The disaster known as “Microsoft Vista” explained. “Yea, I can learn. I can make Windows more secure” … “yea, I can learn. I can make Vista pretty” … “yea, I can do Windows applications. I can learn” … “Hey, guys!!! Check this out!!!” (shoots his USB rocket launcher …)
I have to include a comment for those of us who have been stay-at-home moms.
While staying at home for 5-years, I kept my resume filled with “part-time” computer training at the local school, and learning web site design (take a peek) I still “get it”.
These weren’t in my field of software engineering but showed I knew how to adapt. Now I’m two years back into the field a job I love again in…software engineering thanks to a guy who “took a chance on me”, after all I didn’t have direct experience in the field lately.
This week, I just got our second USB port (via a USB to SPI port into the uC) to communicate this week with our product! I never had any direct experience in that! (I guess breast feeding didn’t drain the brain after all).
Coding Horror Fan
I find the exact opposite to be true when it comes to IT system/network administration. Too many companies are stuck in the, ‘How many certs does this candidate have?’ game. Experience doesn’t seem to count. So you wind up playing the game to get your foot in the door, but then you get to work with a bunch of mindless morons that ‘learn quickly’ and take tests well. Because the rest of your company doesn’t understand IT, they all assume your team knows what it’s doing. You end running herd on everyone else to keep the entire team from getting fired. Of course, you don’t get extra credit for this, as everyone else on your team takes credit for all your work and knowlege.
This is a refreshing post, when I look at posting on Monster I see all of this nonsense. They ask for every acronym on the planet. Even when I look at the postings for my own job I honestly don’t recognize most of the “technologies”. My favorites though are when companies list their propriety technology/system/whatever as a requirement.
So, I do agree with your point. However, I do imagine that its difficult to find people based on this ambiguous qualities.
This is particularly frustrating for those of us who would like a new job or would like to work on a different project. Unfortunately, people want to pigeonhole you into a particular technology/language/skillset. It drives me bonkers that I might have to continue to rehash most of the same skills in every project. It gets to the point at times where I volunteer or do some part-time paid work just to be exposed to radically different technologies than those at work.
US recruiters are bad about this. If they don’t know what checkbox to check to send you off to their client who has a project in technology X, they don’t know how to evaluate you, because, of course, they don’t actually know anything about IT at all, other than acronymns.
What makes it worse is the huge percentage of job postings by recruitment agencies. I know there are many jobs interviews I would do well in and jobs where I would learn the required technologies once I work with them, but without the recruiters being able to check the checkbox, I’ll never get to the interview in the first place.
I suck at interview…
The right way is commonly referred to as the “best athlete” recruiting approach.
Ask a basketball coach, and he’ll tell you, “You can’t teach tall.”
“Sometimes, it’s the person’s capacity/willingness to learn that’s more important than the things they already know.”
That was my original response to your phone interview post. It’s good to see that you’ve added to your original point of view. Looking solely at an applicant’s experience is a very narrow, one-dimensional position. As you point out, if that’s the case I don’t want to work in that organization anyway. Programming is very multi-dimensional. The programming interview process should reflect that.
these have been some great posts. good insight into HR, etc.
can we get some programming posts? 
it’s been a while.
Why ask for 10 years experience? In short, you ask for 8 years of old knowledge, only the 2 latest are fresh knowledge on new techniques.
But on the other hand, experience is important in many cases, with much experience you have already done your share of errors and hopefully learned a lot by doing them and you have a large bag of useful tricks that can be a big benefit and time saver in a project.
So combine seniors and juniors in the project to have a perfect mix of experience and drive can be a good practice.
But you can put in the advert MOD Security Clearance is required since that is a requirement and anyone can theoretically get clearance?
You wouldn’t want to /require/ MOD Security Clearance as hardly anyone has it, and people can’t get it themselves (has to be appropriately sponsored). But, you can’t put no criminal record, nor can you put must have 5 years uk residency, to screen out people who aren’t going to pass the vetting.
If you are really interested in learning how to hire people, I would suggest learning about the field of Industrial Psychology, a large chunk of which is focused on how to recruit, select, hire and retain people. Hiring based on abilities (raw talent, so to speak) has been well-known in this field for decades. It’s when people try to hire based on their own personal pet theories about “what makes a good candidate” (especially when individual hiring managers do this) that you increase risk unnecessarily.
Loved this post. Hated your phone interview post!!!
I couldn’t agree more. I often laugh at job postings that say things like "8-10 years of .NET experience required."
I remember seeing one job posting “requiring” 5 years .NET experience in 2004.
How can they expect you to have experience in a technology from several years before its release?
I totally agree. Maybe software engineering is an art and us developers are artists (http://www.code-muse.com/blog/?p=20)… However, whatever metaphor you want to use for developing software (be it engineering, art, or rock climbing), the most simple way to put it is that it requires hard work. In the sense, that most of the time programming is a tough job requiring a fair amount of using your brain, and with a lot of passion, your mind is at its best.
You know, I have to say, part of this is up to the interviewee as well. Simply saying “I don’t know” when asked a question about a technology you aren’t familiar with is a great way to sink yourself. If a developer is looking for a particular tech that you don’t know, my strategy has always been to be up front, and say “I don’t know it off hand, but I can buy a book and learn it fairly quick.”
This happened to me during an interview for Relic. They wanted STL experience, but I told them straight up, I’m not directly familiar with the STL, but I can buy a book and learn it without significantly hindering my ability.
Not only did the interviews continue, but they eventually made me an offer (which, ironically, I refused).
But if you can reach a point where you are talking with a live person, if you know you can do the job, then there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to talk yourself in to it.
Some people work for 5 years and gain 5 years of experience. Some people work for the same 5 years and gain 1 year of experience 5 times.