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  Why do so many technical recruiters suck?

It’s Tuesday, I get a call from an unknown number.  There is a little hesitation, but I finally pick it up.  My number is listed on my business card and I feel like I should get these calls unless I am in a meeting.- Hi, is this Mike?- Yes, speaking….- Hi Mike!  How are you today?- Fine…- I am calling from XYZ Co, and we deal with recruiting and staff augmentation.  I was wondering if you are looking for software developers.We are in San Francisco and it’s late 2011.  Every tech company is looking for developers.  If they were not looking...

2,230 0       RECRUITMENT HR SUCKS TECH RECRUITER


  The Failure of Passive Recruiting: Recruiters

This is an actual conversation I had with a recruiter:Phone rings and I pick it upHim: Hi, is Paul there?Aaron: May I ask who is calling?Him: I have a technical question. Aaron: Ok, what is it?Him: Are you technical?Aaron: Yes. Who is this?Him: Who are you?Aaron: Are you a recruiter?Him: Yes and…Aaron: Great, send us your resumes, if we like what you send over, we’ll let you know if we want to meet with the candidates, other than that, have a good day.That’s the first of several times the same recruiter, or someone from...

1,647 0       RECRUITMENT HR FAILURE RECRUITER HIRE


  Redesigning the Technical Hiring Process

Since my last post on technical interviews, I’ve been fairly involved in hiring at Pulse as we grew our team from 6 people when I joined last November to 14 full-timers. In my previous post, I suggested that technical interviews, in the conventional sense, are not especially effective (by technical interviews, I mean the traditional 45 minute coding-at-a-whiteboard and algorithm puzzlers interviews). Those do a great job of telling you how well a candidate is at acing those types of interviews, specifically coding on a whiteboard while someone watches over your shoulder, and how well th...

2,260 0       DEVELOPER RECRUITMENT PROCESS CAREER SKI


  Round Peg, Square Hole: How to Know If a Developer is a Good Fit for Your Team

Over the last few months, we have been recruiting developers, and we’ve started to get a sense for the type of developer who is a good fit for our team.  These attributes probably apply for developers at most web startups, so I wanted to share them with you.Before I get into it, the most important thing to know is that technical skill is a threshold requirement.  The assumption is that any person who is a fit for our team will have the relevant technical experience to do the job.Beyond that, here’s what we look for in someone as a good fit…PassionOne of our g...

3,509 0       RECRUITMENT GIRE EMPLOYEE SKILL