Ask HN: What would make you say "I want to hire this devloper?" | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What would make you say "I want to hire this devloper?"

13 pointsdevoutsalsa20 comments

No wrong answers here. I'm just curious what would make you personally want to interview someone. Forget interview questions, take home exercises, and all of that.

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They are self taught. That alone is enough. It shows they are curious and interested in their vocation. It also shows they can figure things out on their own.

In addition, knowing a few languages of different types (OO, functional, etc.) means a lot.

Hello, I'm available for hire. Half joking aside, this usuallly has been deterrant for my job searchs, especially against ats

Where were you people for my 22 years of career so far? Honest question. When I say I am self-taught only a small part of the interviewers are impressed, most act like I am a cheat.

Hasn't stopped me from having an okay career but damn. Yet another proof that bubbles exist, and that they likely don't mix well, too. Sad.

I've worked with them on a previous job, or otherwise know of their work. From the other side (being hired), this is how I got most of my jobs.

Talking to them on a phone interview, say, deciding whether to bring them in for an in-person interview (or at an in-person, trying to make a hiring decision):

1. They know their stuff. They may not know the specifics of the business we're in, they may not know the language, they may not know the libraries, but they know how to think and how to program. (Knowing all of the above helps, of course.)

2. Their personality isn't in need of too much debugging (so to speak). They aren't obviously a flaming jerk. They can communicate, and they can do so without it being wooden. They're not there primarily to hit on girls or to campaign politically or to show off how smart they are. They can be something of a misfit, but they can't be a bad enough fit that they can't function reasonably smoothly.

3. They have needed credentials, or can get it. If I'm hiring for a position that needs a security clearance, can they get one? If I'm hiring for a financial institution, are they friends with known felons? (Um, just to clarify: "friends with known felons" is not a job requirement; it's a rule-this-person-out.)

That's pretty much it.

> 3. ...If I'm hiring for a financial institution, are they friends with known felons? (Um, just to clarify: "friends with known felons" is not a job requirement; it's a rule-this-person-out.)

One should be very careful with this one! Hiring laws differ dramatically from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but I am pretty sure that in mine (England, Britain), rejecting a candidate on these grounds could get the would-be employer in serious trouble. One is forbidden to discriminate against those with fully served criminal sentences, and even less so against those with mere association with criminals, former or current. Naturally, it is not discriminatory if you choose whether or not to personally invite someone to work for you on these grounds, as long as this does not constitute any prejudice against a formal job application by that person.

I thought that, for financial institutions (especially banks), that you couldn't have associates who were known felons, for anti-money-laundering reasons if nothing else. But I'm not in that world, so I freely admit that my knowledge is hearsay/rumor.

Define "associate" or "friend" and how to classify it. It would be ridiculous that you could disqualify someone for bank role because one hangs out with "known felon" but possibly unknown to them at gym or alumni BBQ. Surely you would straight reject anyone coming from neighborhood with high crime level, which is reinforcing criminal stereotype discrimination.

#3 is a big yikes about parent poster.

Just because an engineer has a friend who is a felon you’d pass? Are they supposed to cut someone out of their life because they committed a felony?

We aren’t even talking about the actual person who committed the crime!

What if this is a family member?

Honestly, it’s very discriminatory.

I'd pass on them for a position in a financial institution (presuming that I understand US regulations correctly). I wouldn't pass on them for, say, a job at Google. It's not relevant there.

Whenever I learn something from someone, that’s a good sign. It’s a sign they can communicate well and in my experience being practiced in teaching strongly correlates with eagerness to learn and grow.

Sometimes I come across small blogs with interesting and insightful ideas and think about how much I'd like to work with the author.

I value Open Source contributions to well known projects quite a bit. If they have multiple accepted PRs to a large project it shows they can work with others, adopt a style guide, figure out how to contribute, meet code quality standards, and explain their reasoning for the change as well.

A really good blog post might do it. The bar is quite high there as of course lots of people are blogging to establish themselves as the expert in X. So nothing that gives me positioning vibes. Those curiousity driven posts are better.

But also any developer who has clearly done X and we need X at work right now.

They seem passionate about their job and they enjoy programming professionally.

mostly its the willingness to listen and learn, plus they have to have demonstrated some ability to code, either via github, or in person conversations reveal their knowledge quickly.

Great communication skills, the ability to articulate themselves, strong demonstration of problem solving skills.

The way he/she manages time.

Well I think the problem is the question is much harder to answer because it assumes people know why they want to hire someone. Frankly I think it comes down to personality and not flunking the question. Maybe interesting to ask why you wouldn’t hire someone? For me bad attitude, and inability to answer easy questions.

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