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Comment by codingdave | Hacker News Reader

Recruiters putting silly time requirements on skills is nothing new. My favorite moment of this type was at a meetup for .NET, where a recruiter came in and asked for too many years of experience, and the entire room burst out laughing. She just smiled, accepted the grief we all were giving her, and changed the job description to be accurate. I forget the exact wording she used, but I remember the gist of her response was, "Thanks for correcting me - if I was an expert in the technology I'd be doing it, not looking for people to do it, so I appreciate it when you all help me understand it better."

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I get that she was actually a nice person who simply didn't know when .NET was invented. But I do not accept that she made a harmless and easily fixed error on the job requirements because of this.

Frankly, I'm not that concerned that the job requirements demanded more years of .NET experience then it was possible to have. I am more concerned about all the other requirements that were listed on that job description which were just as wrong but in a way that was not obvious.

Consider the analogy to all of the exonerations of convicted prisoners we have had since DNA analysis became possible. The minor problem is that hundreds of innocent people were held in prison for years before DNA analysis proved they were innocent. The bigger problem is that we have now demonstrated that the legal process has a significant rate of error, meaning that there are tens of thousands of innocent people serving years in prison whose cases didn't happen to permit exoneration by DNA.

That line in the job requirements that specifies you must have a college degree -- is that unnecessarily excluding a lot of qualified candidates? The general tendency to request more expertise and years of experience than are really needed -- is that driving off candidates with lower levels of self-aggrandizement? If it is, does that have anything to do with the deplorable number of women succeeding in our industry?

Asking for 12 years experience in Kubernetes isn't just a silly error: it is an unmistakable sign of a much deeper problem.

> That line in the job requirements that specifies you must have a college degree -- is that unnecessarily excluding a lot of qualified candidates?

Outside of careers requiring vocational degrees (like engineering), yes - but for any job posting simply requiring a degree (any degree) has a valuable selective effect of eliminating swathes of objectively unqualified and less-qualified candidates and thus shrinking the pool of people you'd need to call-in for an on-site interview - even though many objectively qualified but non-degree-holding candidates would be eliminated unfairly.

It's a trade-off based around how much value you assign to your recruiter's time.

I totally agree. There are many fields and situations where the cost for a certain type of error is negligible or non existant. This inevitably creates a system biased towards making gambles that end up create such errors.

If for example, a case where a person is discovered to have been wrongly accused and incarcerated would trigger a very serious investigation of the specific people that were involved in that decision (judge, jury, lawyers, experts etc), the system would be much more careful with such acts.

I agree and disagree with this.

I do feel that everyone who has been around the block knows that job requirements are nice to haves rather than need to haves. Otherwise no one would get hired.

On the other hand, I do think there are issues with how recruiters use descriptions that imply expectations that candidates have certain qualities like obsession with coding outside of work, being a tech bro, etc. And I do think some of the job requirement stuff overlaps. It makes it difficult for people who can do the work to feel comfortable applying and obviously is a negative for people who feel excluded from hacker culture which obviously does include minorities and women.

The problem is when resumes get filtered into trash because the computer determined that you don't fulfill the stated requirements (no matter how silly). Which is a common practice these days, especially in hiring agencies who are hired to do pre-screening of candidates for a company.

Add the outright dishonest recruiters ("Oh don't worry about that ultra short start date, I have only put that in there so that people apply faster!" - one 20something HR dude trying to rope me into a BS job ...) to the mix and then companies are wondering why they "can't find talent" and why skilled people have difficulties to find jobs.

just supporting your point: Why Women Don’t Apply for Jobs Unless They’re 100% Qualified [1]

[1] - https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-dont-apply-for-jobs-unless...

Or they could clearly put out actual REQUIREMENTS and then a list of 'nice to have's.

If you are expecting perfection then the world is going to be disappointing, in general.

I am sure perfection cannot be reached. I am hoping that we can recognize how far from perfection we are and adjust our systems to take account of that.

For the criminal justice system in the US, one of the clearest implications is that we should allow lawyers -- or at least judges -- to inform jurors about the basics of what we know about witness reliability. Because a huge portion of those we now know to have been falsely convicted we're convicted solely or primarily on the basis of witnesses.

For hiring, I think it means we should deemphasize filtering out candidates using some basic thresholds (like X years experience with Y) and emphasize opportunities for the candidates to demonstrate the skills they will use on the job.

Therefor, out of all the 360 directions one can choose to walk, we should not even bother trying to figure out in which direction perfection lies, let alone pick that direction to walk. Got it.

I mean, that’s cool, and better than nothing. But why don’t they ask someone that is qualified to determine those kinds of things before posting the job.

At least, that’s what the recruiters at my company do.

Asking or not asking a dev doesn't really change anything. The problem that I'd worry about is it signals (rather clearly) that the hiring manager isn't in charge of setting the requirements for the position. Who knows what a hiree is walking in to.

> But why don’t they ask someone that is qualified to determine those kinds of things before posting the job.

Because they don't want to. The recruiter's point stands from the other perspective too: if the technical people wanted their job requirements to be perfect, they'd spend time writing them and not hiring recruiters to do it instead.

I mean it also puts a bad light at the company. If they don’t even know when the software they want someone to be experienced in was released, how world they even judge if the applicant is competent in it?

Could just be a miscommunication between recruiters and devs of the company.

Which is a red flag on its own.

There's multiple stages. The recruiter does a handoff early on

The software jobs requirements (where I work) are written by team leads/software engineers, pretty much the same people that would be doing the interviews.

I worked at a company (who shall remain nameless) where the recruiters would "pad the requirements" asked for because it would draw in "more qualified candidates and people lie on their resumes anyway". I shit you not. I was aghast at this statement when I asked.... Needless to say, I just walked away from that particular conversation.

This is obviously the correct way to do it. I say "obviously" sarcastically because you'd be surprised how many companies just don't understand this or have policies that disincentivize reality.

> if I was an expert in the technology I'd be doing it, not looking for people to do it,

But this doesn't pass muster, it doesn't require knowing the technology, just a quick search of when the language was invented

May as well be a truck driver recruiter who doesn't know what a CDL is. Or a real estate agent that can't search MLS.

Wrong job recruiter for recruiting the job?

> and changed the job description to be accurate

Accurate? No, I don't think that's the correct word. The value was changed, but it was gibberish before and remains gibberish afterwards.

That’s the right attitude to have. I would hire her as my recruiter.

I don't know, she doesn't really seem experienced enough to be mine.

Maybe she could have a hiring manager proof what they’re looking for so it actually makes sense? This just means the first introduction to your company by a potential hire showcases a broken process.

At most jobs I've had the recruiters pretty much always work with the hiring manager on editing the job requirements and all that. Sure it could still just be a mistake, or it could mean the hiring manager wasn't in the loop.

I'd personally be wondering why she changed/added requirements to my job description ...

This sounds like a terrible experience for the recruiter.

I suggest re-examining the response you had based on understandings of gender issues in tech.

Your assumption that the room was full of men and one female recruiter perpetuates gender inequality as much as your assertion that everyone should refrain from good natured ribbing at ridiculous requirements just because the person dictating the requirements is a woman.

Gender inequality in tech is a much deeper issue that starts much earlier in life. And it's possible the ridiculous requirement of 12 years of kubernetes itself perpetuates the issue because it immediately preferences people who came up with the OG attitude.

At first approach I wanted to agree with you, but after trying to imagine a room full of women vocally laughing at a male recruiter who’s made a similar mistake I must concede that the matter is not so black and white.

Although I suspect that may be bait, when you look at everything from that perspective everything looks gender related. Just because they hired a woman to do the job has nothing to do with it.

Tribalism around gender, race, nationality etc. serves only to divide us into smaller and smaller groups.

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