Anne Learns To Recruit
solipsys.co.uk
solipsys.co.uk
At one point I tried to get into the hiring pipeline to both streamline the process and to get better candidates in the door because the job adverts we were putting out were horrendous. Instead of seeking general problem solvers that were familiar with X, Y, Z technologies the adverts were specifying things like specific versions of Tomcat and JBoss. Long story short I just gave up. I couldn't get the recruiters out of the pipeline and they were the ones going to campuses and job fairs and gumming up the works. I couldn't get it across to them that we just wanted smart people and didn't really care if the person fell in front-end, back-end, or QA bucket.
I'm sometimes asked about tech hiring and I keep telling people that technical teams need to be responsible for technical recruiting. No one wants to hear that though.
Here's the reality: these companies can't hire. I know it and they know it.
They can't hire because they're invested in cancerous HR bureaucracy. Think The Crimson Permanent Assurance, the opening scene in Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life." Turns out there's a reason why The Very Big Corporation of America can't move fast and hire the people they need. And a lot of smaller companies trying in vain to hire like this don't have any excuse to act like VBCA because they aren't big now and never will be.
They can't hire because they won't pay market salaries, don't offer enough equity, and try to make up for it with a combination of pizza, Red Bull, foosball, and nerf guns.
They can't hire because their office is a place that makes Initech (the company in Office Space) look appealing.
They can't hire because they skimp on benefits.
All this has been covered before, but VBCA refuses to learn anything new because they don't want to change the way they do things.
I'd like to point out - this was not some fly-by-night sort of deal - they we're clearly not on a shoestring budget, well funded by major industry players, offering a unique solution, and it was the true startup environment - replete with: engineers who looked as if they rolled out of bed, and into work - friday night beer, free lunch, well stocked soda, nap and gaming rooms, and of course the obligatory fooseball table.
My title was to be "Senior Technical Support Engineer" - on my first day I was handed an HP laptop - with nothing but Windows on it, and a manual for their product, which I read in about 2 hours (I read fast, and it was only about an inch/inch and a half thick) - my training consisted mostly of watching the guy next to me do calls - most of which have to do with license entitlement issues and anything beyond that or simple config issues, required come cli-fu to fix.
The next day, was really just a repeat of the first - I still don't have an ID badge or a phone at my desk - so I keep watching and listening to these calls, I also took a note on hoe the majority of the office was dressed - pretty casual - Asking my peers about Putty and other apps, I asked, and was told I have local admin on the box, for office, go thru IT - anything else, just install yourself - so I then installed putty and winscp, and went thru the rigmarole to get office installed.
The next day I showed up in toe shoes, jeans and a button up shirt - as I don't really have much in the way of dressy working clothes (plus they advertise not having a dress code on their website) - but my toe shoes are brown leather - so I figure it cant be that bad, I get a sneery look from the manager and an aside comment - later that day, I was called in - and told that this would be my last day - she said I spent the whole day on Facebook (at that time I didnt even have one), dressed unprofessionally and installed "advanced software" on my laptop - I of course protested, and indicated what I saw for dress - and then told her what I was told about tools - she told me I didn't need putty, that was too advanced.
That was that - and of course the consulting house that sent me in basically looked at me as mud - I got fired on the third day; who gets fired on the third day? - eventually 2 other people had a similar experience and I was in good graces again.
The moral of this is - its not enough to worry about HR - HR is one problem, you also need to make sure you have a sane way of onboarding people, no matter if your giant or not.
From the perspective of the agency recruiter, what seems to happen at some companies is that the development team just find the person they want through the agency recruiters and unless HR can find a better person, they tell HR to hire them and pay the recruiting agency. It's an approach that is hard for HR to argue against if they can't find a good person.
e.g.
"Seeking Junior Ruby on Rails developer with 8+ years in C++, JavaScript,
Delphi, AnyLisp, MongoDB, NoSQL, API, Agile, MooseTalk, Apache, GoLang
Experience contributing to the Linux Kernel preferred"If he refuses, then she needs to either get on with her job with the people she has and accept that the schedule delays are not her fault and not her problem, or start looking for a job in a less dysfunctional company.
There is a main concern about the interview process in this story. Anne's team should've been the one interviewing. Then they would know who would have the skills required.
Excellent hands-on experience building ETL jobs using ETL tools like Informatica, Talend, Ab Initio etc.
Bloody hell, that's a disaster. How do they ever hire anybody that way?