Comment by morbia | Hacker News Reader

Comment by morbia | Hacker News Reader

I'm a hiring manager for UK based FTSE 100 company, hiring software engineers and data scientists. I wanted to give a perspective from 'the other side'.

I've been involved in hiring for a few companies since 2018 ish, and I've noticed a really sharp decline in the quality of candidates this year. Recently I have interviewed no end of candidates who have 5+ years experience, made redundant and seem to think they can walk into a job with zero effort.

Some recent examples that I am slightly changing for anonymity:-

- a candidate could not remember how to do a for loop in python

- a candidate told me they forgot what the job they applied for was and who we are

- the only question a candidate asked me at the end of the interview was 'can I work on my personal laptop?' We are a multi billion pound company, not a startup.

If these were graduates I can forgive some of the poor interviewing skills, but these were for mid/senior positions, sometimes leads!

I would like to stress, there are some fantastic candidates coming through too, and I am deeply sorry for anyone who has lost their job. The challenge though as a hiring manager right now is wading through the vast numbers of candidates who really put in zero effort, and there are a lot of them.

I am not hiring but I have discussed with hiring managers and interviewers and they said there are a lot of candidates who really cannot code almost anything or are completely lost even with most basic things

I was in this boat a few months ago, doing a lot of exercises on leetcode legitimately helps, because you can quickly type an ~80-90% solution immediately from memory, and you have a lot of time left over to finish the remaining portion. It also looks super impressive from the hiring side.

> a candidate told me they forgot what the job they applied for was and who we are

How long from the application to the interview? I’ve damn well forget what some random company or job I applied to was when they reach out months after the application. Look at these threads. Experienced people are having to put in hundreds of applications just get a single callback. I can’t remember the specifics of every company/job with that sort of volume when you wait that long

I don't know the lead time from when they apply, but the time it takes to go from CVs hitting my inbox to first interview is about a week.

I'm not sure that is really a valid excuse though. I understand if you're making a lot of applications it's hard to keep track, but all it takes is a 10 minutes refresher just before the interview. I do exactly the same with candidate's CVs prior to the interview too and I've never mixed up candidates up to date. 24 hours afterwards I'll have forgotten everything without my notes.

Also a top tip, even if you're in a mad panic in the interview and your mind has gone blank, wording is key. "Can you give some more details about the role and the company?" comes across a hell of a lot better than "Sorry I've forgotten what I applied for".

The analogies here to dating are striking to me. Sure you might have gone on 3 dates in that week, but if expect one to work out you better not get their name wrong.

RE point 1: in the actual job these days, we're coding through so many layers of distributed madness that you end up doing YAML/JSON engineering and gluing systems together more than anything, for years on end. A lot of "software engineers" are not writing software, or engineering. Candidates will have to brush up on the basics, because it's been so long. An anecdote: explicit for loops were banned from a codebase I worked on, only interior iteration was allowed. I too, forgot how to use for loops. I spent quite some time writing in embedded YAML DSLs as well (complete with static analysis and compiler).

RE point 2: after sending out a lot of applications, you tend to forget the specifics of where you applied, sometimes companies reach out after weeks or months, and everyone wants 3-5 rounds of multi-hour interviews, so it all becomes a blur. Maybe spreadsheets or a CRM would help candidates here. There is no excuse on the candidate's part for not brushing up before the interview though.

RE point 3: very fair, candidates should jot down a few good questions to ask beforehand.

It's crazy on both sides, not sure how to fix tech hiring. Somehow the industry soldiers on.

totally. I can map reduce blind drunk and asleep but I'd have to google how to for loop in just about any language.

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