Pedantic Interviewers

These days there are an increasing amount of applications, time constraints, and limited employable spaces at companies. This creates a huge spiral of competitive dilemma for candidates trying to get an employment. It is even harder for ones just starting out as their first job. Technical interviews usually require some level of programming test. However, the more hands on a test is the more pedantic the interviewer will get in process. Even mistakes that an interviewer makes in their own daily lives can seem like an issue to mark against a candidate. For a lot of candidates that get rejected these days their solutions are pretty much perfect in terms of deliverable. What this means is that interviewers look for every corner case possible to mark a candidate off as there are no other ways about filtering them. Interviewers are setting a very unfair target for themselves and screening out perfectly good candidates in process. This can be very frustrating for candidates too. Not to mention if the interviewer does not even bother to check their test and ends up messing them around which means a wasted exercises. Most interviewers can't be bothered for the time and effort that a candidate puts into their application and interview tests. And, in turn, they provide for an aimless feedback that has no real meaning to candidate other than the fact that code was not produced in a similar way as to how the interviewer likes it even though the candidate approach is perfectly logical. With pedantic interviewers, a candidate also has an opportunity to work out how the team is going to be like on a typical work day. Would you really want to work with such a person in your team who just has an issue with everything right down to what you name your variable, spelling, to the approach you followed. There have even been cases in UK where an interviewer has marked a candidate off because they used American English spelling of words in their code. Some senior developers are so strung out on process that they really forget to deliver on quality. Would you rather see a piece of code that was optimized and correct with no issues, compared to a solution that worked in sub-optimal time, had a whole lot of unnecessary tests, and still created issues in production. Tests are essentially there to provide a confidence level to assure the code does what it needs to do, has been properly refractored, and can be applied to a continuous integration for repeatable build tests. Overbearing tests that have little sense are just driving time wasted solutions. After all tests are self-engineered. However, an experienced productive developer can build tests that are minimal, logical, and yet have a better coverage. Again, over engineering on solutions is driving away creativity and innovation and instilling a very rigid and illogical approach to quality assured development practices.  

Clueless Recruiters

Most recruiters have little to no clue about technology or the relevance of it to a role. When they conduct CV screening they are usually just looking for keywords. They have usually no idea what the manager really wants and what the candidate is stating in their technical CV. In respect of that, it means the candidate not only has to tailor the CV for the recruiter but also the technical manager. Possibly, a very difficult task in meeting a balance. The recruiter would like to see a word document and yet a technical manager most likely prefers the PDF document version. Not to mention in process of CV screening the very good candidates will get screened out of the process for having either too many or too little of any given keyword on their CV. Perhaps, most technology related companies should really do away with third-party recruiters and let technical managers and developers deal directly with CV screening themselves. It is understandable that people are bound by time constraints and most only spend about 10 seconds to review a CV before making a decision. However, reviewing the context of a CV is paramount in recruiting the right candidate for the job. These days a recruiter will decline a CV on all sorts of reasons which may have no relevance to what the technical manager has asked for. Also, it is understandable that minority groups in any society are always at a disadvantage as part of institutional discrimination. It may be assumed that it does not exist, but it is something that ordinarily does happen at a subjective level and as part of human judgement. A non-white is generally less likely to get a salary at par to a white individual and at same time less likely to be offered an interview in certain places. There is even a correlation these days that plays into having a specific religious affiliation which draw even more stereotypes on the CV screening and review process. A fair and equitable process of recruitment is key in finding the right people and knowing your candidate in an objective way also makes for a more approachable process for both parties. Making assumptions about a profile only leads to good candidates that will not be accepted and in process business will struggle to find the right skills. There is generally a technology skills shortage in world and will continue as newer approaches from open source community are developed. This would mean a demand for people who are well versed in their use and implementation. Elucidation of technical concepts and how they are used need to be approached methodically from a balanced view point of communicating to both non-technical as well as technical individuals on  CV. Conducting aptitude and personality tests are also a complete waste of time. Even at certain interviews the interviewer wants to ask as many technical questions as possible without realizing that a lot of it has no relevance for the role, which means a complete waste of time. At most companies recruitment processes are a foregone conclusion with much to be desired in terms of improvements and any consideration for candidates. One thing is for sure, the future of recruiters is in a sure demise as job search engines turn into smart matching engines and people are more able to rely on intelligent approaches rather than requiring people to do the job. Even human resources personnel will be reduced at most technology companies, in future, as most processes are pushed to the cloud or are automated to provide for a more contextual efficiency.