

Ask HN: Effects of hiring based on GitHub - fraserm

A growing part of the industry over the past several years is making github or other open source code examples mandatory for the application process.<p>Since I am interested in recruitment what changes have HN users noticed?<p>- Has the average quality of interview candidates increased?<p>- Do impressive open source contributions correlate with high performance when hired into your company?<p>- Do employees now push to open source internal tools to demonstrate their work?
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shubhamjain
A related question to this. While I have started putting up my code on Github
but they are rather small hacks which I do in my free time. I find it hard to
be persistent in extending them or contributing to existing projects. Does
that reflect negatively on me?

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daken
I work in the gaming industry, and recently have been spending a lot of time
between reviewing resumes and going through Github code. What I did notice is:
\- The best profiles I've seen were not Github publishers \- Doing a dev-test
prior to interview is a better sorting \- I believe open-source contribution
is a state of mind and not of performance

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fraserm
Has any Github code or practices put you off interviewing someone so far? What
kind of dev test do you do? Question and answer or give them a spec to
implement?

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daken
I give them a dev test (Node JS) with their choice of database to create a
small service (front end and back end).

Deliverable is code + db scheme + additionnal questions (mostly how they would
improve if they had time, choice on tech etc.)

We also have in interview "do this function for me" to see how they think

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allworknoplay
\- yes \- yes \- yes ... but that's not to say it's a must or even a terribly
significant factor. It merely makes you easier to say 'yes' to from afar, and
that's it. I think people generally realize that the "github profile is a
must" mentality is extremely likely to pass by highly qualified candidates in
a hiring market where nobody can afford to do that. Willingness to torch any
candidate that doesn't behave like a 25 year old groomed in the silicon valley
of the last few years is not a successful hiring strategy.

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Peroni
Making it mandatory to have appropriate examples of your work on GitHub is
foolish. There are a huge number of talented engineers who simply don't have
the time or the ability to maintain a decent OS repo.

Sure, it certainly helps to be able to see real samples of code but it should
never be a mandatory requirement.

