Last year, I set out with a head full of disconnected thoughts about hiring and a vision to share those thoughts with a wider audience. The response has been positive and overwhelming, with the Hiring For Tech newsletter at over 50,000 subscribers as of today!
I’m only one person, so I haven’t yet changed the world of tech hiring yet. Plus, with hiring slowed down last year due to COVID, companies haven’t always invested in improving their process. We still have the same problems we always did:
- Companies are looking for weaknesses, instead of strengths. Weaknesses tend to be coachable, but strengths represent potential. Until we, as an industry, shift our focus, our hiring processes will always exclude good people.
- Companies treat interviews as a competition, instead of a collaborative exercise. This puts candidates in a defensive position, instead of allowing them to show how they would work with their future colleagues.
- Interviewers don’t invest in interviews, putting minimal effort into evaluating candidates. That includes not preparing ahead of the interviews, and not being involved after the interview.
- Companies evaluate candidates based on criteria that don’t match day-to-day work. Algorithm interviews are a great example, when interviews could utilize real-world projects instead.
- Companies don’t focus on hiring underrepresented groups, leading to perpetuating existing biases in their processes. The cycle has to be broken with targeted intervention.
If this feels like I’m repeating myself, it’s because I am. Over the last year, I’ve covered exactly how we need to improve hiring in tech, but we’re not making nearly enough progress. Now, there are two things that need to happen:
- People need to speak up. This means not making excuses for the terrible practices companies use, instead holding these employers and interviewers accountable. Talk about what companies are doing wrong, and what they should be doing instead.
- Having written down many of my thoughts, I’m going to focus on compiling this information in an actionable form and push for change. This means less writing on this newsletter. Expect to see new articles less frequently.
This is not the end of the journey for Hiring For Tech. The last year has only been the first step. Let’s making tech hiring better together!
This article was originally published on the Hiring For Tech website. If you want to read more content from me, please subscribe either by email or on LinkedIn. If you have any thoughts about my content, comment below. And don't forget to follow me for more content!
Product Focused | Experience Rich | Agile Mindset
4 年Hmm, I just found this newsletter and was very taken in by it, Avik. But then saddened to see: "This means less writing on this newsletter. Expect to see new articles less frequently." I wish you luck in compiling your work and look forward to what's next from you...
SaaS Tech Founder | AI for Freshouts | Organic Farming Enthusiast
4 年Well-articulated Avik Das! the industry is much in need of cross-functional collaboration. In many cases, it's the engineering team taking all the load, right from scrutinizing resumes to evaluate the candidates, along with their project delivery tasks.
Service Management Consulting, Service Delivery Management, Account Delivery Management, Service Integration & Management (SIAM), IT Project Management
4 年Avik that is mostly or rather almost completely true! But do remember these are the very companies that some of us either work for or would be interviewing at now or later. Companies tend to have gargantuan memories! And comments like these don’t sit well with most of them! Hence many of us would hesitate to. All it out. I certainly would! Despite being wronged, not necessarily by recruitment alone, I would still hesitate to “call out” bad practices at a place because it matters to me not to be seen as a troublemaker! I shall continue to harangue on issues but may not be able to call out specific companies where the incorrect practices exist and thrive. That should be ok since many others are cognisant of these facts.
Vaccinated brain cancer survivor courtesy of medical cannabis
4 年Hiring managers don’t manage down any more. They don’t want to “coach” their reports thus they are hiring for “tasks to be done” so they don’t have to “help reports grow” into their best self. As an analogy, college qbs were all “projects” who needed to sit for a year or two to adjust to the nfl. Now if you aren’t crushing it after three years you get tossed on the scrap pile as a reclamation project. Same in tech or any other industry from what I can see.