The Entire Industry of Corporate Recruiting and HR is Ridiculous

[Voyager]

@CaveMike

This can be a good point, but I think there is an over-reliance on tools and training when recruiting in the software field. Maybe it matters more if the candidate is not very sharp or if they are older and not interested in learning, but I’ve never seen anyone struggle over learning a particular tool. I’ve seen developers struggle with fundamentals, but not with how to use a tool.

I realize that everyone uses buzzwords to filter out the mass of resumes they get for a given position, but I think that fact reinforces the point of the OP.

There was an editorial in Computerworld a while back where a CIO was quoted as complaining about the shortage of programmers - because he only wanted to hire people with exactly the skills he wanted, and wanted other companies to train them for him. This is why claims of programmer shortages don’t get much credence with me.

[Shagnasty]

@CaveMike

This can be a good point, but I think there is an over-reliance on tools and training when recruiting in the software field. Maybe it matters more if the candidate is not very sharp or if they are older and not interested in learning, but I’ve never seen anyone struggle over learning a particular tool. I’ve seen developers struggle with fundamentals, but not with how to use a tool.

I realize that everyone uses buzzwords to filter out the mass of resumes they get for a given position, but I think that fact reinforces the point of the OP.

That is all true for at least the way I think. Once you know basic concepts, who cares what tools they give you to do it. It never took me more than a day or two to learn a new application based on concepts I already know cold. Those types of job descriptions get out of control very fast though. I am not sure how they are finding people who are experts in 7 different specific technologies with particular version numbers who are willing to work for 50K but there must be a lot of them out there that I have never met because they keep posting ads for them.

[msmith537]

@Theodore_Striker

Skill-sets only get you so far, and I have shot down people who have had much better qualifications than the person who eventually got hired because they actually knew how to interact with other people.

All you can tell about how well a person interacts with people from a 35 minute interview is how attractive or superficially charming they are. It tells you absolutely nothing about how that person will act in an actual workplace setting.

[Theodore_Striker]

@msmith537

All you can tell about how well a person interacts with people from a 35 minute interview is how attractive or superficially charming they are. It tells you absolutely nothing about how that person will act in an actual workplace setting.

There is some truth and some fiction to this. Of course you cannot get every detail about a person’s performance from a half an hour interview… or an hour interview… or a full day interview with multiple people in an organization… or a work a day type of interview. A lot of people can fake their way through that. I don’t think you can see how a person will act on a daily basis until after the first 90 days for the most part, since there is a great deal of adaptation and learning that occurs in that period.

On the other hand, if people cannot get themselves together enough to present themselves well, and cannot make their way through the general questioning of a short first interview, then they really need to re-evaluate the way they are conducting themselves in the interview. If this is happening multiple times, then there is an underlying cause aside from the HR people or recruiters not knowing what they are doing.

Also, a well trained interviewer will ask questions to identify how people will act on the job, and more than you would expect can be gleaned from innocent sounding questions.