Antipatterns for finding applicants

Hi, Habr. As a team leader, I simultaneously stand on both sides of the search for applicants - for the last five years I have been actively participating in interviews of my developers, as well as undergoing interviews. I’m not ashamed to write that I go for interviews - this helps to understand what is now in demand in the market, and where you have gaps that would be good to fill. Anyway, any specialist should strive for growth, not stagnation.

And during this time I have accumulated a huge number of funny and sad stories of interaction with recruiters on both sides, which I decided to organize into a general collection of antipatterns. Go!

Vacancy

Each search begins with the publication of a vacancy, and it is very important to properly format it.

To begin with, never specify a salary - the applicant should dream of working at your startup Gorim LLC, and it should not matter to him how much money he will be paid. And in general, why do you need mercantile employees?

Next, be sure to look for a full stack. Everyone knows this buzzword, and why hire several developers if everything can be done by one? Front, back, databases, architecture, server support, and better availability of transport to transport the product to customers.

It’s better to write that this is an interesting work with a bunch of prospects and opportunities for self-realization - then the applicant will definitely bite on doing absolutely everything in your company.

You can also write about responsibility, leadership qualities, and that the developer himself must understand everything and set himself goals. In the end, you already have a vision of your product - you just have to fill it in, and the macaque will cope with this.

You can also tell that you will pay a percentage of something there. It’s dangerous to promise money, and the percentage of zero is always zero, and you risk nothing.

If you still don’t know which stack will be used in the product, ask your friends or read articles on the Internet - you need to immediately determine which developer you are looking for. And you can figure out the technology yourself - easily. For example, you can understand that clear boys write on go and use NoSQL at the same time - that means you definitely need a go developer with NoSQL knowledge on your website selling earflaps hats with one and a half visitors per day.

Be sure to write that you will soon move to the USA or somewhere else where programmers usually want. It is safe. "Soon" is a loose concept, usually meaning "as soon as we suddenly get a ton of money and bathe in it like Scrooge McDuck." So what if it’s at best for a couple of years. It may happen. Some are lucky! So your startup - the killer of Facebook and Google at the same time - will definitely take off.

In no case do not disclose what you actually have to work on. You probably have a priceless idea, and it can be stolen by an insidious developer - keep quiet and mysteriously hint at highload, blockchain, instagram, neural networks and SaaS.

In vacancies you need to immediately write that you all love refining and constant deadlines. Bad and lazy is the developer who does not dream of doing something good at least 12 hours a day. Naturally, no one pays for processing - you are a team and work for the product, not for despicable gold.

Be sure to make it necessary to add a cover letter where the developer will write why he wants to go specifically to you. He goes not just to get money for his work, but to you! Let it justify, at least 500 characters. Those who write "I want to work with you, like a job is right for me," you can immediately filter.

In addition to the cover letter, it is also nice to make a questionnaire with 20 or more questions - the more you know about the applicant, the better! Feel free to give this questionnaire to the applicant several times in a row - discrepancies in the answers can tell you a lot.

Separate remark on the search for juniors. If you are looking for a novice developer, then he must have at least five years of work in a similar position and experience in industrial implementations.

In no case do not ask the applicant how important the white salary is to him. The fact that you have only gray, he should know only after passing three interviews, solving test problems and getting to know everyone, including cleaner Ahmet. Surely after that he will be soexhausted I am glad to work with you that I will not pay attention to such trifles as a gray salary.

Do not forget to write in the job description that you have cookies. And also Agile and Scrum. This is so original!

Automatically respond

Hooray, the vacancy is ready! What to do next? First of all, you need to write a response letter that comes from the machine to interested applicants. It is best to indicate your phone number there and write so that the applicant calls you if he is suddenly still interested in the vacancy that he responded to five minutes ago.

Search for job seekers

You probably know that the developers themselves do not know what they want, so look diagonally and send an invitation if at least one word matches.

• Doesn't the salary plug double? It doesn’t matter if he suddenly overstates the requirements or really wants to work in your startup?
• He wants a lead developer, but you have a junior job? Well, let your lip roll.
• He wants to do backend, but you have a frontend? Well, they said above that the developer should only be a full-joint (or whatever it is. In short, he should be able to rearrange Windows and repair the coffee machine).

In general, you have so little time, and your KPI is measured by the number of applicants that you find. Send everyone, and let there already highbrow developers understand if Javascript is suitable for Java developer, or 1C developer for C #.

Work with the applicant

Remember - your main working tool is the phone. Nothing can replace the good old tube voice communication. Even if the developer indicated that he preferred three other communication methods. So what if he is most likely at his previous job or at home. Surely he can find 20 minutes to chat with you. He doesn’t get a call every day with a job offer.

Separately, I note that developers often attach a bunch of garbage in the resume - profiles on some sites, some kind of code ... You need to cut it all off so that techies only get the information they need. Name and list of jobs - this is a necessary and sufficient data set.

Do not rush to respond to the response of the candidate. His initial enthusiasm should be defended - what if he changes his mind about working for you and leaves for another company, and you are wasting your time in vain?

Test tasks

Remember the test items! It’s necessary to filter people somehow. It is customary to give three categories of test items:

1. Typical task downloaded from the Internet. It doesn’t matter if it is boring - the applicant is not going to have fun with you. It does not matter that the solution has already been published on hundreds of resources - it certainly will not look. And in case it happens - add a timer to the test task - everyone says they say “the deadline is exciting for the creator”.
2. Some kind of difficult task for the applicant to show himself in all its glory. Expect him to spend 2-3 days on it. In the end, does he want to work for you or not?
3. The last category that has recently lost popularity is to take some current task of your company and ask the applicant to do it. So to speak, test in conditions close to combat. But in fact, you can use tasks such as free outsourcing. Cool! It is strange that in recent times I see such test tasks less and less.

By the way, you can take test tasks in which you do not understand at all. It doesn’t matter - you just need to make sure that the candidate’s answer matches the letter in the cheat sheet before the letter.

Personal interviews

There are several mandatory commandments that you need to follow when conducting an interview, no matter whether it is remote or not.

• Do you know that it’s decent to be 15 minutes late? Well, here it is the same. Begin an interview 15-30 minutes after the appointed time, this will give the candidate better preparation and calm down.
• If the interview involves connecting additional people, start looking for them at the time of the interview. No need to distract people in advance.
• For an interview you need at least 4-5 people, except for the applicant. He then work together, so let the whole team evaluate him, at the first interview. They just sit on chairs all day, so let them spend it profitably. If you attract 5 people and conduct at least 3 one and a half hour interviews per week, then during the week they will usefully use 3x5x1.5 = 22 hours, i.e. almost three person-days.
• It’s not worth the time to remember or prepare a candidate’s resume in advance. In the first half hour, everyone will already remember who he is, what position he came to, and he will tell his resume again. To disguise the fact that you have lost his resume, you can ask to tell his resume in your own words. This is solid and will show a lot, including to the candidate.
• Bad is the programmer who is not ready to write code on a piece of paper. Let it show that it can not only write code in an environment that does everything for it. Moreover, you definitely need to write working code in your specific language, and not some block schemes (well, what does Alexander have to do with it?).
• Surely the applicant has come to you with the feeling that he is cool and worthy of a lot. Even so, you obviously do not want to overpay for it - so find in his resume something that he did ten years ago, and ask more difficult questions. Let him understand that you can only clean the toilet.
• There must be several interviews. For example, the first happens with HR, the second with the developer, the third with the lead, the fourth with the whole team, and the fifth with the CEO. Do not rush anywhere, the applicant is not a wolf, he will not run away into the forest.
• Take long pauses between each stage of the interview, preferably at least a week. This will provide an opportunity to carefully evaluate the candidate and show that you have a serious company, and not some kind of sharashka.
• If you need to postpone the interview time, do it half an hour before the candidate arrives. Well, you cannot take into account all possible factors in advance.
• If the candidate said something that you did not expect, then you can laugh together. It really discharges the atmosphere!
• If the interview is remote, then ask the applicant to turn on the camera, but do not turn it on yourself. You are looking at him, not he at you.
• Any luxury like a headset is not at all necessary for an interview. Echo, office noises, negotiations around - this is a normal working environment.
• If you needed to go out during an interview, feel free to do it. You can leave the problem to the candidate and leave for an hour or two. Let her solve it slowly and drink instant coffee from a cup that he was kindly offered.
• Be sure to first ask the candidate what he knows about your company. If he did not conduct a survey to obtain information about all of her products and people, then he is not interested in you! In this case, do not tell anything yourself.
• I almost forgot. At any interview, you must definitely ask about patterns. And ask to implement singleton. Or at least ask to write some recursion or something about the Fibonacci numbers. All serious companies ask this. Probably, it was necessary to put this first point.

Be sure to ask the candidate for recommendations at the current job from his management. And then you never know what.

If you liked the candidate, and you agree on everything, then do not forget to bargain. After all, your job description says “until xxx”. So you will not deceive anyone if you offer “xxx: 2”. People are like watermelons in the market, only people. The principles of trade are the same. If the applicant disappeared after your proposal, well, that means that he is simply not motivated to work with you and is to blame.

And if the candidate does not agree to accept your offer, then tell us that the situation on the market is difficult, it is not so easy to find a job, and you already have other candidates who have agreed to this place - let them be scared and accept your conditions!

If the candidate nevertheless agreed, then offer to go to work tomorrow, or better today. Even if his current place of work is indicated. Why waste time?

Life hack: in a letter to a candidate you can ask a bunch of questions and even ask you to recommend someone, and if you write "Thank you in advance" at the end, then you can not waste time answering!

Another general recommendation - remember: you are a machine, you are a processor for processing applications into people! Everyone needs to use the same approach so that the applicant understands that he is a potential screw in a huge machine that needs to know its place in it. Fan mailings, exchange of databases of applicants, messy connections in linkedin - all this is suitable for finding people!

Well, the last. If you did not like the job seeker, then simply hammer in the correspondence. Why waste your time on someone who doesn't suit you? In addition, by refusing you can also offend a person! And do not tell him what exactly he needs to tighten - if he did not suit you today, then he will never do.

Follow these tips, and you will certainly not find yourself the right developer!

I would not want this post to be taken for some kind of nagging. On the contrary - I want to think that he will reach many recruiters, and they, having noticed some points behind them, will work on them. Both parties (developers and recruiters) are interested in finding work quickly and efficiently.

Yes, a separate post could be written about applicants - I admit that there is also a lot of fun on this side - but it will not be so interesting and useful.

Так же хотелось привести несколько примеров компаний с той и другой стороны, но решил, что это не совсем корректно. Кто-то себя просто узнает в этих примерах.

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UPD. Дополнено антипаттернами от kyb27, White_Scorpion, samuelsh, Idot, yefrem, michael_vostrikov, santanico.