Antipatterns to search for applicants

Hi, Habr. As a team leader, I stand simultaneously on both sides of the search for applicants - for the last five years I have been actively participating in interviews with my developers, as well as passing interviews. I am not ashamed to write that I go to interviews - it helps to understand what is now in demand in the market, and where you have gaps that would be good to fill. And indeed, any specialist should strive for growth, not stagnation.

And during this time I have accumulated a huge number of funny and sad stories of interaction with recruiters on both sides, which I decided to systematize into a common collection of antipatterns. Go!

Registration of vacancy

Each search begins with the publication of a vacancy, and it is very important to arrange it correctly.

To begin with, never specify a salary - the applicant should dream of working in your startup LLC Gorym, and it should not be important for him how much money he will be paid. And in general, why do you need mercantile employees?

Next, be sure to look for a full stack. Everyone knows this buzzword, and why hire a few developers if one can do everything? Front, back, database, architecture, server support, and better availability of transport to deliver the product to customers.

It is better to write that this is an interesting job with a bunch of prospects and opportunities for self-realization - that's when the applicant will definitely bite on doing absolutely everything in your company.

You can also write about responsibility, leadership qualities, and about the fact that the developer himself must understand everything and set himself tasks. In the end, you already have a vision of your product - it remains only to nakodit it, and the macaque will cope with it.

You can also tell that you will pay a percentage of something there. It’s dangerous to promise money, and the percentage of zero is always zero, and you risk nothing.

If you do not know yet what stack will be used in the product, ask your friends or read articles on the Internet - you need to immediately determine which developer you are looking for. And you yourself will understand the technologies - easily. For example, you can understand that clear boys write to go and use NoSQL at the same time, which means you definitely need a go developer with knowledge of NoSQL on your website for selling earflaps with one and a half visitors per day.

Be sure to write that soon you are moving to the United States or anywhere else, where programmers usually want. It's safe. “Soon” is a loose concept, usually means “as soon as we suddenly get a lot of money and swim in them like Scrooge McDuck.” So what if this is, at best, in the perspective of a couple of years. It can happen. Lucky some! So your startup, the killer of Facebook and Google at the same time, is sure to take off.

In no case do not disclose what actually have to work. You probably have an invaluable idea, and an insidious developer can steal it - be silent and mysteriously hint at the download, blockchain, instagram, neural networks and SaaS.

In the vacancy you need to immediately write that you all love the processing and constant deadlines. That developer who does not dream of doing something good at least 12 hours a day is bad and lazy. Naturally, nobody pays for processing - you are a team and work for the sake of a product, and not for despicable gold.

Be sure to make it necessary to add a cover letter, where the developer will write, why he wants to go exactly to you. He goes not just to get money for his work, but to you! Let them justify, at least characters for 500. Those who write "I want to work for you, like a vacancy suits me," you can immediately filter out.

In addition to the cover letter, it is also a good idea to make a questionnaire with 20 or more questions - the more you know about the applicant, the better! Feel free to give this form to the applicant several times in a row - discrepancies in the answers can tell you a lot.

Separate note on the search for juniors. If you are looking for a novice developer, then he must have at least five years of work in a similar position and experience of industrial implementations.

In no case do not ask the applicant, how important is his white salary. The fact that you have only gray, he should find out only after passing three interviews, solving test problems and getting to know everyone, including the janitor Ahmet. Surely after that he will be so exhausted I am glad to work with you that I will not pay attention to such trifles as gray salary.

Do not forget to write in the job description that you have cookies. And also Agile and Scrum. This is so original!

Automatic email to the respondent

Hooray, the vacancy is ready! What to do next? First of all, you need to write a response letter that comes from a machine to interested applicants. It is best to indicate your phone number there and write, so that the applicant would call you if he was suddenly interested in a vacancy to which he responded five minutes ago.

Search for applicants

You probably know that the developers themselves do not know what they want, so look at the summary diagonally and send an invitation if at least one word matches.

• Does the salary fork not match twice? It doesn't matter - what if he overestimates the requirements or really wants to work in your startup?
• He wants a lead developer, and you have a junior job? Well, let your lip roll.
• Wants to do backend, and you have a front end? Well, it’s said above that the developer should be only full (or whatever it is. In short, Windows should be able to rearrange and repair the coffee machine).

In general, you have so little time, and your KPI is measured by the number of applicants that you find. Send everyone, and let there already highbrow developers understand whether the Javascript is suitable for Java developers, or 1C developers for C #.

Work with the applicant

Remember - your main work tool is a telephone. Nothing replaces the good old tube voice communication. Even if the developer indicated that it is preferable for him to three other ways of communication. So what if he most likely is now at a previous job or at home. Surely he can find 20 minutes to talk with you. He is not called every day with a job offer.

Separately, I note that developers often attach a bunch of garbage to resumes — profiles on some sites, some code ... We need to cut all this away so that only the necessary information is left to the techies. Full name and list of jobs - this is the necessary and sufficient data set.

Do not rush to respond to the response of the candidate. His initial enthusiasm should be defended - what if he changes his mind about working for you and goes to another company, and you waste your time on him?

Test items

Remember about the test tasks! It is necessary to filter people somehow. It is accepted to give three categories of test tasks:

1. Typical task, downloaded from the Internet. It does not matter if it is boring - the applicant is not going to entertain you. It does not matter that the solution has already been published on hundreds of resources - surely it will not search. And in case it becomes - add a timer to the test task - everyone says that the “Creator deadline excites”.
2. Any difficult task for the applicant to show himself in all its glory. Expect him to spend 2-3 days on it. In the end, he wants to work for you or not?
3. The last category that has recently lost its popularity is to take a certain current task of your company and ask the applicant to do it. So to say, test in conditions close to combat. But in fact, you can use such tasks as free outsourcing. Cool! It is strange that lately I see such test tasks less and less.

By the way, you can take test items in which you do not understand at all. It doesn't matter - you just need to make sure that the answer of the candidate to the letter coincides with the one you have in the cheat sheet.

Personal interviews

There are several obligatory commandments that need to be followed during the interview, no matter if it is deleted or not.

• You know that on a decent visit late for 15 minutes? Well, here as well. Begin the interview in 15-30 minutes after the appointed time, it will give the candidate better prepare and calm down.
• If the interview implies the connection of additional people, start looking for them at the time of the interview. No need to distract people in advance.
• For an interview you need at least 4-5 people, except the applicant. They then work together, so let the whole team evaluate it at the first interview. They just sit on chairs all working day - so let them spend it with benefit. If you attract 5 people and conduct at least 3 and a half hour interviews a week, then they spend a week using 3x5x1.5 = 22 hours, that is, almost three man-days.
• It is not worth spending time on remembering in advance or preparing a candidate’s resume. In the first half hour, everyone will remember who he is, what position he has taken, and he will tell his resume again. To disguise the fact that you have lost his resume, you can ask to tell his resume in your own words. It is solid and much will show, including the candidate.
• That programmer who is not ready to write code on a piece of paper is bad. Let them show that they can not only write code in an environment that does everything for it. Moreover, it is necessary to write a working code in your specific language, and not some Block diagram there (well, what about Alexander?).
• Surely the applicant came to you with the feeling that he is cool and worthy of much. Even if so, you obviously do not want to overpay for it - so find something in his resume that he did ten years ago and ask more complicated questions. Let them understand that you can only clean the toilet.
• Interviews must be several. For example, the first happens with HR, the second with the developer, the third with the lead, the fourth with the whole team, and the fifth with the CEO. Take your time anywhere, the applicant - he is not a wolf, he will not run to the forest.
• Make long pauses between each stage of the interview, preferably at least a week. This will provide an opportunity to carefully evaluate the candidate and show that you have a serious company, and not some kind of sharashka.
• If you need to postpone the interview, then do it half an hour before the candidate arrives. Well, you can not take into account all possible factors in advance.
• If the candidate said something that you did not expect, then you can laugh together. It really discharges the atmosphere!
• If the interview is remote, then ask the applicant to turn on the camera, but do not turn it on. It’s you who look at him, not he at you.
• Any kind of luxury headset is not necessary for an interview. Echo, office noise, talks around - this is a normal working environment.
• If you need to go out during the interview - feel free to do it. You can leave the candidate a puzzle and leave for an hour or two. Let him decide it slowly and drink instant coffee from a cup, which he was kindly offered.
• Be sure to first ask the candidate what he knows about your company. If he didn’t conduct research with obtaining information about all her products and people, it means that he is not interested in you! In this case, do not tell anything yourself.
• I almost forgot. At any interview, be sure to ask about the patterns. And ask to implement singleton. Well, or at least ask to write some recursion or something about the Fibonacci numbers. All serious companies ask this. Probably, it was necessary to put this first point.

Be sure to seek the advice of the candidate at the current job from his management. And then you never know what.

If you liked the candidate, and you agreed on everything, then do not forget to bargain. You have in fact in the description of the vacancy indicated “to xxx” So you will not deceive anyone if you offer “xxx: 2”. People are like watermelons in the market, only people. The principles of trade are the same. If the applicant has disappeared after your proposal - well, it means that he is simply not motivated to work with you and is to blame.

And if the candidate does not agree to accept your offer, then tell us that the situation on the market is difficult, it is not so easy to find a job, and you already have other candidates who have agreed to this position - let him get scared and accept your conditions!

If the candidate nevertheless agreed, then offer to go to work tomorrow, and better today. Even if he has the current place of work. Why waste time?

Life hacking: in a letter to a candidate, you can ask a bunch of questions and even ask to recommend someone, and if at the end write "Thanks in advance," then you can not waste time answering!

One more general recommendation - remember: you are a machine, you are a combine for processing applications into people! The same approach should be applied to all, so that the applicant understands that he is a potential cog in a huge machine who needs to know his place in it. Fan mailings, exchange of databases of applicants, erratic communications in linkedin - all this is suitable for finding people!

Well, the last. If you do not like the applicant, then just hammer on the correspondence. Why waste your time on a person who does not suit you? In addition, the refusal, you can still hurt a person! And do not tell him exactly what he needs to tighten up - if he didn’t fit you today, it will never work.

Follow these tips and you will not find the right developer!

I would not want this post to be accepted for some kind of whining. On the contrary - I want to think that he will reach many recruiters, and they, having noticed some points behind them, will work on them. Both sides (developers and recruiters) are interested in finding work quickly and efficiently.

Yes, a separate post could be written about the applicants - I recognize that on this side too much fun - but it will not be so interesting and useful.

I also wanted to give a few examples of companies on both sides, but decided that this was not entirely correct. Someone simply recognizes himself in these examples.

Specify your anti-patterns in the comments - let's add to the list!

UPD. Complemented by antipatterns from kyb27 , White_Scorpion , samuelsh , Idot , yefrem , michael_vostrikov , santanico .