Diversity and recruiting developers

Posted Jun 8, 2013 0:10 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
In reply to: Diversity and recruiting developers by daglwn
Parent article: Diversity and recruiting developers

A big problem our company has is that requirements are written by non-technical people and tend to overstate the requirements and often make them impossible to achieve.

Is that how that happens? I've always wondered why ads for software engineers have long lists of specific, and fairly trivial, required experience. Do you really want to exclude an applicant because he hasn't programmed anything in Ruby yet?

I can't take a manager seriously when he says there is an engineer shortage while writing, "must have two years experience with Python and HTML under Solaris in the financial services industry."

I have noticed, though, that when people hire people they know, they don't pay any attention to lists of skills. They'll cajole the candidate into taking the job as the candidate protests, "I've never done anything like that; I'm not sure I could."

Diversity and recruiting developers

Posted Jun 8, 2013 17:43 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (4 responses)

I can't take a manager seriously when he says there is an engineer shortage while writing, "must have two years experience with Python and HTML under Solaris in the financial services industry."

Why? You need people who will work well with other members of the team, but you can not just write that in advertisement: you'll see "harassment", "discrimintation" and other such words on a letter from a courts and in the end you'll have bunch of useless people who will just demand "fair treatment" instead of doing what needs to be done. Thus you write very specific requirements to have a valid reason to reject candidates you don't like. Cases where candidate indeed fits all the requirements are so rare that it's worth trying to accept even "feels bad" candidate: perhaps if he's so well accustomed to the position already his other quirks can be tolerated?

I have noticed, though, that when people hire people they know, they don't pay any attention to lists of skills. They'll cajole the candidate into taking the job as the candidate protests, "I've never done anything like that; I'm not sure I could."

Well, sure. Why not? Technical skills are rarely a reason to reject or accept candidate (well, except may be for the most basic programming skills), but since you are not allowed to use other characteristics of candidate in the official rejection letter...

Diversity and recruiting developers

Posted Jun 8, 2013 18:52 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (3 responses)

you write very specific requirements to have a valid reason to reject candidates you don't like

How does that work? I'm talking about the solicitation for candidates; so how do you even get a candidate to evaluate if you state requirements no candidate has? Do job seekers ignore the requirements in job listings and apply anyway?

Or maybe the listings aren't real solicitations but just formalities, as another poster suggested, and the authors of them actually recruit a different way.

Diversity and recruiting developers

Posted Jun 8, 2013 18:59 UTC (Sat) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] (1 responses)

How does that work? I'm talking about the solicitation for candidates; so how do you even get a candidate to evaluate if you state requirements no candidate has? Do job seekers ignore the requirements in job listings and apply anyway?

Sometimes, yes; after all, there's a decent chance that the skillset requirement was written by the PHB or Catbert instead of the people who know what the jobs actually require.

Or maybe the listings aren't real solicitations but just formalities, as another poster suggested, and the authors of them actually recruit a different way.

This is also a possibility. Often, a meticulously tailored job description means "we want to hire J. Specific Hacker so we will write a skill set that is exactly the skill set of J. Specific Hacker; in the event that someone who is J. Specific Hacker only better applying, well, we might hire them instead".

Diversity and recruiting developers

Posted Jun 8, 2013 22:05 UTC (Sat) by hummassa (guest, #307) [Link]

> This is also a possibility. Often, a meticulously tailored job description means "we want to hire J. Specific Hacker so we will write a skill set that is exactly the skill set of J. Specific Hacker; in the event that someone who is J. Specific Hacker only better applying, well, we might hire them instead".

Yeah, but more often is like "int the event that someone who is J. Specific Hacker only better applying, well, don't bother because we are going to hire J. Specific Hacker instead."

Diversity and recruiting developers

Posted Jun 13, 2013 12:40 UTC (Thu) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link]

>Do job seekers ignore the requirements in job listings and apply anyway?

Yes, and that's why the kind of practice khim suggests is bad business practice (in addition to being blatantly immoral and arguably illegal).

These requirements basically mean that the only candidates they get, by definition, are the kind of people who ignore requirements - I don't want to work with people who will happily ignore requirements. Who does?

Much more specific

Posted Jun 9, 2013 18:26 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (3 responses)

Do you really want to exclude an applicant because he hasn't programmed anything in Ruby yet?

That is nothing; usually requirements are much more specific than that. Some real-world examples taken from a fairly technical site, Stackoverflow Careers:

Experience designing and managing DNS, DHCP
Expertise in Location Framework / MapKIT
Experience working in an XP/Agile environment a big plus
Expert in CSS, XHTML, JavaScript, HTML5, RSS, jQuery

These offers are not from particularly clueless or ossified companies but trendy Internet startups. If an engineer cannot learn any of these things in a few days on the job, or with minimal training, then I would not consider them as good candidates for anything.

Much more specific

Posted Jun 9, 2013 20:50 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (2 responses)

It's actually not really extreme. They are searching for a candidate with the experience of location-specific services, of which DNS is a major example. On top of that they also want the regular Web page design experience.

Much more specific

Posted Jun 9, 2013 21:03 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (1 responses)

Note that each line is from a different job offer. These are from the clueful end of the spectrum. I have seen requests for specific versions of Java, WebSphere Application Server or Red Hat Linux, and they were not joking or (to my knowledge) posting an offer with a preassigned candidate. I can post real examples but they are too depressing. Once I was asked at an interview if I did know "HTLM" (sic). Human resources can be a dark place.

Much more specific

Posted Jun 9, 2013 22:45 UTC (Sun) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

Human resources can be a dark place.

Usually this comes out when they ask for five years' worth of experience with some technology that has only been around for two years.