

Always find the best candidates - the 7 minute candidate matching system - seanjohnson
http://www.sean-johnson.com/2011/08/09/always-hire-the-best-candidate-part-one/
How I built a simple, effective candidate filtering system in 7 minutes for less than $100.
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kabdib
> Step Five: Hire someone cheap to look at the resumes

Fail. You'll miss someone who lacks some minor criteria but is stellar in
other areas.

"No college degree." Toss. You'll miss a bunch of the really good people I
know who didn't finish.

"No LinkedIn profile." Toss. You'll miss good people who honestly don't care
about LI.

"Expert in JS, not so much in CSS." Toss. You just lost a JS guru who's smart
enough to pick up the other things you need, as you need them.

Unless you filter carefully, this step will filter out the quirks, probably
the creative, driven people you really want.

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Troll_Whisperer
I agree with you that the author had some really crazy preferences in his
example. Penalizing a front end webdev who aren't on LinkedIn as harshly as
you penalize those who don't know HTML is absolutely bonkers!

In his defense, I think it was just meant to be an arbitrary example. You
could avoid this problem by dramatically lowering the point values assigned to
college degrees and LinkedIn profiles and upping the credit assigned to having
Javascript skills.

The real problem is that there's no distinction made between someone such as
myself who knows a bit of Javascript and someone who is an _expert_ in it.
Some criteria are binary, others are not.

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seanjohnson
It is binary, mainly because it has to be. You couldn't reliably job out a
screening like this if it required the person to understand the nuances of JS,
or any other skill requiring domain expertise.

But as long as you weight it properly, any candidate that makes the short list
has javascript as competency. Their level of expertise can be teased out as
you go. This is meant to be a first step to go from 300 down to 20, not to
take you all the way there.

There are other ways to make it more nuanced - identifying keywords that would
make it more likely to identify a JS expert in a resume or cover letter (not a
replacement for looking at someone's code, but again something a non
programmer could do). Or looking at someone's github account and seeing if
they have JS repos (maybe factoring in the # of people following those repos).
The formula would need some tweaking, but those are objective measurements
that could get you closer.

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hwang89
This site may already exist. Identified (www.identified.com) assigns a score
on each candidate's profile based on their network, previous experience, and
education. Recruiters search for a set of criteria and are presented with list
of relevant candidates sorted by score.

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diek
But what happens when someone comes up with a 6 minute candidate matching
system?

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seanjohnson
impossible :)

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emp_
For the ones wondering, quote:
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129387/quotes?qt=qt0410938>

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cletus
This is a recipe for mediocrity.

This is really no different from the HR filters many large companies have that
result in people asking questions like "I see you have 6 years of Java
experience. Do you have any J2SE experience?". The only possible difference is
weighting of criteria and I'm not convinced HR departments don't do that
already.

So, fail.

~~~
seanjohnson
What a screening system like this does in practice is save you from having to
look at hundreds of resumes from people who aren't even remotely qualified -
the folks who carpet bomb their resume out to anyone.

You're the one creating the criteria and determining the weighting, so if the
system excludes people because they don't have J2SE experience it's only
because you put it on the list and made it extremely important.

~~~
Troll_Whisperer
What it does in practice is encourage keyword-stuffing.

I've been going through dozens of iOS and webdev resumes a week and about two
in three have the right keywords. Their skills don't correlate strongly with
those keywords. What has gotten dramatically better results for me has been
this: put programmers through some automated programming tests (kind of like
an in house version of interviewstreet.com), and filter any graphic artists /
designer entirely based off of their portfolios.

That has quickly weeded out those who can't code (or design).

~~~
seanjohnson
Interview street looks fantastic. You probably don't need a system like this
for dev hires with a tool like that.

And you're right about designers - I look at portfolios more than anything
else. This system does save me having to look at resumes to figure out whether
they have a portfolio or not. It at least weeds out that third :)

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joedwy
Awesome - can save a ton of time and result in better hires!

