

Ask HN: Why is tech recruiting broken? - ihadaquestion

Nowadays it is almost cliche' to hear both startups and mid/large size companies in the software industry complain about how hard it is to find good technical people. I want to understand why, so please indulge me.<p>The developer's perspective is easy to figure out, we've all heard that one: company's mission is not exciting, the goal isn't clear, I'm being promised .1% equity of something that will likely be worth $0 anyway, tools are boring, doesn't let me telecommute, the pay isn't high enough, the location is unfavorable and much much more..<p>What about the company's perspective though? If you've ever recruited for a company, then please share your opinion from the trenches.<p>What's the key problem here? It's my understanding that most startups receive hundreds, if not more, applications weekly. You have access to wonderful resources such as angel.co/talent, GitHub jobs and StackOverflow jobs with hundreds of verified quality developers on there. Recruiters, if you can afford them, will try to poach quality developers from other gigs for you. These days even VCs will talent scout for you! Once again, what's the issue?<p>Thank you!
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andrewstuart
The problem is that companies won't employ anyone who isn't perfect. They
don't believe anyone is capable of learning, and if they do think someone is
capable of learning, they don't want to be "paying them to learn". If you
haven't worked at a company that looks exactly like this one, working on
exactly the same technologies and processes then you are rejected.

~~~
ihadaquestion
I can tell you from personal experience that very large companies, especially
the ones that are no longer perceived as hot as they once were, have a rather
low bar of entry. I can see however why a small business would want to be very
cautious though. Say you're a 9 person business, the 10th guy you hire is
going to determine 10% of the company's success. You want to make sure you
don't screw up on that. It's a fine balance, right?

Is your opinion that startups these days are on the excessively cautious end?
Would hiring more openly for a trial position and firing fast be a better
approach?

~~~
andrewstuart
The question is, wait six to nine months, have no-one in the job and don't get
that stuff done, or recruit a smart person now who needs to learn stuff? Hire
smart people with good fundamentals of computer science who have a proven
willingness and ability to learn.

~~~
ihadaquestion
It's a good point. The only case I can think of where you wouldn't want that
is if you don't even know if you'll have enough runway in 9 months, but that's
probably not quite hiring stage.

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antonwinter
This is a big question that i face daily. here at our recruitment company, we
are actual programmers that do recruitment. first, let me tell you, it does
make a big difference in who we choose. When a coder starts talking about how
they are using elastic search, AWS or even good old C#, we can talk to them
about how the ins and outs and work out how much they actually know.

The challenge that we are facing is with the employers. Many of them that use
a HR department rely on a "tick the boxes" approach that cuts out many many
good coders. Others rely on "rockstar <insert brandname>" company to choose
who gets in. maybe 70%+ of good coders dont make it through because of the
above 2 hurdles.

Most of our clients spend 6+months trying to get people, until finally they
work out that its the internal process that stops them employing, not the
perceived ( and IMHO non existent ) skills shortage.

~~~
ihadaquestion
What is your typical customer, if you don't mind me asking? Can smaller
startups afford your services?

Also, do you consider culture fit at all? I read somewhere that because
recruiters make their money on volume, their interest in small companies is
rather limited. Basically, it doesn't make business sense for them to spend
hours to get to know a small company's culture inside-out and then send them
one-two candidates. You could be funneling dozens of developers to very large
clients with very generic culture requirements in that time frame.

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trueneverland
A lot to be said about difficulty in finding a culture fit, personality fit...
basically evaluating the person as a whole vs their skillset.

Most people say they want a rockstar engineer (or insert other rockstar
positions here). What they really want (or should) is to find someone who fits
and can reasonably do their job well. Some times this means learning something
fast, but other times, its a bunch of other nuances in between and traits a
person may have about their personality or who they are. The smaller the
startup, the more critical and true this is.

~~~
ihadaquestion
People will occasionally hint at this. The impression I got is that startups
often interview for high technical skills and hope that the brief interaction
during the meetings gave them sufficient insight into the person's personality
and culture fits.

Supposedly, it often happens that a few months down the line you realize that
a lot of expectations and quirks weren't properly discussed and you get into
sticky situations.

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ig1
There aren't enough good developers on the market, demand is significantly
exceeding supply.

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heretohelp
People doing the recruiting don't know anything about

1\. Programming

2\. Programmers

3\. What makes a programmer 'good'

4\. How to identify a 'good' programmer

5\. How to appeal to a good programmer

~~~
godbolev
I'm an undergrad studying CS and Electrical & Electronic Eng. I'm keen to
improve myself.

Just out of curiosity, how would you identify a 'good' programmer? What makes
a programmer 'good'?

Cheers for your answers in advance.

~~~
dbecker
If you've ever worked with classmates on a program, you probably already have
a sense of what it means to be a good programmer. As you become more advanced
and experienced, the differences between good programmers and bad programmers
will change some... but not a lot.

You also may be interested in Joel Spolsky's views on what employers should be
looking for in a programmer. It's at
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html)

