Timeline for Should I keep asking candidates to include a specific word to filter out candidates who didn't pay attention to the job ad?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 5, 2019 at 15:36 | comment | added | Smitty | I think we can all agree that the process is flawed and there will always be room for improvement... High fives all around | |
| Feb 5, 2019 at 0:18 | comment | added | J... | @Smitty Yeah, I'm in a mid-size gig so I don't have anyone qualified enough to go through those 4000CVs. You have to have some strategies to deal with that when pulling for juniors. | |
| Feb 4, 2019 at 22:48 | comment | added | Smitty | And for the record, even with my terrible, narcissistic, Millennial attitude.. If a job posting was excellent and attractive to me outside of the strange request on the cover letter, I would totally comply... I might grumble about the silliness at the time and maybe even inquire about it at the interview... But if its something simple and trivial, its not worth the fuss to not comply. At this point, the masses have come out strongly for "its silly and I dont apply to this stuff" and I can emphasize with that too because the spam goes both ways | |
| Feb 4, 2019 at 22:28 | comment | added | Smitty | @J...That is a fair take. I think I read the OP as "Im not getting quality candidates and I think its because of my filter". I didnt think to rotate the prism to see "hiring a junior dev" is a different context, one that I havent thought about in a while. In this regard, I am right there with you. My first job was in a shop that had a dedicated "person who takes job reqs and finds candidates", She once told me "I go through 4000 CVs to get you 10 people to interview". I have a side hustle doing phone screens for my tech recruiter and I always have to remind myself to reset my expectations | |
| Feb 4, 2019 at 21:45 | comment | added | J... | @Smitty I say diva when we can't even have a conversation - when the table gets flipped over minutiae or when someone doesn't get their way. This is clearly for a junior position, and I'm treating it in that context. I've said elsewhere that this would certainly be out of place when hiring a senior or consultant. With juniors you literally have hundreds of CVs to sift through for a single position. I don't think I'd use 'sunshine', but I would certainly consider some variation of salting the job ad with some small details I would expect the 'wrong' candidates to not pick up on. | |
| Feb 4, 2019 at 21:28 | comment | added | Smitty | @J... Every job post I bother to look at is some form of "We want someone who is passionate about building good software! A creative individual with new ideas! Someone who studies the finer details of the SDLC in their spare time! A true Rock Star! etc".. When that rock star shows up you say "Diva".. Well, I say "Advocate for quality, process, and controls. Forward thinking Champion of emerging technologies. Leader in the field. Mentor". I have been called a diva in the workplace and I wear it with pride. Software is serious work and "adding sunshine" to a cover letter isnt. | |
| Feb 4, 2019 at 13:09 | comment | added | VLAZ | Adding something irrelevant to the job application can also be used to filter but with the opposite effect. If you added it, aren't you adding irrelevant details to your task? Wouldn't that mean that you are a developer open to scope creep? See, it makes exactly as much sense as being "detail oriented". So, which of the two would be for this job ad? The whole exercise is pointless. From the applicant's point of view, the winning move here is not to play. | |
| Feb 4, 2019 at 9:37 | comment | added | J... | @sleske Yeah, here. | |
| Feb 4, 2019 at 7:55 | comment | added | sleske | @J...: With all due respect - there's a difference between being skeptical about a problem whose purpose you don't understand, and being a diva. I'd actually consider it a quality if developers push back if they don't understand something. But you seem to have met really many devs with difficult personalities. | |
| Feb 3, 2019 at 11:44 | comment | added | J... | @gnasher729 I think this technique works better than expected. From all the comments on this page, it looks like not only does it flag people who read and pay attention, at also filters out divas and narcissists. You know, there's always the option to go above and beyond. I'd be waiting for the person who didn't just write 'sunshine', but who might even write a short few sentences to demonstrate they'd thought about why this requirement was there. Devs need to be able to notice things that seem out of place and to think about why something that seems odd might be necessary (or not!). | |
| Feb 3, 2019 at 9:56 | comment | added | gnasher729 | @J... If you ask me to write "Sunshine" on a cover letter, I'll take the risk that there might be a purpose that I don't understand, and I'll take the risk that I might have an inflated estimate of my own intelligence, and allow you to hire someone else. | |
| Feb 2, 2019 at 21:37 | comment | added | Walter Mitty | Inflated when compared to their peers perhaps. They are, broadly speaking, quite intelligent. We agree, there is not enough information. | |
| Feb 2, 2019 at 14:27 | comment | added | J... | @WalterMitty Developers often have a cripplingly narrow focus and an inflated estimate of their own intelligence. They can be stubborn and truculent when faced with problems whose purpose they don't understand. If they aren't willing to make a small step to do what they're told on the off chance that they might not have a complete understanding of what it's for or that it may actually be useful, then maybe OP has dodged a bullet. Again, we don't know. Not enough information. | |
| Feb 2, 2019 at 12:43 | comment | added | Walter Mitty | Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy. | |
| Feb 2, 2019 at 12:38 | comment | added | Walter Mitty | There is also the missing control group. The group who read the ad, and decided not to apply. These are the people who decided not put in an application with the word sunshine at the top, because they considered it stupid, and decided not to send one in without the word sunshine because that would be a waste of time. It's possible that this group might contain some qualified candidatees. | |
| Feb 2, 2019 at 11:15 | history | edited | J... | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 470 characters in body
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| Feb 2, 2019 at 11:08 | comment | added | Moschops | As J... says, the experiment is incomplete. I was typing out something similar, but J... beat me to it :) If the 47 rejected candidates contain applicants who are serious and detail-oriented, then the filter is ineffective and in fact is filtering out the very candidates you want to keep in the pile. | |
| Feb 2, 2019 at 10:57 | history | answered | J... | CC BY-SA 4.0 |