
Ask HN: What to look for in a job candidate's GitHub profile - noaclpo
What do you look for when evaluating a job candidate&#x27;s Github profile?
What do you value most? What warning signs do you watch out for?
Do you skim their activity log or try to analyze commits in depth?
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awareBrah
It's quite hard to gather anything of importance. You have to remember that
some of the best candidates work full time on their company's private repos.
If they do have their own projects, they might be using a diff VCS. Either
way, there are too many variables to make a github have any warning signs, but
it's a good data source along with everything else to get a better idea of a
candidates background.

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mooreds
* Do they have a github profile?

* Have a conversation about what is in it.

Don't expect a github profile to be professional class code. Sometimes it is
just a playground.

So to me it is just one more data source to learn about a candidate.

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guessmyname
Considering how easy it is to fake commits with Git, Mercurial, and maybe
others I wouldn't trust must of the information provided in a GitHub profile.
You might get a vague idea of the contributions to other projects and the
preferences of the coder for coding standards, language, tooling, and silly
things like that but don't expect anything serious, as other user commented:
some of the best candidates work full time on their company's private
repositories. I would also add the fact that some companies have clause in
their contracts stating that all code written by the employee during his free
time _(aka. side projects)_ is to be owned by the company, I had this clause
in my contracts and that is why my GitHub account only hosts experimental
projects, nothing serious that I would want an employer to consider in order
to offer a position in their company.

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mrits
I was the original programmer at my startup. 7 years later I'm the chief
architect. I've had very little time to contribute to open source projects.
Any kind of creativity itch I have I can funnel into our product somehow. It
would be very upsetting to me if someone got a bad vibe from my low activity
on github.

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ig1
You're approaching hiring from the wrong angle. You're looking at evidence and
letting that decide what you hiring criteria should be, when what you should
be doing is the exact opposite.

Start with writing a set of criteria for the role you want to hire and then
measure the evidence against that. So for example if you criteria is "writes
well commented code" you could use the candidate's code on github for evidence
to support that (although a better approach would be to evaluate a work-sample
test).

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bendixso
I'm not sure I get what all the cynicism is about. Github can be really
helpful for figuring out where someone's strengths lie.

If they are really proud of what they've done, I would want to look at a few
sample projects.

If they can explain clearly what their code does, I might even forego a code
test. After all, if you aren't paying for the test, you're just wasting their
time. There are lots of candidates who won't do an unpaid code test because
the subject matter is usually really boring, and they would rather work on
something meaningful.

I suppose anything can be faked, so I would be asking myself if their story
matches what's on the Github profile. If it doesn't, then what you're seeing
is probably fake. If it does, you can use it as a springboard to ask more
questions.

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probinso
If they have a project that they list on their resume that is also on their
github, then take a quick look. Just enough to decide if you can ask them
questions without getting their input first.

Also, if they list a bunch of languages, but they don't have examples in those
languages, then have questions about that. (there aren't very many polyglot
shops)

Remember, to become a rockstar cpp programmer
[https://github.com/avinassh/rockstar](https://github.com/avinassh/rockstar)

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kasey_junk
I don't look at GitHub profiles unless a candidate specifically mentions
something they are proud of. In that case, I scan the project they are proud
of with the most charitable outlook I can.

Most of the best developers I know either have no GitHub profile or have
profiles that are full of noodling that is not indicative of their output.

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_RPM
Honestly, it should only matter for New Grad positions. Why would it be
relevant beyond the new grad position?

