Recruitment is broken

Does the traditional recruitment process find the best developers? I think not

Do the best developers have the best CV's? Absolutely not. The trusty CV, a two page document filled with elevated job titles and fabricated accounts of seniority, leadership and responsibility all backed up by endorsements from people who pray they are never contacted to have to carry on this charade on the fly.

What is the alternative? A GitHub profile, a website, whiteboard questions, pair programming? Don't get me started on the "come and work with us for a day" idea. All of these are snapshots, a best foot forward scenario like a Tinder profile. The reality might be vastly different to what is advertised!

Some of the best developers I know failed or dropped out of university. They have no LinkedIn profile, a poor CV and GitHub profiles that are lacklustre. They are the developers that most employers turn their nose up at during interview due to some technicality and usually a complete lack of understanding of the skill set for which they are assessing.

The corporate world seems to want to find candidates with the relevant checkboxes ticked on a well formed CV and then whip them to do the trivial tasks they have assigned for this work cycle. We should be looking for people with passion. Someone who likes technology and understands the space. Your job as employer from this moment is to unleash them and get out of their way. Give them the problem and let them do what they do best.

I'd rather hire a developer with 1yr of experience and buckets of passion than a developer with 10 years of showing up. Don't get me wrong, the blame is not all on one side. It is our job as developers to showcase our passion. How you do that is up to you and I'd welcome some thoughts and suggestions on innovative ways to do that, but we do need to find a way. The best developers (for your project) are passing you by and all because their CV did not match up when underneath lay a burning passion to solve the problem.