Ask HN: Disrupt – Recruiting | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Disrupt – Recruiting

7 pointsnns3 comments

I wanted to start a periodic series of brainstorming where we could write down our ideas and views on existing practices of one particular industry which may (or may not) be ripe for Disruption. We could focus on emerging trends and pain points that this community of Technologists can adopt and solve for.

As a start, I wanted to open the conversation on a topic whose current state of play we all find difficult to accept and cope with - Recruiting.

Some questions that I could think of:

* What trends are you seeing that you think should be more widely adopted? * What practices could promote a better dialogue between recruiters and candidates? * How can we solve for some of these problems using the technology we have at hand? * .....

For mutual benefit, lets keep this conversation as constructive as possible. Lets keep the criticism limited to the extent it can be converted to positive motivation for change.

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I like the spirit of this thread. Kudos.

What trends are you seeing that you think should be more widely adopted?

Recruiters that behave more like community-managers / outreach-coordinators. Roles whose purpose is to engage with (and build relationships with) the developer-community as a whole, not just pluck talent ad-hoc.

What practices could promote a better dialogue between recruiters and candidates?

I find it easier to engage with a recruiter (instead of circumventing them) when they personally offer me something of value. For example: The recruiter who says "if you apply online you'll just get a phone interview, but if you go through me I'll get you a 1-on-1 lunch with the CTO". When they start off with a clear value-proposition like that, then the headaches and bureaucracy of dealing with them are much easier to stomach.

How can we solve for some of these problems using the technology we have at hand?

I wish the application process could be a bit more standardized for the early stages (like the college / grad-school admissions process). I think it'd be an interesting thought-experiment to envision a standard-format for application packages. Imagine a package.json ~esque file that pulled in your github repos, recommendations, personal statements, etc. I wonder what else would be necessary.

It seems like the beginning stages of working with a recruiter are always the same ("where'd you go to school?", "show me some stuff you've done", "have you heard of Big O notation?", etc etc). I wish we could just put together one standard packet, throw it up somewhere online, and let the recruiters line up interviews for us. If that would allow the recruiters to contact us with an "I've got you an interview" type of message instead of a "hey let's talk" message, I'd be all for it.

This post reminded me of a recent Nick Corcodilos article:

The reason the labor market seems less efficient is because applicant tracking systems (ATS) and job boards fail to match job applicants to jobs, and instead, stimulate phony recruiting activity by human resources (HR) departments. The employment system is now clogged with so much crud spawned by these databases that even Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen is confused. ATS databases like LinkedIn and Oracle’s Taleo — these darlings of the stock market — are making it more difficult for employers to hire. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/ask-headhunter-recr...

One piece of technology-- often overlooked, good old-fashioned phone conversation. Sadly, a dying art.

As a recruiter, I would be very interested to hear what engineers have to say here.

One thing I believe that makes a good recruiter is not only the ability to find good talent, connecting w/ people who have the right experience but also to remember this is a human experience.

I transitioned from QA engineering into recruiting because a) I was tired of QA and couldn't code to save my life and b) because a lot of the recruiters who reached out to me where just horrible and just treated me as a number - not even know what I did - and not even caring.

What I discovered upon transitioning is how frantic it can be. I'm going to use a 3 round process for this example - To get 1 engineering hire, recruiters could need to have 2-4 candidates make it to final round, which means realistically there should be 6-12 onsite interviews, which means 18-35+ phone screens, which means a recruiter would have to have to 50-100+ engineers willing to talk to them w/ regards to the role. Meaning they'd have to reach out to 150-300+ engineers. Obviously I'm picking an arbitrary 3x multiplier as some recruiters are better than others and may not need to reach out to that many, or some might even need more.

If a recruiter has multiple positions they're trying to fill (which happens all the time) that means they really don't have a lot of time to put onto each position and less time if they need to spend time working w/ candidates currently in process and Hiring managers.

Creating software that might help a recruiter make more accurate assessments of candidates skill sets really only work if engineers are forthcoming and totally accurate w/ their skill sets. However even then the best algorithms can be fooled. Sites like Linkedin, Bright or Whitetruffle (just pulling from the top of my head) can have poor matching because of how a descriptions/requirements on both the candidates and the company's side are misrepresented. The other thing to remember; software can never properly replace "high touch" human interaction - which, at it's core is what recruiting is often about. Thoughts?

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