Gergely Orosz

“Why was my resume rejected when I think I’m a great fit for this job?”

So many times I’ve observed the reason being the hiring manager not talking with their recruiter / inbound sourcer / the person doing the resume screening.

The hiring manager would eg say “I want someone senior with Go experience, don’t send me anyone below 5 YOE” and the recruiter rejects anyone without 5 years of Go on their resume, even though it’s not what the hiring manager meant…

Dec 19, 2022 at 8:40amWeb
Show threadGergely OroszDec 19, 2022
A lot of the times, the issues come not just from the lack of hiring manager - recruiter communications, but not having a job description that specifies what the hiring manager is *really* looking for. Wrote suggestions on how to tackle this in The Pragmatic Engineer: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/hiring-software-engineers
Hiring Software Engineers

Building an engineering hiring process from role definition to debrief, and calibrating it.

The Pragmatic Engineer
Show threadChristian UhlDec 19, 2022

@gergelyorosz Absolutely agree - The worst mistake I have done as a hiring manager was telling the recuiter that „It‘s a generic profile, same as always“, but as soon as CVs and candidates came in, the „But actually I need…“ started. Which is not only a big waste of time, but also damaging to the HM - Recruiting relationship.

Spending time and dilligence upfront on a clear internal and external description of who could fit the job pays off a lot, especially when hiring a lot.

Show threadPaul de RaaijDec 19, 2022

@gergelyorosz The best recruiters I worked with challenged my choices and viewpoints. Collaboratively, we enhanced our profiles and hiring, using our company values as guidelines.

I could not be successful as hiring manager without supportive recruiters that rightfully challenged me.

Show threadSzymon NowickiDec 19, 2022

@gergelyorosz I've found so many gems in "rejected" column while too many out of scope in "to review" that now I do the initial scanning myself

It takes more time and is not efficient but at least I have some control over who are rejected at this point.

Show threadAntmanDec 19, 2022

@gergelyorosz The best recruiter I've worked with really understands tech. She's been doing it for 15 years and has been internal at companies to see the consequences of her hires. I can have conversations with her about some really fuzzy concepts and she nails it.

Other recruiters I've worked with have been the equivalent of an alpha-version ChatGPT bot turning my plaintext request into a linkedin recruiter search

Show threadAntoniusDec 19, 2022
@gergelyorosz Serious question in that regard: How should I count the “X years of experience” when I learned most of my favorite languages in side projects during school and studies?
Should I just estimate how many years of full-time job experience my skill set is equivalent to?
Show threadBeetroot PaulDec 19, 2022
@gergelyorosz @antonius My related struggle: I used tech X from time to time in my work, I touch tech Y nearly every week, I also worked with tech Z for half a year, but only 10h/week (side gig). How to count it? I gave up on thinking about it and answer such questions counting all of these as full time “years of experience” 🤷‍♂️
Show threadBeetroot PaulDec 19, 2022
@antonius @gergelyorosz (in general I dislike a lot when I meet a recruiter who seems to ignore all the context and just ask me dozen of questions about years of experience in specific technologies. But I assume this is how it has to be and valuable talk will happen on latter stages)
Show threadJason YipDec 19, 2022
@gergelyorosz We paired with the recruiter to do screenings initially to highlight the specific things we cared about and didn’t and generated a checklist from the exercise.
Show threadJoshua Herzig-MarxDec 19, 2022

@gergelyorosz I'm saving this one for reference.

So many organizations are just not good at hiring. It's not a skill that's practiced or taught.