What's wrong with tech hiring
Tech hiring sucks. But before we can fix a problem, we have to understand and agree on what the problem is. Today, a capable candidate, with industry experience and the ability to solve technical problems, can fail an interview due to factors that have nothing to do with their technical ability. Maybe they never learned to solve dynamic programming problems. Or they’re simply better at working at a desk with their computer set up the way they like, instead of writing code at a whiteboard. Or they’re just nervous.
I believe the interview process should have the following property: a capable engineer should not have to study to demonstrate their competency. The interview process should allow them to demonstrate what they already know. Everything I’ll write on this topic stems from this philosophy. This has a few consequences:
- The skills a candidate demonstrates in the interview must match the requirements of the job. This doesn’t mean the interview process has to exactly match the work environment, but the skills the interview tests must be meaningful to the job. In my view, this rules out most computer science theory problems and riddles.
- Interviewing will always be a skill separate from software engineering, but it’s important that interviewing skills alone don’t make or break the success of the candidate.
- Hiring experienced candidates is very different from hiring junior candidates. Using the same process for both leads to failures across the experience range. After all, each skill level has different strengths, which must be evaluated differently.
Over time, I’ll go into more detail about my philosophy, but I want to set up my underlying assumptions. The caveat is that hiring today doesn’t follow this philosophy, so you’ll see content geared to the state of hiring today, like practice interview problems. Hopefully, the nature of such content can convince you these practices are widely used today, but maybe, they shouldn’t be.
This article was originally published on the Hiring For Tech website.
Software Engineer - C#, Typescript, T-SQL
4 年This is the first article on LinkedIn i've seen or ever clicked on and I correlate with everything you've said, hopefully things can change, either way, amazing article!
Founder | KDS Proptech Real Estate Consultants
5 年"Complete Adwords and Facebook Marketing" with KDS Tech Teams Google Adowrds: 1. What is Google Adwords and how it works? 2. How to run campaigns on Google Adwords? 3. What is Search Campaign and Display Campaign? 4. How to set up bid strategy? 5. How to make responsive ads? 6. Keywords research? Facebook Marketing: 1. How to Optimize your Facebook Page 2. Types of Campaigns 3. How to run campaign 4. Lead ad Campaign And many more.
Experienced Product Manager | Product Coach | Technology Leader
5 年Avik Das?I enjoyed your post. My personal view is that the very valid issues you raised in the interview process are symptomatic of a bigger problem facing tech recruitment, the way in which tech skills are sourced and screened. It has become so easy to apply for open jobs online; a single posting gets upwards of 300 applications increasing the reliance of employers on automation or applicant tracking systems ?to filter out the so called “unqualified” candidates based on keywords from job descriptions. This encourages applicants to embellish/misrepresent their resume and true capability so that they are able to compete with the wash of resumes that are submitted leading to more candidates without technical skills for the position are making it through to the interview stage. This pushes employers to create more robust and perhaps unrealistic technical assessments to avoid these candidates being mistakenly hired. Unfortunately, if you pull on this string you start to see all the other parts of the hiring process begin to unravel and is why we need more innovative ways to credibly identify potential candidates with the technical skills to do the job, perhaps even before they apply.
Currently Available
5 年Accurately qualify the position internally before posting that a position is available. I've seen too many positions posted that are a 'grab bag' assortment of positions/skills tossed together... Sure your company wants a flexible candidate with 'X' number of skills which is completely understandable but, when you have to many skill options listed you are not going to be satisfied with what the potential candidate has in those skills or doesn't. Is the list of technologies centric to each other or completely disparate? You might end up passing on a great candidate that doesn't have that skill listed that really shouldn't be listed as a requirement for that position. Sure the candidate is a great administrator on multiple platforms but... doesn't code the LAMP stack or C#, etc... Don't overdo the qualification requirements, recently seen a post for a 3rd level administrator (Ph.D. was a requirement that offset 4yrs of experience), if anyone has a Ph.D. and is applying for a 3rd level administrator position they have career limiting move story to tell. Understanding the technology in your environment is the best way to understand which candidate is best suited to manage the technology in your environment.