Why programmers can not find a job

After a long time of technical hiring, I can assure you that it is also important to be aware of the random and false negatives in the hiring process. In general, refusals are caused by the occurrence of contingencies and by some true negative.

Candidates refused because of the frame
In response to the front-end needs of an agency, I recommend a front-end engineer who has made a significant contribution to ECMAScript and open source projects. It took me several weeks to find this person and spent hours evaluating him in detail, including video interviews (we love doing this at coderfit.com). However, an engineer at the agency refused him only after examining the code he submitted for 10 minutes. The candidate did not even get a valid reason for the refusal, only the company sent him a reply to a fixed template:

This is a very bad reply because he never submitted a cover letter! After reading the reply, I left everything in my hands, drove to their office and talked to the engineer at the agency, because the candidate he rejected was my best interview in 2017 Front-end engineer.

At the beginning of the day, the engineer at the agency responsible for the interview did not tell me the reason for the real rejection. He simply said that all ES6 operators and short functions were correct, but "code over-designed" despite the correct structure. After 10 minutes of discussion, the reason for rejection was clear: the candidate used an MVC framework unknown to the interviewer. I find it awesome for candidates to use this framework in coded interviews, so I can not understand that this can be a problem for interviewing companies.

With some background checks, I understand the underlying reasons and why candidates are using this MVC framework: Hiring companies want to find reusable programs and programs that save time and money, The chief engineer (not the interviewer) complained to me that the candidates were more likely to "reinvent the wheel for each customer", which clearly did not meet the company's appeals. However, my proposed candidate did a tailor-made framework during his free time, just to solve some of the problems facing the agency.

But the interviewer did not read my article or video interview record, and he did not consider why the candidate used the framework, simply giving the result of "rejection." Moreover, the team leader (who is also a candidate's supporter) happens to be on leave and he can not intervene in the outcome.

Hint: Before doing an assessment, it is not good to know what other people think of a candidate. But in some cases it makes sense to do so if there are special circumstances.

This story is particularly sad, because CEOs believe me and give me some extra remuneration for me to bring them "the best people", so I am particularly concerned about this. However, I did not get the support of the company's staff and hiring manager. They did not really evaluate the candidates I recommended. The engineer who rejected the candidate even told me: "Recruitment is insignificant for us." If you get extra remuneration as a recruiter, it will give you more motivation and sense of mission; but if you lack support from the hiring team , Then the value of hiring almost does not exist.

To make matters worse, the candidate got such a feeling of resistance and did not want to have contact with other Swiss employers anymore. (Turtle Point: A template response from HR, no feedback, waiting for two weeks after code submission Was reviewed).