Comment by Tyrannosaurs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tyrannosaurs | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I'd be terrified of anywhere that didn't put their best people forward for interviews. Two reasons:

1) Hiring someone is a big deal. You want the people best placed to judge whether they're right involved.

2) You're selling the company to someone who may/will have other choices. Put the people forward who are going to do the best job of that.

Point 2 is important. I have no interest in candidates who do the whole "you'll make all the effort and bend over backwards because I'm in demand". Similarly I have no time for companies who demand days of preparation before interview as if I have no other options and they're the only game in town. In almost all cases the person isn't good enough to put up with that attitude and the company isn't the only place the person might consider working.

Jobs are a coming together of two interested parties and both sides need to show respect and be fair and reasonable. As a result if I'm recruiting then beyond a slightly tailored CV and some basic research into what we do (and maybe the technologies we use if you don't know them) I don't expect preparation. In exchange I'm going to spend time telling you about the role, the company and the project, I'm going to answer questions and I'm going to be as honest as I can be to make sure you can make a good decision.

Wait, the developers are the most important? Then why is the initial filtering done by someone else? Why does the hiring manager have no time to waste on hiring? When it's time to do some real work that take time and discernent, it's the developers who do it.

'sounds familiar?

Showing respect is not having someone who have no clue in JS libraries filtering CVs for JS positions, certainly not. They'll settle for famous education places. The candidate write without too many typos and show proper development skills and the hiring chain show proper hiring skills and get the hiring process as least stupid as possible. That's what I would call respect from both parties.

Having a clueless HR person initially filtering the CVs for keywords in 15s is not showing respect. They'll have their role later, in managing the vacations, doing the pay stubs, calling some previous places for feedback, bugging the newly hired with red tape and managing the retirement plan, places where they make a difference.

A few things:

1) Like all things it's a balance. Developers are valuable resources and I'm not going to dump 100 CVs on them when I can reduce that number. Aside from anything else they'd hate me if I did but also I can reduce that number without significantly reducing the quality.

2) In many cases these aren't HR generalists, they're recruitment professionals. They know about whether people are eligible to work, they know about qualifications, they can spot odd patterns and gaps in CVs and they can spot a well written CV.

You mock spotting typos but how interested should I be in someone who sent out a professional document to someone they were trying to impress and didn't proof read it? How serious are they about the job? Are they going to send the same sort of thing out to my customers? Maybe it's just me but while it wouldn't exclude them outright for this, it raises alarm bells.

3) You can define basic rules which allow someone relatively non-technical to filter out complete time wasters. If a candidate hasn't listed JavaScript in any of their roles and I've asked for commercial JavaScript experience then I can reasonably conclude (1) they don't have it, (2) they do but not enough to warrant listing it (which is effectively 1) or (3) either they are an idiot or their communication skills suck because despite knowing it was relevant they didn't mention JavaScript when applying for the job. Whichever it is of those I don't think I need to waste a developer's time having them look at the CV - maybe they do have those skills and a developer could work that out but I could probably find someone who knew JavaScript who didn't also have the questionable decision making skills that led them not to mentioned it.

Let's be clear, this isn't a stage where people making difficult, detailed decisions requiring specialist skills. This clearing what should be a relatively low bar to create a long list where those with real skills will get involved.

They put HR in between the hiring manager so that said hiring manager doesn't just bring in all of his buddies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com