
If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers - NTDF9
https://medium.com/@NTDF9/if-companies-interviewed-tech-recruiters-the-way-they-interview-programmers-f18e1a980cdd
======
dsr_
I am, now and on occasion, a hiring manager. Naturally, every freelance
recruiter wants to be my friend.

They often start cold calls with a description of a person's technical
abilities, and then ask if I would be interested in interviewing that person.

When that happens, I ask them to define one of the buzzwords that they have
just used. "Could you tell me what 'big data' means?" or "What's the
difference between AWS and GCE?"

I don't do business with technical recruiters who aren't familiar with the
meanings of the terms that they throw around. They have never been more
valuable than a regex.

~~~
dsacco
Please, _please_ share one of the funnier stories you have about grilling
recruiters who didn't know the difference between AWS and GCE.

~~~
dsr_
Most recently I asked if the recruiter knew the difference between Java and
JavaScript, since he had just mentioned both of them.

"Uh, they're web technologies... in very high demand."

"Yes, but is there a difference between them? What kind of web technologies
are they?"

Long pause.

The background silence changes a little, as though a hand were placed over the
telephone's mouthpiece.

I can't hear the word in the conversation he's having, but it's clear that he
is talking to someone.

The hand goes away.

"Java is a general purpose computer programming language with concurrent
objects, and JavaScript is the script version."

Pause.

"Did I get that right?"

~~~
dsacco
Perfect.

Next time you should respond, "Hmm...that's not what I have here. The answer
is, 'JavaScript uses Electron and Java uses Spring.' I'm sorry, I don't think
you're a great fit for us. Best of luck and have a good day."

Then hang up, and kill two birds with one stone in the process: the tone-deaf
recruiter finally understands how the buzzword bingo interview feels, and you
have one less incompetent recruiter to deal with.

~~~
justforFranz
I like you.

------
jordanpg
When I read articles like this, I tend to assume that they are exaggerations
written by people who feel burned because they didn't get the job they want
and that the reason was unfair interview questions.

In other words, I simply don't believe that interviewers are, as a group, so
stupid that they regularly ask obscure Excel questions when they are plainly
not relevant.

To continue with the recruiting example, I suspect what is more common is that
interviewers are expecting candidates with some Excel experience, and ask
questions to gauge some basic level of competency. And interviewees have
conflated using it one time with any depth of experience.

I can attest to seeing this many times during programming interviews. If I see
something towards the top of someone's resume, I will ask a basic question to
see if anything whatsoever is known about that thing. Yes, book knowledge.
Stuff that you would know if you had actually read any docs.

I don't want to work alongside someone who claims knowledge or experience of
something and doesn't know the basics. Or doesn't know that they don't know
the basics.

~~~
justin_vanw
Yes I think you are right, buuuut...

Lots of times the initial screen is done by someone totally non-technical, and
they are asking questions from a sheet and judging whether you are saying what
is in the answer field for their sheet. This is super stupid, but I have seen
it, usually when some headhunting firm is deciding whether to add your resume
to their database which they pull resume's from to send to clients.

The moral: Don't use headhunting firms, because they will basically never send
you a decent candidate. In the very rare cases where they by pure luck do send
a good candidate, this is rarely worth the dozens of crap candidates they have
sent you (not to mention that they will try to push candidates on you if they
think they can get away with it).

~~~
TurboHaskal
My past initial screen was hilarious:

    
    
      - I see that you worked for a consultancy firm on your previous job. Do you
        have experience working with clients?
      - Yes. My client at the time was XXX Bank where I was involved in foo bar
        baz...
      - So you don’t have experience working with clients.
      - What? Yes, yes I do. I worked and interacted with them on a daily basis,
        with meetings and the like.
      - Okay. Do you have experience with databases?
      - Yes. Mostly Oracle and MySQL. Some postgresql. I’m also quite comfortable
        with NoSQL databases such as Redis and MongoDB.
      - Good. Do you have experience with programming languages?
      - ... Yes.
    

Some codility tests and interviews later I was notified I was not getting an
offer due to lack of first hand experience with AWS (previous interviewers
were apparently fine with that, but this one saw it as a red flag, although it
was not listed as a requirement in the job offer).

Definitely a good call for both ends, as this was one of those modern
companies where everyone are supposed to be friends, play with nerf-guns and
have after work drinks. I think I’m too old for that.

For the record, it feels good for once being rejected on lack of technical
merits rather than failing some “culture fit” interview. A trend that is
giving me the worst interview streak of my career and is making me consider a
change of profession.

------
sleepychu

        Interviewer: It means we do Agile. Everything is in a flat structure, except
        when it comes to salary and responsibilities. We have a Recruitment Master,
        that coordinates all the other recruiters in Sprints.
    

Absolute gold.

~~~
sarabande
To give credit where it is due, this especially funny quote is nearly verbatim
copied from the original article ([https://medium.freecodecamp.com/welcome-to-
the-software-inte...](https://medium.freecodecamp.com/welcome-to-the-software-
interview-ee673bc5ef6)) from which "inspiration" for this one was taken:

    
    
        It means we do Agile. Everything is in a flat structure,
        except when it comes to salary and responsibilities. 
        We have a Translator Master, that coordinates all 
        the other Translators in Sprints."

~~~
cyphar
"""inspiration""". It's a flat-out and less funny rip-off of the original. In
fact, several of the responses don't make sense in this version that did make
sense in the original.

    
    
        Candidate: Forget it. Just give me a second ok? I think I will organize
        rows as candidates and columns as dates/times and use NOW, TODAY, WEEKNUM
        and the rarely used called YEARFRAC
    
        Interviewer: Oh, no, that’s from the answer sheet in the “Cracking the
        Recruiting Interview: 150 Spreadsheet Questions and Solutions.”
    
        Candidate: No, I mean, that is something I have used in the past for simple
        fractions
    
        Interviewer: How would I know? I’m not a spreadsheet wizard like you.

~~~
sleepychu
Oh yeah, I read this as like "you fail for giving me a standard answer" but
reading the original it's clear they missed the point here.

------
TamDenholm
I get at least 5 phone calls from recruiters a week, being a contractor. The
amount of times i get someone that asks me something like:

    
    
      Recruiter: "We're looking for someone with React experience, do you have that?"
      Me: "Yes"
      Them: "Ok, how about Javascript?"
    

I want to explain to them but i end up just saying yes to every acronym on
their list since they've no idea what they're asking for.

~~~
beager
It's funny because in a different context, that's exactly a sequence of
questions that I as an engineer would ask:

> Do you have experience with React?

> Okay, do you have experience writing pure, vanilla JavaScript? Absent a
> framework like jQuery or Backbone or Angular?

The second question can often screen out people who simply maintain framework
apps rather than those who actually know JS.

~~~
nulagrithom
Are you assuming that people who haven't maintained a vanilla JS app don't
actually know JS?

~~~
beager
Not at all. I'm getting at the fact that many frontend devs don't know
JavaScript, they just know cut-and-paste jQuery or how to fiddle with/maintain
React/Angular components in a large app.

~~~
cema
I doubt you can really just cut-n-paste jQuery in any nontrivial web app...

~~~
beager
Correct, and that's one way to decisively filter out people who haven't worked
on a nontrivial web app.

------
fecak
20 year recovering recruiter here (now more focused on providing services to
help job seekers).

I think at least some of the animosity job seekers have for recruiters is that
they may feel recruiters are designing these types of esoteric interview
questions and exercises. The overwhelming majority of recruiters are entirely
incapable of designing them because they lack the technical skills (myself
included).

The recruiter is primarily responsible for identifying a (hopefully) qualified
candidate and managing the hiring process along to ensure the "candidate
experience" doesn't get in the way of a hire being made. The recruiter might
be just as frustrated with that hiring process and the methods as the
candidate, but probably has little control over it.

If we want to end these types of interviews, the people to change them are
engineering managers. If the engineering manager wanted to end whiteboard
exercises and trivial questions on minute details, I assure you the recruiter
wouldn't be against it.

~~~
ryandrake
Exactly. My interactions with tech recruiters are, by and large, pleasant and
effective. There are some bad ones, but most just seem overworked at best,
flaky at worst. I don't see recruiters as a major part of the tech
interviewing problem. It's not until the point where the recruitment process
gets tossed over into to the hiring manager's hands where things go feet-up
and I start feeling like a piece of steak being graded.

------
dagw
On the flip side I recently interviewed for a programming position at a civil
engineering company and at no point in the process did anybody ask any
questions that would in any way test if I actually knew any of the things I
claimed to know. The entire "programming" part of the interview was
essentially:

"We use quite a bit of python. I see from your CV you've used python".

"Oh absolutely, I consider python the language I know best. I've worked on a
couple of larger python applications as well as used it extensively in a
number of smaller projects"

"Great!"

~~~
mrfusion
We all deserved to be treated with that kind of dignity.

I'm not sure where our industry went wrong. You'd never ask a doctor medical
school trivia during an interview.

~~~
ryanmarsh
Doctors take a test and go through a verifiable apprenticeship period.

If Dr. Nidal got his MD from Johns Hopkins and did his residency in pediatric
oncology at Sloan Kettering where he is a fellow and has published 2 papers on
Nueroblastoma you can safely assume he knows a thing or two about high risk
pediatric solid tumor cancers.

What do we have for programmers?

~~~
oega98
I have a shipping product I worked on for 12 years and that is used all over
the industry. I have a public mailing list you can search where I answered
questions from developers about the product during that entire time. I have a
profile on some well-known programming web sites (like Stack Overflow, etc.).
I have a degree from a well-known university and actually have at least 1
paper listed on Google Scholar. I still have had to do stupid whiteboard
programming exercises of 1st year data structure and algorithm nonsense.

~~~
ryanmarsh
Yes I'd say you deserve more respect than someone with an unknown background,
which is to say most candidates.

------
robotnoises
That really was funny, but man, it's hard to stomach "inspired by" when
realistically it's a Mad Lib of the original post from Free Code Camp.

------
dudul
Total rip off of the original post. What does it bring? The jokes are the same
( and sometimes lose their meaning in "translation")

~~~
dracodoc
Yes, almost byte by byte translation, and a bad one. The original is much
better.

I guess this title is better aimed at audience though, since many people may
not have interest on translation.

Strongly suggest people not read yet to read the original post
[https://medium.freecodecamp.com/welcome-to-the-software-
inte...](https://medium.freecodecamp.com/welcome-to-the-software-interview-
ee673bc5ef6)

------
ggggtez
These pieces always tend to feel to me like complaining. It assumes the reader
already agrees that tech interviewers are broken and does nothing to convince
others. I for one don't see whiteboarding questions as a problem, so the
scenario rings hollow.

~~~
nope123
Would you allow me to interview you and ask you some questions on algorithms
and data structures and have that recorded for everyone here to see. I bet you
that I can ask relevant questions that you'll struggle and most likely fail to
answer in the 20 minutes time allotted. And no they won't be from any standard
'cracking the code interview' questions. The point is, the relationship
between interviewer and interviewee should be reciprocal. Both should ask
questions and the winner gets the job (maybe even the interviewer's job) Now,
I think companies would love that as it exposes weakness in their ranks, but
interviewers would then join the rank of complainers. You haver to think more
deeply about this stuff, not just state whatever you feel like as your
righteous opinion.

------
throwaway8686
Time is the most valuable resource which can be saved tremendously if really
competent recruiters/interviewers are involved in the recruitment process.

I was recently interviewing for a position with a company behind pushcrew/vwo,
it took me roughly 55+ hours (cumulative) to work on their assignment, attend
interviews, company/business analysis etc.

I knew the the assignment which I had created was really good given the time
constraint on it. Even recruiters acknowledged it (!), but at the end the
decision was made on basis of team diversity!! They wanted to have a diverse
set of team. I'm not against their decision, it's their company and their
team. But to come to this conclusion, there's no need to make a candidate
spend this much amount of time.

Just by glancing over resume and previous history, they could have rejected me
straightaway OR maybe on the very first call! Both of my interviewers were
good, I think, but I doubt they weren't sure what exactly they were looking
for? It is simply another set of people, who I believe are from tech
background but lack experience in recruitment.

The equation should be managed properly: Tech knowledge + People
Skills/Management = Good Recruiter.

A good recruiter should be skilled equally in tech + his/her people reading
skills. It saves a lot of time, money and efforts for both of the parties
involved in the process.

------
pulse7
Recruiters usually aren't good at programming. If they were - in most cases -
they wouldn't be recruiting, but writing code... So their "identification of
good programmers" is somehow limited...

~~~
shubb
There are places where good technical recruiters earn substantially more than
programmers - if they get 10% year salary (which I understand is not the
highest number you might see), they only need ~1 successful placement a month
to make reach parity.

~~~
creepydata
Not only that but they may just enjoy recruiting more than they enjoy (or
don't enjoy) programing.

~~~
dagw
The two recruiters I know basically did it has a mid life career switch.

------
IceyEC
Why are we suddenly inundated with "If companies interviewed * the way they
interview programmers" posts?

~~~
sleepychu
because the community is super frustrated with the state of interviewing.

~~~
kaybe
It's quite interesting how different submissions on the front page build on
each other and there is a sort of meta-conversation happening with the flow of
articles.

I think AI or whatever you want to call it is not up to it yet, but it would
be an interesting investigation for in a few years.

------
jancsika
> You see, we are looking for the very best Recruiters, and it has been proven
> by major companies that the people that are able to do the job best have a
> very solid foundation in spreadsheets for quick applicant tracking.

Doesn't the punchline hinge on the above quote from the interviewer being
false?

In other words, if the research really did show that testing on spreadsheet
desiderata would get you the best recruiters, there would be no joke here.

edit: clarification

------
nautilus12
This is a picture perfect description of my interview with stitchfix.

~~~
jonathanwallace
I'm sorry to hear that. For which position were you interviewing?

~~~
nautilus12
Engineering. First job ive never gotten an offer for. I feel like they werent
serious about hiring and maybe they were required to interview a number of non
internal candidates and were just checking boxes. Huge waste of my time.

Granted I acknowledge Im not perfect and desirable in every way, but the
interview felt really silly

------
kevstev
I get that the point of the article is to point out the flaws of technical
interviews, but I see a lot of people griping and quite frankly circle jerking
about how bad recruiters are.

I am definitely "mid career" at this point and a manager and I consider my
"recruiter bench" to be a huge asset, both for when I am hiring, and also
looking. The thing is, yes absolutely 80% of them are garbage- they are mere
regex's and will likely be out of the industry in a few years.

The other 20%, that really know their shit, and have deep connections in the
industry are gold though. What you need to do is find those guys and build
relationships with them over time, so when you have an open head, or decide
its time, you already have a half dozen people you can call that you have a
long relationship that you trust to help get you a job. These guys can also
just give you good intelligence- what is hot right now, what is not, who is
paying well, which companies despite their darling status at the moment can't
seem to keep an engineer in their seats more than a year.

To get that kind of info though, you have to build a relationship. If I see
someone that writes a well informed, grammatically correct email to me, I will
look them up on LinkedIn. If they have been around awhile, have some shared
connections with me, maybe shared some posts that are interesting, I will
usually give them a call back and say "hey I am not interested, but lets keep
in touch- here are some things that might interest me in a new role, you are
welcome to bounce stuff that fits this off me any time." They will inevitably
continue to call you over time- and that's when you can start asking them
stuff- who is good/bad, etc. Even offer to get drinks (they will almost always
pay)- that's when you can get the really good gossip.

If you keep that bench warm, you will likely find that the quality of
potential positions thrown your way improves dramatically, as well as the
quality of potential candidates. At least that's been my experience.

------
SmellyGeekBoy
Step 1: Copy post from Free Code Camp

Step 2: s/translator/recruiter/g

Step 3: ?

Step 4: Profit

------
Retr0spectrum
Why-is-the-title-written-like-this?

~~~
philbarr
because-it-makes-you-read-it-faster?

------
jftuga
I actually created an Excel question for interviewing help desk candidates:

If you were to type in 5+2 into a cell, what would be the result?

:-)

------
chrisweekly
Instant classic. Hilarious -- and spot-on.

