Why companies fail or struggle to hire senior tech talents?

Today I wanna disclose one of the top secret problems we have researched before we started building Whalecard.co as a unified data-driven tech talent search and assessment platform.

Apart from many other none-technical reasons - for example how far company culture, employee value proposition, salary, company benefit programs or its related industry inflaunces in attracting good candidates - we have analyzed why most of the companies are failing or struggling to attract senior or more experienced software or data engineers, architects and similar professionals to hire for new positions.

To achieve this objective, we've opted to delve into the world of tech talents rather than reaching out to companies directly. Our choice led us to Reddit, which proved to be exceptionally fitting for attaining genuine insights. The platform's anonymity empowers individuals to candidly share their thoughts, aligning perfectly with our intentions. This approach has proven instrumental on a global scale, as it facilitated open and unfiltered discussions, enabling us to amass invaluable perspectives and garner meaningful data points through the voting system – a quantifiable measure of engagement and sentiment for each discussion.

Our research shows up that tech talents having long years intense experience in bounch of technologies distilled from diverse industries and problem areas, regardless if they could proof that experience on a paper or not, are not interested in much for long running hiring process. There are many reasons justifing them in this regard. Below are some top eye catching citations participants in discussions we leveraged for our research.

Before diving deep I would like to note that below I have only shared the top leading answers and echo of the related community on each specific questions, otherwise this article would quickly flood with many quotes.

Do you prefer doing multi-choice questions with piece of codes online or take home assignment task offline, when you are technically interviewed?        

Not a single one. I made a decision to discontinue engagement with companies that required more than 30 minutes of additional work from my end. Nevertheless, I would be more than willing to offer insights into the work I've already completed.

Both of these criteria fall short in assessing the qualities of a skilled software developer. I decline any interview that incorporates these factors.

Imagine having a family with kids, pursuing hobbies, having proper time to rest, and on top of that you have to take 10 hours of coding in your free time, just to get the change to even go to the next steps. I think that's unreasonable.

Interview is symmetrical. It wastes time of both parties. That's fair. Homework wastes time of only one party.

Being experienced developers gives us the luxury to be picky. Why pick something inconvenient?!

My favorite interviewing tool is to take a complete project, cut out a function definition block, and ask them to implement the function I cut out. I will also allow calling other functions you could write if you can explain to me what thoese functions do.

Companies that give out takehome assignment will lose out on more senior people with less time on their hands and possibly with multiple oppertunity offer.

We have analysed more than 500 distint feedback of peopled engaged to the question above.

The comments above represent a selection of the most upvoted "critical" feedback from tech talents. However, it's important to note that we have also captured input from both individuals who are in agreement ("yes" sayers) and those who hold differing opinions ("no" sayers).

Research shows that roughly 90% of experienced tech talents hold the viewpoint that evaluating and interviewing candidates, whether it's through online or offline mediums, is an inadequate method for making hiring decisions. In contrast, slightly over 10% of these talents believe that companies have limited alternatives to ascertain the expertise prospective employees can bring to the table.

In various discussions across different threads, it has become evident that among tech talents, approximately 53% find technical assessments to be fair, irrespective of their level of experience. Conversely, 47% of these individuals hold a contrary opinion.

The insights gained highlight that seasoned tech talents have a desire to showcase their previous expertise, although this aspiration is not consistently straightforward to fulfill. Nevertheless, individuals who have actively contributed on open-source platforms such as Github, Gitlab, Bitbucket, and similar platforms have a distinct advantage in this regard. The coding style, volume of contributions, and related factors can be assessed by technical hiring managers within companies, potentially streamlining and expediting the hiring process while also enhancing its dependability.

At Whalecard.co , we engage in the practice of crawling open-source projects hosted on the platforms mentioned earlier. Our approach involves conducting comprehensive analyses of these projects from diverse perspectives. As a result of this process, we generate statistical and AI-driven metrics pertaining to technical talents. These metrics encompass their experience levels, skillsets, and the projects to which they have contributed. Notably, these metrics prove to be immensely impactful and straightforward for evaluating the capabilities of technical talents. This evaluation occurs without necessitating any direct technical questioning. Moreover, these metrics allow for a seamless comparison among different talents, enabling smarter decision-making in the hiring process.

Possessing such remarkably valuable insights regarding talents, including their contact information, previous professional background, and relevant industry experience, brings us to the brink of extending a meaningful job offer with highly adjustable personalized email compaigns.

We have embarked on the meticulous implementation of the refined research findings on our platform, Whalecard.co . I am genuinely excited to share that our compact team has successfully introduced an entirely captivating "zero to one" product into the realm of tech hiring teams.

We continue to provide our tool entirely free of charge, and we hold great esteem for any feedback you might have about it. Your input is valued and essential to us!