Some ways to fix tech's broken hiring

[SeanKilleen]

• This is a systemic issue. It takes change on the part of both organizations and applicants to fix it.

For Organizations

• recognize that your hiring process is the way that many people in the industry will see your company and consider it for the first time. Make sure you are living your values in your hiring process.
• remember that people and hiring make or break a company. It is the difference between a team of people who share a common vision and add to a culture, and a bunch of people acting like cogs in the machine.
• expect hiring to take time. Especially the time of hiring managers. It is unavoidable for a quality process. And it should take time. That's part of the investment. This is not to downplay the role of recruiters, but to say that the people involved in the vision for and outcomes of the work need to be connected deeply in this process to the people who will be doing the work with them.
• Focus on "day 1" skills in a job description. A laundry list of buzzwords helps nobody and leads to gaming the system. Things beyond day one skills should be able to be taught. If you can't do that, address that first before hiring anybody if possible.
• stop keyword scanning your job applications. It is resulting in a massive race toward the middle where people are just trying to get past automated systems, and it makes their resumes harder for humans to parse. Many current systems encourage this.
• don't ghost people. There are like 100 ways to track that stuff and ensure it doesn't happen. Automated responses are better than no response.
• aim to provide value even to people you don't hire. This is most cheaply accomplished by committing to providing feedback. It helps the candidate in their next steps and costs nothing but a small polish on the notes you probably already took. They have take the time to invest in you and have taken a chance. Don't let them walk away with nothing. (This is also a good way to get candidates to refer other people by word of mouth. People talk about this stuff, and they remember how your experience made them feel.)

Applicants

• don't bullshit on your resumes. It's easy for a hiring manager to spot, and it probably doesn't feel good. You have enough to offer.
• have a resume for "gamified" responses (where you're trying to get past keyword gateways) and one for situations that aren't that. The two are incompatible. When I read a resume that is clearly engineered for that, it's very hard to trust it and assess what the candidate might be good at. A wall of buzzwords works against you in those situations.
• try to focus on accomplishments. A position that has 15 bullet points and one of them is "attended daily stand-ups" is going to work against you.

[SeanKilleen]

I added some other thoughts here that I can work in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39001583

[SeanKilleen]

I covered enough of this in the other posts that I don't think this one stands on its own anymore.