Former Google employees were rejected because they did not memorize the Bayesian formula

Why software engineers can't find a job. I want to share four stories of horror .

Editor's note: As a programmer, if you do not receive the right job offer, you will lose confidence in yourself. Iwan, founder of Coderfit.com, a website for entrepreneurs and programmers, thinks you need not worry. He shared four "horror stories," telling us that the reason that the powerful engineers were rejected was likely to have nothing to do with their level of business or cultural fit. This article is compiled by 36 krypton.

When people don't get an offer, they tend to think it's their fault: "I was shut out of three companies, so I could be a bad engineer." "After working in the tech recruiting industry for a while, I can assure you that random and disruptive factors play an important role, too. The reason why you are often rejected is likely to be a matter of chance or unreasonable.

Horror Story One: The candidate was rejected for adopting a new framework

An enterprise put forward the front-end recruitment needs, so I gave them a front-end engineer, he made a great contribution to ECMAScript, and wrote a lot of open source code. It took me weeks to find this person, and it took me several hours to properly assess him, including a video interview (something we like to do on coderfit.com). But. One of the agency's engineers had no hesitation in deciding not to hire him in just 10 minutes after browsing the code he submitted. The candidate was not even turned down in a respectable way, because the company sent him a "possible" letter:

Hello Although your CV and cover letter are very competitive, unfortunately, due to limited positions, our recruiting team has not taken you into further consideration after further review of your application. ......“

This is a very bad answer, because the candidate has never even submitted a letter of knowledge. When I saw the letter, I immediately dropped my hand and drove to their office to talk to the interview engineer who rejected the best front-end engineer candidate I interviewed in 2017.

First of all, the interview engineer couldn't even tell me why he refused the candidate, and the reason he gave was simply to say "the code is over-engineered", although the structure of the buy-in is actually correct, and all ES6 operators and short functions are correct and valid. After arguing with him for 10 minutes, the reason for the candidate's rejection became clearer: he used a non-known MVC framework in the code that the interview engineer did not know. In fact, I was so impressed with the framework that the candidate used in the coding interview that I couldn't understand that this could lead to a series of problems later.

Again, I can provide some background information explaining why our candidate used such an unknown MVC framework: The recruiting front-end company is a body looking for a repeatable process, and the chief Engineer (not the interviewer in the previous article) complained to me that every time they "reinvent a set of mechanisms for each customer" ”。 The candidate I nominated used his free time to build a bespoke framework that solved some of the problems facing the agency.

Because the interviewer who rejected the candidate did not read my notes or My video interview records, he did not take into account why the candidate used the framework, but simply pressed the "reject" button. And, more unfortunately, the company's leader, who supported the candidate, was on holiday, unable to intervene on the outcome of the interview.

Tip: Usually, it's a bad idea to look at someone else's opinion before evaluating an interviewer. But in some cases, it does make sense to add some extra background knowledge to yourself. At least not as the interviewer in this story misses a very good candidate.

The story became particularly sad considering that the CEO of the company gave me some extra money to bring me the "Best Man". I have made an extra effort to look for candidates, however, they have not really assessed the candidates I nominate, with the recruitment team and the interviewer's complicity. The engineer who rejected the candidate even told me: "Hiring is the most important thing for us." "If you're a recruiter and you find the right person for the company, it will make you more proud, but if you don't know exactly what your team needs, the value of the job is small."

Worse still, the front-end engineer, after being treated like this, refused to make contact with any other Swiss employer (who had not surrendered the cover letter, was rebuffed by the Human resources department, received no feedback for a long time, and the code submitted by himself waited two weeks to be viewed, etc.).

Horror Story Two: Former Google employees were rejected because they did not memorize the Bayesian formula

A start-up company looking for a Python engineer interviewed a programmer who had worked in Google-Zurich for four years. In recommending the candidate to start-ups, I had some problems, because everyone thought he would ask for the equivalent of Google-Zurich (almost twice times the average wage in the industry).

However, his actual expectations for the next job are not that high-he just wants a harmonious team that solves all kinds of interesting technical challenges. So he accepted every interview invitation and made a deep impression on most of the people he talked to. A start-up company gave him four rounds of interviews, and in the end he had a one-on-one conversation with everyone on the team.

However, at the end of the interview, a person on the team stood up, making it clear that the candidate did not know and could not explain the Bayesian formula and therefore could not be employed by the company.

Everyone here doesn't seem to care, except for the technical director. He is the person who has been in the best interests of the team and will be reporting directly to the chief executive who has not hired anyone for months. This time, he exercised the right of veto and made it clear that it was a rather foolish reason to refuse a good candidate for not knowing something trivial. They hired the former Google engineer. The result shows that the engineer is the person who has made the biggest contribution to the company's history.

It turns out that the technical director's decision was correct: the candidate installed his development environment at a record speed and resolved three bugs on the first day. In the end, everyone was deeply moved by the fact that HR hired this person.

It's understandable that Google and its rival companies use some very tricky questions or algorithmic questions to screen candidates, because big international companies like this can afford the "false negative" results of the hiring process, and they can reject a lot of really good candidates, Because there are a steady stream of talented people who want to enter the threshold of these companies (Google receives 3 million job applications every year). But startups can afford to be able to afford the risk, inadvertently, and probably miss the best candidate for it. As Erin Ptacek says, "If you want to define madness," It's about Google's style and look forward to bringing you success. ”

Horror Story Three: Programmers forgotten by the Human resources department

Usually I keep a close eye on the entire recruiting process for the candidates I nominate. When I was on vacation, a CEO told me that they were going to hire an engineer I had nominated. However, the Human resources department, which worked remotely in another country, did not follow up. As I was on vacation, I didn't follow up, and the candidate waited a few weeks to think he had been rejected because no one had any further communication with him. This is a very typical error.

Two months later, I communicated with the candidate again and asked him what had happened. Neither he nor the Human Resources department understood why no one was further in touch with him. So I wrote to all the relevant people and asked if we could finish the process.

The human resources department is usually such a presence--under salary, without organization. Internal recruiters are usually responsible for other administrative tasks rather than recruiting. Even worse, some startups don't even have human resources, and those from the front desk are responsible for evaluating, rejecting, or passing the building. These people often do not understand the requirements of technical positions. They just listen to the hiring manager's 15-minute briefing on "Looking for talent" and then make the so-called appropriate "filter". Lack of background knowledge and understanding of the position often lead to the company can not recruit the right people.

Horror Story Four: The candidate was rejected because the level of the interviewer was higher ...

Don't laugh, it's not a joke. I have personally seen candidates who are above the interviewer. The candidate is a 22-year-old "prodigy" open-source programmer who was rejected by an interviewer during the resume screening phase. Let's call this interviewer "Jon" and I'm shocked that this excellent candidate was rejected by Jon, so I made a phone call for the tripartite talks.

Jon explained on the phone why he refused the candidate, but it sounded ridiculous and I didn't know if Jon was serious. I must say that this Jon is very weak either in code level, GitHub contribution or other ability points, but after all he is responsible for the resume screening, so I have to listen to his feedback.

Jon points out some of the problems in the candidate code he sees on the shared screen. All of the questions he mentioned were in fact a more optimal choice, not a question. His other criticisms are problematic for unprofessional people, but in practice there are good reasons for it. Then I lost my temper. These criticisms have made me wary and suggest that the candidate's code quality on GitHub is better than Jon's. Here, I made the opposite of my job. Fortunately, HR stopped me and told me "we're not evaluating Jon." I feel unable to continue to communicate, so quickly change the topic, hung up the phone.

Summary

In a word, recruiting is more complicated than you think. If you are rejected, this does not mean that you are an unqualified engineer, because there may be many reasons behind the rejection.

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