My secret Hobby: Applying for jobs

http://www.irrlicht3d.org/pivot/entry.php?id=1223

by irrlichthn • 15 years ago

187 127 15 years ago

Peroni10• 15 years ago

These companies don't notice that in this way, the good people a driven away, and only the desperate will apply.

It's a catch-22. Without this process, every man & his dog will apply for the job causing the company to have to filter through literally hundreds of applications in order to find appropriate candidates. Those that actually take the time to tolerate the process obviously consider themselves suitable and do really want the job.

As a Tech Recruiter, I'm generally the front line for job applications and I'll give you stats from my most recent role:

Python Dev- London - Circa £45k

Applications: 48

* 36 highly irrelevant and inappropriate candidates that were blatantly just clicking 'apply' on every job they found.

* 6 applications with no CV attached.

* 6 potentially relevant candidates.

* Out of the 6 potentials that I spoke to over the phone and face to face, only 2 were worth submitting directly to the client.

These stats are pretty much the norm for most of the roles I advertise.

mootothemax• 15 years ago

Without this process, every man & his dog will apply for the job causing the company to have to filter through literally hundreds of applications in order to find appropriate candidates

Shouldn't that be the point of tech recruitment agents, though? It used to drive me mad when recruitment agents would phone up, ask for 25%, then email me two "top" CVs which bore zero relevance to the jobs previously advertised.

Out of the 6 potentials that I spoke to over the phone and face to face, only 2 were worth submitting directly to the client.

You sounds like the exception that proves the rule ;)

Peroni10• 15 years ago

Shouldn't that be the point of tech recruitment agents, though?

Absolutely. You engage us to be your personal filter. We shield you from the deluge and provide you access to the handful of suitable candidates. I'm not surprised your recruiters are sending you irrelevant candidates. It's something I ranted about at length in my most recent blog post, link in my profile.

You sounds like the exception that proves the rule ;)

Most recruiters do exactly the same, the difference is the recruiters who actually understand the requirement, your needs & the technology involved will send you some decent CV's from the steaming pile of rubbish they receive, the 'salesman' recruiters will send you two CV's that appear to be relevant or are a high keyword match against the job spec and don't have a fundamental grasp of your needs.

mikle• 15 years ago

I think this is a compelling reason not to use sites where you can simply click apply to be considered for a job.

nirvana4• 15 years ago

Please tell me about the "highly irrelevant and inappropriate candidates" you were seeing.

Were you seeing people whose previous job experience was: Receptionist, Typist, Journalist, Janitor, Taxi Driver, etc?

Or were you seeing web developers who never mentioned python on their resume?

The reason I ask is, the majority of the times I've been screened by recruiters, they clearly were unable to tell what was relevant and what was not. EG: Thinking you're not qualified because you worked with a different version of a database the employer uses, even though SQL hasn't changed between versions and you probably usually shouldn't be writing SQL anyway in your code.

The inability to screen properly gave me the distinct impressions that those who were filtering me out were incompetent because they were being arbitrary, and those who weren't filtering me out just had low standards (they didn't ask better questions.) In the end, I was the one who filtered me out of inappropriate jobs because I could tell by their descriptions (if they let me see the job description rather than rambling on about how they need a "ninja coder to take their B2B accounting software to the next level").

Do you use any software to screen the applications for appropriateness? I know that keywords likely would only work to get rid of the 36 (or would they? Did they all say "python" on their resume?) Would machine learning or bayesian techniques possibly work better?

Peroni10• 15 years ago

I don't use any artificial means of filtering candidates. If I receive 48 applications, I read 48 CV's.

There were a large number of graduates with zero commercial experience and zero open source contributions as well as a number of foreign candidates with completely unrelated careers simply looking for a job in London. There were also a number of underqualified candidates and people with strong careers but zero commercial or practical experience with Python.

eli2• 15 years ago

I get what you're saying about recruiters and hiring managers having too narrow a view of what they really need in a candidate.

But let me tell you first hand (I'm trying to hire a PHP developer now), you get lots of truly and objectively bad candidates. People who want to telecommute even though the job clearly says you must be on-site. Or people who submit a resume that does not demonstrate the required skills and do not include a cover letter.

I've found that some University job boards make it way too easy for a student to check off a whole bunch of jobs (or perhaps all the jobs) and apply to them en masse.

nknight• 15 years ago

But those statistics by themselves do nothing to counter one of the key points. How do you actually know they were irrelevant? How do you know the 4 potentials weren't worth submitting?

Your commenting history suggests you might have a clue what you're doing, but this comment taken by itself could easily be from a recruiter that's part of the problem and doesn't know it. Lord knows I've never (in the US) personally encountered a recruiter that really understood the position they were trying to fill.

Peroni10• 15 years ago

How do you actually know they were irrelevant? How do you know the 4 potentials weren't worth submitting?

I'm a former developer. I'm currently teaching myself Python. I listen and understand my clients needs. I'm not afraid to ask a client or candidate to elaborate on a point I don't understand. Essentially I don't think that it's necessary for a recruiter to claim to know everything about every technology as I believe from experience that a lot of employers find honesty refreshing.

ay• 15 years ago

If you're looking for the coding jobs, ask them if:

- they have a github profile - they have a stackoverflow profile - they have a linkedin profile

(the latter will go for a CV - I actually used it when one $reasonably_big_and_known_company called me up wanting to hire me and wanted me to write a CV - I told them to use my linkedin profile, and it worked all right).

Arguably this is not a 1:1 relation - since there might be a lot of good programmers that do not bother to communicate much externally.

But if they have the presence, then you will be well able to judge their quality without having to ask them a single question. (I silently assume you can read code/judge programming questions - if not, then my blurb is of not much use indeed)

nickthedart• 15 years ago

IMHO one thing the client needs to do to get a decent Python programmer apply is either relocate that job somewhere cheaper, or pay significantly more. In London, too much of that £45k is going to be swallowed up by accommodation costs.

Peroni10• 15 years ago

You'd be surprised. £45k is a pretty standard salary for Python Devs as well as Ruby Devs which are much harder to find.

TamDenholm• 15 years ago

I have the same hobby, i'm a php contractor but sometimes go to job interviews for permanent positions even though its extremely unlikely i'll ever accept a permanent position, but i do it for the experience of interviewing and to become aware of the companies in my area. Also, its always nice to get an offer of a job sometimes.

rickmb• 15 years ago

Funny, as a company we sometimes invite contractors to interview for much the same reasons. It's good to know the freelancers that are around, and especially if they'll be able to fit into our existing teams, even though we rarely make use of that option. And it helps with long-term recruiting, since contractors regularly give up being self-employed for a variety of reasons.

We are always completely upfront about it though.

martincmartin• 15 years ago

I actually look for jobs with a thorough interview process, and having to spend a few hours solving a puzzle, on my own time, before an in-person interview, is a plus. It means the other people I'll be working with have been through the same thing, and there'll be a higher percentage of good programmers among them.

StavrosK9• 15 years ago

Is your reasoning that other good programmers have nothing better to do than solve puzzles for a few hours?

I have so little time to myself that I can't spend hours solving each little puzzle a HR department comes up with...

anonymoushn2• 15 years ago

I've never been asked to solve a puzzle by an HR department, but I have always been asked to solve a puzzle. Have you been asked to solve puzzles that were written by HR, and how could you tell?

healsdata4• 15 years ago

I honestly don't know what the masses expect companies that hire programmers to do. We're told that we're not as good of a company if programmers don't program in the interview. But then the next thing we're told is that nobody programs on a whiteboard and/or with someone watching. To help, we come up with take home exercises that are custom to us so we know the answers are real. Now this article and the parent are saying we're wasting time with these "puzzles".

When I hire, I do a phone screen before asking the candidates to complete the code exercise. If it isn't going to be a fit from either of our perspectives, then they didn't spend time doing it.

akat• 15 years ago

So little time for yourself yet reading and commenting on hn...just saying...

eli2• 15 years ago

I get what you're saying, but I really don't think it's fair to ask people to do work on their own time -- for free -- in order to be considered for a job.

Most recently I asked a candidate to work a few hours on a real project for a fair hourly rate. I think this is much better for all involved. As a bonus, you get to see how they perform on a real project, rather than a contrived puzzle and they get to see what sort of work they might be doing if hired.

wpietri3• 15 years ago

This is something we've struggled with. The final phase of our interviewing process is a few hours of pair programming. If folks worked on production code, we wanted to pay them.

Paying people for a few hours of work is difficult: if we pay them as an employee then we have to do employee paperwork and deal with the payroll company. If we pay them as a contractor then they have to sign a lot of contractor paperwork, including a confidentiality and intellectual property assignment agreement. It's the kind of thing I wouldn't sign without my lawyer's advice. It just seems like too much trouble.

Instead, we'll either work on a throwaway toy project or an open-source project. Both of those are working well so far, and people seem happy to actually ship some open-source code at the end of the interview.

thomasgerbe• 15 years ago

"I get what you're saying, but I really don't think it's fair to ask people to do work on their own time -- for free -- in order to be considered for a job."

Bravo.

I can't stand when companies do this. Whether it's design or development, it's basically spec work. It's one thing if it's a general question, but if they ask you to do work related to their service, why not just pay them for a few hours or a few days?

Triumvark• 15 years ago

> So about once in a year I [apply to] an advertised programmers job...

This doesn't sound frequent enough to really extrapolate anything about trends. Maybe he meant once a month?

mtogo• 15 years ago

If he didn't apply for any jobs he would be mostly completely out of the loop as far as the world of working for someone else goes. If he had or wanted to get a job at some point, the knowledge of current practices would help a lot compared to never having interviewed in years.

maayank6• 15 years ago

"These companies don't notice that in this way, the good people a driven away, and only the desperate will apply."

This. One of the reasons I chose my last employer (SAP, or more specifically, SAP Research) was their no bullshit, yet very thorough, recruitment process.

Compare that with my <A very, very, well known software corp> experience, where the phone call interview with HR went like that:

HR drone: "So, what's your degree?"

Me: "Mathematics." [didn't you read my resume?]

HR: "Oh... well... Most of the people working here have CS degrees."

Me: "Ah, well, my last job title was 'Computer Science researcher' and before that I had several years of experience as a programmer, so I think I'll fit" [apparently not!]

HR: "Yes, but do you know algorithms?"

Me: bangs head on wall

Sorry, no matter how reputable your company is, if that's the recruitment process then I can do better.

Peroni10• 15 years ago

Let me shed some prespective.

I can absolutely guarantee you that the actual hiring manager briefed the HR department on the job spec and had to dumb it down significantly. The summary would have been something along the lines of 'Ideally the perfect candidate will have a CS degree from a major University as strong algorithmic knowledge is a fundamental requirement for the role.'

HR would then interpret this as:

1: Must have CS Degree

2: Must know algorithms.

3: Only CS people study & understand algorithms.

4: Refer to step 1.

jonnathanson6• 15 years ago

This.

Ironically, it helps to think of the HR screening process as a really dumb algorithm. The HR staffer likely has little to no understanding of how to ferret out "knowledge of algorithms," (or any other job skill, for that matter). So he defaults to a list of keywords or phrases -- interpreted very literally -- from a job description received from the hiring manager.

His internal logic is pretty much driven by two directives:

1: If a keyword or phrase is in the job description, a successful applicant MUST have it on his resume. (Word for word, preferably).

2: Anything on a candidate's resume that is not on the job description is irrelevant.

In fairness, there is some legitimate value to the HR screening process. It is a filter. A dumb filter, but a filter that the hiring manager doesn't have time to run on X hundred (or Y thousand) resumes. Some HR filters are designed to screen out resumes that don't contain the right keywords. Others are designed to select for resumes that match all the right keywords. Either way, the effect is similar. Of course, such a process can (and does) weed out a lot of very talented, very qualified people.

The trick is learning how to game the filter. The filter penalizes creative or unusual word choices. The filter flags candidates who reference someone they've met or spoken to at the company (doubly so if that person is the actual referrer). The filter rewards fidelity to the letter of the job description. Tailor your cover letter and resume accordingly.

mavelikara2• 15 years ago

Steve, how to recruiters themselves find their jobs? Do you guys find your respective jobs via the traditional resume-interview route?

I ask this because looking for word-for-word matches etc imply a lack of unfamiliarity with the process as viewed from the other side of the table. I understand that you have been a developer previously and probably understand the technical specifics better. But my guess is be that most of these recruiters might have gone the resume-interview route for at least _some_ job; I am surprised that they don't seem to understand how hopeless their techniques are.

Duff• 15 years ago

You're assuming an actual spec existed. When budgets are tight, the ability to hire someone occasionally comes out of nowhere with an insane deadline.

So instead of writing something up, the recruiter or manager googles around for "enterprise foobar developer", and copy/pastes a few pidgin english job descriptions from other places.

This arrives in HR, who then needs to translate slop into something that can be posted. Hence, the loop you described above.

cheez• 15 years ago

Google?

nuclear_eclipse• 15 years ago

At least from my experience, the Google recruiter I worked with was very knowledgeable of the software domain.

kabdib• 15 years ago

Right.

"We need someone to do real-time object-oriented programming."

"I do real time. I do object-oriented design and programming."

"But do you do real-time object-oriented programming?"

"Yes."

"I don't believe you."

Their loss, not mine. Employers, listen: Your recruiters come across as idiots when you do this.

Jach• 15 years ago

I've flustered a lot of people asking them which definition of "real-time" they mean at the current moment.

lhnn• 15 years ago

Perhaps HR departments are counter-intuitive. Why can't a manager of a department or team hire their own teammate?

maayank6• 15 years ago

When I meet such corporate bureaucracy I'm always reminded of this paragraph from one of PG's essays[1]: "A group of 10 managers is not merely a group of 10 people working together in the usual way... for a group of 10 managers to work together as if they were simply a group of 10 individuals, the group working for each manager would have to work as if they were a single person—the workers and manager would each share only one person's worth of freedom between them... the result is that each person gets freedom of action in inverse proportion to the size of the entire [corporate] tree. Anyone who's worked for a large organization has felt this."

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html

wpietri3• 15 years ago

Man, this makes me happy to hear. I'm CTO at a small startup, so hiring is crucial. We've worked really hard to optimize the recruiting process to make it easy on candidates, but it's been hard to know how much it matters.

To filter out the total idiots, I ask people to give me a one-paragraph answer to one of 5 technical-ish questions. That lets me spend plenty of time on the people that do make it through. I try to reply to all applications personally within 24 hours. Interviews take scheduling priority over pretty much anything else. We meet right after interviewing someone and try to get them an answer either way within a day.

If folks have other things they like (or hate) about hiring processes, I'd love to hear about it. We really want to get this right.

cydonian_monk• 15 years ago

> I try to reply to all applications personally within 24 hours.

With that, you've addressed my biggest issue with the ordinary hiring process: Complete Lack of Feedback. When I was fresh (or nearly) out of college in 2003, the only responses I received were from the CMU Robotics Lab. And while they were "we're not interested" replies, they at least had a real signature on them. Nothing else I applied for produced even as much as an automated response - print, e-mail, phone, nothing. (My options and interests at the time were admitedly a bit too narrow, and geography worked harshly against me.)

Worse yet is when you interview somewhere and then never hear back. Thankfully that only happened once to me.

Otherwise it really depends on the group and the culture. It doesn't bother me when Megacorps use standardized tests or puzzles (large or popular groups need some sort of advanced filter), but I prefer the hiring process at smaller companies to be more personal.

maayank6• 15 years ago

Actually, that debacle is one of the reasons why I decided that my next job would be at a startup. So yes, it definitely matters.

VladRussian2• 15 years ago

>To filter out the total idiots, I ask people to give me a one-paragraph answer to one of 5 technical-ish questions.

from my recent job change (several offers). After supposedly reading my resume and after half an hour on the phone the company's staff recruiter asked me to write a paragraph on how i see my fit to the company. It became immediately obvious to me that there is no fit. Somehow that wasn't obvious for him. Next day he's calling and emailing - they really like to talk with me in-house and where is the paragraph? Couple days later - the same. Day after that - they really like to talk with me in-house. The paragraph somehow isn't mentioned anymore. Good luck guys. I hope you find the programmer(s) with a hobby for essay writing.

petercooper• 15 years ago

I used to do this back in the late 90s! I was also self employed and happy with it, but the added ingredient was overenthusiastic recruitment agencies who wanted me to go. I had one particularly eager guy who wouldn't leave me alone and got me to take an interview at the BBC for Director of Online Media or some similar high flying title (the role was not as significant then as it is now).. I was wildly inexperienced and only 18 but I ended up spending a few hours in BBC Television Centre and it was quite the day out ;-) The recruiter never contacted me again after that.

onan_barbarian• 15 years ago

For some reason this story reminds me of one of the Arabian Nights stories, which, in the translation I read, began:

"Know, my friends, when I was no more than eight years old, I had already cultivated the remarkable habit of telling one really big lie per year".

I wonder if these hobbies could be combined? Indulging in these kind of pranks seems almost justifiable given the "can they really be serious" shenanigans perpetrated upon those of our trade by the interviewers and recruiters.

I am polishing my resume, with special emphasis on my glory days at the Austrian Naval Academy.

maeon3• 15 years ago

It seems to be some bizarre tradition in this country (US) to kick applicants in the nuts every time they apply, call or inquire about a employment position at a company.

My theory is that if every company does this, then the current body of employees will work harder to stay out of that prison of unemployment, where everyone kicks you when you are down. I am in support of all the good programmers everywhere applying to jobs without intending to take them, and generally treating the system that hires you like crap. So next time you are unemployed and you are treated badly, you'll at least know why they are doing so.

mathattack• 15 years ago

Interesting observations. As someone who has been in hiring positions over several years, the signal to noise ratio in recruiting consistently goes down. On-line recruiting used to be the domain of the talented. Now that everyone is on-line, the professional job-searchers have more time on their hands.

Let's say the unqualified outnumber the qualified by 5 to 1. They're also job-searching on company time, so they send out 5 times as many resumes as the qualified. Their resumes then outnumber the qualified by 25 to 1. This gives you the ratios that Peroni sees.

What's hard - very hard - is that good engineers aren't great at writing job descriptions that are useful to HR recruiters. Conversely, many good HR recruiters still don't understand technical job descriptions.

In the end, this is why the best recruiting method still seems to be, "Ask your best person who their most capable friend is."

rch2• 15 years ago

Going through the motions of applying for jobs also helped me keep my resume up to date and polished. Now that I've been in the same place for a few years I've let that slide - time to get back in the habit maybe?

neebz• 15 years ago

I applied to a London based digital agency. In return they sent me a 10-page document (!) asking me stuff like what were my previous three addresses ?

It was like filling up a visa application.

yuvipanda2• 15 years ago

Was the position good enough for you to fill out that form?

mdaniel• 15 years ago

There are no positions which are good enough to complete such a form.

Like a poster mentioned elsewhere: the interview process is also a strong indicator of the internal atmosphere, too. I don't want to work for any company which believes such a form is a good idea.

peteretep• 15 years ago

I'm really happy where I'm contracting at the moment, but like to apply for challenging-looking roles. Two big benefits here:

a) If somewhere offers you a lot money, you can take that back to your current employer. I've had a 30% payrise from that before on my day rate.

b) Slightly bigger companies with big pockets are often hiring 'unofficially'. That means if they know you and like you, they're often willing to employ you. If you've applied for a job, but turned it down while being very very positive about the company, you've got a set of contacts there to email when you current contract doesn't get renewed...

BornInTheUSSR2• 15 years ago

From the comments:

I am a human resources manager, and I like to call people in for interview.

We do not have any openings but I just like to call them, give them 1-2 tests, make them sweat, then never call them again.

It is more fun than going at the interview, you should give it a shot. :) Daniel - 10 08 11 - 13:10

megamark16• 15 years ago

I'm pretty sure that the commenter was being facetious, but I have worked at a company where they actually did this. They always had job openings posted on their website, and they would bring people in for interviews, even though they weren't hiring and had no positions to place those individuals in. I remember the CEO said "that way we'll have a pool of candidates to pull from if we decide to hire someone".

Needless to say, I never referred any of my friends.

eavc• 15 years ago

This is also commonly done when the law stipulates that a search must be done broadly and fairly.

They know they are going to promote the guy already at their company, but they are bound to do a full search anyway.

BornInTheUSSR2• 15 years ago

I thought it was pretty funny given the article title

matan_a• 15 years ago

I've been through this as well for a very senior role:

Interviewer: "Do you know X?"

Me: "Yes"

Interviewer: "Great, do you know Y?"

Me: "Sure" (starting to get suspicious)

Interviewer: "Nice, how about Z?"

Me: "Aha" (not believing this)

Interviewer: "When can you start?"

....

This is the opposite side of the coin. This quick-fire hiring is scary and detrimental. What would that tell you about the company? :)

int3rnaut• 15 years ago

While I think it's great to stay in the rhythm of things and really get your interview skills down pat, to me the idea of applying for a job when you don't need one is a bit arrogant and selfish. In the grand scheme of things you took a potential interview and maybe a job away from someone else who might have really needed it. It's great that people want to help themselves but doing the right thing and being nice can go a long way--if you really want to brush up on your interviewing or just not lose touch of the corporate game there are a lot of career centers out there just itching to give you tips and encouragement. I'm not taking away from your message about companies and their hiring practices in general but don't forget about what really matters.

My secret Hobby: Applying for jobs

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