all.
Experience: the least important factor, but the candidate gotta know something.
Coachability: he's eager to learn new stuff... long-term.