Ask HN: Do you know startups that are changing the world of tech recruitment?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8515633

by ftpaul • 12 years ago

22 50 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

bluerail5• 12 years ago

hackerrank.com (formerly interviewstreet) - This came in at the right moment when tech companies are struggling to filter out 1000s of resumes for a programmer job.. You can read more about it here..

http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/interviewstreet-disr...

tptacek4• 12 years ago

Does anyone have any experiences with HackerRank to share? I'm curious.

bluerail5• 12 years ago

Experience with regards to working with them or getting hired via it?

If getting hired via it, I do have. So far, 5 out of 6 jobs I applied used hackerrank for initial level screening on programming knowledge.

I ve also worked with them in creating few interview questions, but its via freelancing.

tom_b• 12 years ago

I enjoy Hackerrank very much. Although I've been away for awhile from their site. The coding platform was language-choice-flexible and I did a number of challenges in Clojure as a learning experience - very similar to the challenges from your old company, although I only played with round 1 of the security challenge.

I am not a fan of the mathematical challenges on Hackerrank, mainly because I haven't done much interesting math in years and if I get all ambitious on math stuff, I'm going to dive into functional analysis and stats modeling and probably not from a coding viewpoint. Algorithmic challenges are much more engaging to me.

Hackerrank has a very interesting option for hiring companies to sponsor a challenge or set of challenges. Based on what I read here, if I was a hiring company I would be doubling down on this approach (eg coding challenges as a feed for potential hires like you guys were doing as well). Heck, companies would probably pay five to six figures just for a curated list of candidates from these sites, right?

One specific gripe - sometimes I had the vague feeling that the programmatic challenges encourage non-idiomatic language usage. I did a very fun challenge that involved range-minimum-queries there and to ultimately to have runtime under the JVM cutoff and pass all the testcases, I kind of optimized away from the way Clojure normally looks like. I think my point is code that works well for a programming challenge may not look much like code you would want in production.

I can probably spout off more opinions but this is probably already more than you were looking for for someone who didn't use the site for actually finding a job.

rvivek2• 12 years ago

Hi, hackerrank founder here. Happy to answer any questions.

crazypyro• 12 years ago

Could you give any insight into how many companies are creating their own questions versus using your pre-loaded ones?

ftpaul2• 12 years ago

Why do you think that are changing the recruitment world? Do you work closely with any kind of recruitment agencies?

lamby• 12 years ago

Workable? Not world-changing but certainly takes some of the "urgherhergasdasd" out of it.

zvitez5• 12 years ago

:) as long as it takes that out of it! What would make it world-changing for you? Is that the only option you've considered?

lazyant8• 12 years ago

Doesn't look scalable for a startup but I'd give my pinky (OK, maybe just a month's salary) for having a decent tech recruiter work for me (developer open to new opportunities), as in sparing me of the 90% of BS that I usually go through when dealing with recruiters/companies.

rvivek2• 12 years ago

thanks lazyant; there are specific challenges for a startup which we're trying to address in the product. happy to chat more if you'd like to try.

lazyant8• 12 years ago

sorry, I wasn't addressing Hackerrank in particular, which seems a fine way of doing one of the parts of the recruiting process (tech validation), while my complain is on "everything else" and the general hiring process.

zvitez5• 12 years ago

Why do you think it's not scalable? Think there always has to be a level of attention on an individual level? What BS are you referring to btw? The usual, "This guy knows Java. He'll probably interested in this Javascript position!"?

lazyant8• 12 years ago

The recruiting game makes my blood boil, so I'll just point to some issues but the main thing is that tech recruiters are clueless about tech and don't bother reading about you or the target company before wasting your time, and I'm not even getting at having someone really look out for you actively trying to find a good match.

General issues or "Top 10 Mistakes Technical Recruiters Make":

  - Not selling their company (or the position)  
  - Not looking into the prospect’s web presence  
  - Sending “cold call” vague email  
  - Not understanding basic technology  
  - Not disclosing basic information (an idea of salary, company)  
  - Using buzzwords, offering silly perks  
  - Not asking relevant questions  
  - Radio silence, not being responsive  
  - Not being clear on the process, what to expect  
  - Not understanding what motivates people beyond money

I think a good recruiter is not scalable in principle since it would need someone to get to know you a bit.

lazyant8• 12 years ago

Just to keep ranting, this is a typical process that has been happening to me:

  - Get unsolicited email by recruiter. I ignore if it's generic but if it looks like they've read something about me I answer (now I demand company name & salary range upfront to save everybody's time)

  - Recruiter follows up asking for resume or call. I have linkedin complete public profile, blog, twitter, Stackoverflow, Github etc, with all linked to each other, almost never they notice.
  - If somehow I'm still interested and I can't get out of the call ("my favorite call hours is email"), I schedule for a short call. I always write short, clear polite emails.
  - Already here the communication stops sometimes. If there's a call they invariably want to qualify me with the salary question. I've used both the "won't say at this stage" and "inflated salary" strategies.
  - Next if there's a first company phone interview (basic screening/basic tech) I always pass it, tech questions seem too basic, we schedule remote tech interview
  - In the remote tech interview I tend to fulfill the objectives but maybe I'm too slow or I'm not good at communicating or something. They say they'll call me for the next interview.
  - Then they stop communicating.

This cycle has happened to me several times recently, with several of the HN's "Who's hiring" companies. Only company which replied with a result was Facebook (wasn't a perfect match in any case) and a company in Idaho, it seems people in SV can't be bothered.

leeny4• 12 years ago

I'm a recruiter. Before that, I was an engineer for 5 years. What you're describing sounds really good, but it's likely not going to happen. For the record, I agree with you completely and try to work in the manner you describe, but there are a number of economic incentives working against you before scale is even an issue.

Generally, recruiters work for specific client companies and try to fill seats at those companies. Because the companies are paying them, their interests are fundamentally aligned with them and not with you. The kind of recruiter you describe is more of a talent agent, but until there's a shortage of engineering jobs, this probably won't happen for full-time roles because the financial incentive for engineers to pay an agent simply isn't there.

Agents make sense when it's hard to find a job or when the opportunity cost to looking for work is high enough to justify paying someone else. Recruiters make sense when it's hard to find workers or the opportunity cost of looking for workers is high enough to pay someone else. In some sense, it's almost like recruiters are talent agents for the companies they're representing.

Freelance engineers do have talent agents (e.g. http://www.10xmanagement.com/). When you're a freelancer, your time is split between doing actual work (coding) and drumming up business, so the less time you spend on drumming up business, the more time you can spend doing work that pays. In this model, paying someone to find work for you makes perfect sense because the opportunity cost of not working is high enough to justify the payment.

Full-time engineers are a different story from freelancers, however. I found this out myself when I first started my own recruiting firm. At the time, I really wanted to explore the talent agent model. This model was really interesting to me because I was convinced that having engineers pay for an agent's services would swiftly rectify many of the problems that run rampant in technical recruiting today (e.g. wanton spamming of engineers, misrepresentation of positions, recruiters having a very shallow understanding of the space/companies they're recruiting for).

I dedicated a good chunk of the first few months of running my business to talking to engineers and trying to figure out if a talent agent model would work. Engineers were super excited about this. Until I mentioned that part where they'd have to pay me, that is.

These days, I try to work in this weird hybrid way where I start with finding smart people, figure out what they want, and then no matter what it is, try to give it to them, while still getting paid by the company. This works for me because I maintain relationships with a lot of companies at once. And it also works for me because, as a former engineer, I can grok what people want at hopefully a deeper level than non-technical technical recruiters and also be able to filter talent somewhat effectively.

This still isn't ideal because my incentives are still kind of misaligned and because companies don't always love this approach -- it's great for candidates, but from their perspective, flow is unpredictable and haphazard. And I think this model works for me primarily because I used to code.

So, tl;dr, while what you want sounds awesome, and I want it too, I don't think it's going to happen in any real way anytime soon. At least not until a product comes along.

lazyant8• 12 years ago

I agree with you and I understand that a recruiter works for the companies and not for me. Regarding "Engineers were super excited about this. Until I mentioned that part where they'd have to pay me, that is", what specific services were you thinking of providing and what rates would make it work?

pjungwir2• 12 years ago

I started a project similar to talentbin.com: scraping Github, StackOverflow, and about two dozen other sites to compile searchable developer profiles. Figuring out when a Github and StackOverflow profile belonged to the same person was a pretty fun challenge. Eventually I abandoned it though, because it felt like I was just enabling keyword-based recruiter spam. Selling it to people made me feel bad instead of good.

zvitez5• 12 years ago

Good on you for being so altruistic. Do you think there's any way to leverage that while making it desirable for the developers? Imagine you have great offers that you know would be valuable to the people you found. Would it be spam to share it?

pjungwir2• 12 years ago

Well I did believe that when I started the project. I don't know if quitting was altruism. Selling is hard enough for a programmer like me, but for this project I really recoiled from it. My heart just wasn't in it. Perhaps if communications were opt-in for the developers and we controlled the communications channel it would be okay. This piece might be worth keeping: The site scored each developer on various skills, so users could see that a person was better than 87% of their peers worldwide and better than 93% of people within 100 miles, etc. You could still use the whole population to compile those stats, even if only some people had opted in to communications. (Of course the score was based only on public data, so it was not perfect, but still it seemed like a pretty strong signal when I looked at it for people I know.)

knuxus• 12 years ago

Some guys from here, Lisbon, Portugal are kinda making referrals work without all that linkedin bs... http://www.jobbox.io/ , you can gain some serious money recommending people a better job

bzalasky2• 12 years ago

Hired.com (formerly DeveloperAuction) comes to mind. I found my current role at Lookout through Hired. Having worked with traditional recruiters in the past, the difference with Hired is they have candidates' interests in mind as opposed to focusing solely on commissions. If you're qualified, they put your resume/CV in front of tons of great companies, give you the inside scoop on how interviews work at different companies, and provide more transparency through the whole process.

athesyn• 12 years ago

How long does it usually take for the approval process and to get offers?

bzalasky2• 12 years ago

I don't remember exactly how long it took, but something like a week or so to get approved, and then they run auctions ever few weeks or so. The "offers" are really just invitations to interview where salary, equity and perks are laid out transparently ahead of time so that you can decide if an opportunity is right for your situation.

MalcolmDiggs• 12 years ago

Angellist.

How? Because I can browse the companies that are hiring, see the compensation levels, and apply. The companies can find me and express interest directly.

No recruiters involved whatsoever. I think THAT model is truly the future. It's changing the world of tech recruiting because it's challenging that idea that recruiters need to exist at all... and it's a pretty convincing argument.

mallyvai4• 12 years ago

Going to promote http://offerletter.io here :-) We help engineers and other workers by connecting them with a live human who can help evaluate opportunities, and give them advice to help them get what they're worth.

OfferLetter is adding real value to people's lives and careers. We have a lot of great data on market rates, career trajectories, and company cultures. And because of our tip-as-percent-increase structure, the incentives are totally aligned.

Shoot me a mail if you have any questions, or I'll be hanging around the comments here! mallyvai AT offerletter.io

ftpaul2• 12 years ago

I like the way that you present your website. Do you think that it's scalable? How are you going increase the number of advisors?

mallyvai4• 12 years ago

It's absolutely scalable, and extremely high-leverage to boot.

We have a lot of advisors right now - there's a culture in the Valley of proactively wanting to help and connect with good people who need guidance. So even my friends who are busy founders, PMs, and leaders in their own right, are more than willing to make time to serve as Advisors. (It also helps that they get compensated well for it - and compensated proportional to the value they deliver :-).

The more interesting question is how we get the word out more aggressively to get more individuals on-board. If you have any ideas about that, let me know - mallyvai@offerletter.io.

helen842000• 12 years ago

Are you looking for any additional advisors?

mallyvai4• 12 years ago

Helen - Always happy to talk with empathetic people. Drop me a line - mallyvai@offerletter.io

seekingcharlie• 12 years ago

http://hired.com/

Ask HN: Do you know startups that are changing the world of tech recruitment?

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