Help me hire you!

Tips for lending your very first dev role

Prae Songprasit 🍵 @PraeSongprasit

Topics

Creating a job posting
Reviewing CV
Interviewing
Choosing a candidate
Putting in an offer

...and anything in between

⚠️ Disclaimer

This is my personal view.

It does not represent an organisation's stance or practice.

About me

Photo of Prae doing Japanese archery, in full draw position

We're all humans

Especially those involved in recruiting and management

Key to your success

Employer's need 🤝 Your need

Recruitment process

Phase 1: Preparing

Why hire an intern or junior talent?
Which team?
What does that team need?

✅ Job description/ad

Organisation asks itself, why hire an intern or junior talent?

Depending on its size, business life cycle, and values, answers can range from:

Questionable "save cost"
Expanding rapidly, not enough talent in market
Train into niche specialities like ecommerce and Salesforce
Lofty "fostering future generation of coders"
(intern) Entice them into future role with us

This will inform job posting tones and attitudes.

Which team?

For org with multiple teams, sometimes teams can volunteer or request.

Team's culture and natuer of work will inform the "What you'll learn" section from the ad.

Team needs

Team is full of disgruntled old people and keen on fresh young energy
Members' growth plans involve practice mentoring
Team practice/refine onboarding process
Team has regular/rotation spot for junior talent
(intern) Temporary help to get over a feature release

Informs "What you'll do" section

Phase 2: Sourcing

❤️ Summer of Tech platform
Trademe/Seek
On campus career fairs
Employee referral

✅ Where to find candidates

Phase 3: Screening

Reactive - Candidates apply
Proactive - Search on a platform
Both

Goal: 20-100 candidates per role

2,000 SoT profiles

1 week to screen ≈ 57 candidates / hour 😱

Screening tools

SoT filters
(student status, dev, and etc.)
SoT completed profiles
CV/resume
Portfolio or Git repos

✅ Narrowed down to 20-100 candidates

Phase 4: Selecting

Most resource heavy - Require many people's time
Most intense period - Short, and very busy
- Shortlist candidates (fine tooth comb)
- Technical assessment (sometimes)
- Interviews

A day in life of a senior dev

Screen shot of a senior developer's busy weekly calendar

Shortlist for assessment/interview

SoT profile (effort and attitude)
CV/Resume (personal statement and links to works)
Easy to inspect portfolio (site, GitHub, clip)
All demonstrate
- Genuine interest in this type of role
- Useful/transferable skillset
- (Bonus) Personal touch

✅ Shortlisted 6-10 candidates

No longer a number's game

As someone shortlisting candidates, I look for

Articulate profile, clearly highlighting career aspirations
Good attitude can't be spelled out. Don't just say I love learning, or working with people. Back it up with side project or activities?

CV/resume

What you said in your profile and resume match the nature of the role. Love UX but applied for data science?
Done works and listed out? Great! Where is it? Portfolio, links?

Portfolio isn't required, but greatly boost you
Not going to look at more than 3. Ain't no body got time
Knows git? Real bonus. Hard to teach at work. Show and link it.
Deployed work - Bonus you know how to deploy!
One very well completed and deployed GitHub project is as good as any
Last year I wanted to give candidates a chance, and downloaded their github work to run locally. Some is broken and doesn't run
If don't know how to deploy work but it is on GitHub? GitHub Pages is free.
Work isn't web based and can't be deployed for free? Upload video of how it works. Saves me the installation

You don't say you love C#, no mention of HTML CSS or JS, when applying for a front end web role.
No one wants to be someone's backup role
Waitressed in your past life? Fab, list our human skills.
Hosted events or organised functions? Tell me more. This demonstrate organisation skills
Make yo-self memerable

At this point, I've looked at 25-100 candidates... I'm tired. Difference may be so minute

Technical assessment

Doesn't always happen

Usually when the recruitment is higher stake or is competitive

Online (HackerRank, CodeSubmit, and etc.)
Take-home assessment
White boarding (during interview)

For example, last year in one of the teams, people think having a junior may reduce productivity.

So we had to test if candidate has a basic understanding of git, HTML, and CSS.

For some roles, we had top 20 candidates who all have side projects, do extracurricular activities and seem to have very similar uni experience.

Online

I personally hate online assessment. Especially the timed pressure!

But it the most efficient thing we have to filter through many candidates, so I don't put too much weight on it.

Tip 1: A lot of these record answer everytime you hit run code. Use this instead of paper. It's like maths test showing thoughts process

Tip 2: A lot of these tests are free for candidates. Practice away. Again, like maths class

Take home

If given take home assessment, read instructions very carefully.

If possible, go above and beyond to show your prowess.

For example: Got emailed question to solve. Instead of submitting by attaching folder via email, do the whole thing on Git and deploy!

Use README.md file to your advantage. Explain your choices and decision if you were choosing between 2 possible methods.

White-board

Interviewer ask question, you answer

Talk through thought process. Ask clarfying questions. Gather more data to complete work!

Interview

SoT speed interview
Full interview
Grad day/Open day

Speed interview

Classic SoT 10mins speed interview
Less time consuming for employers
Most stressful for both students and employers
Giving concise but complete answers
How well does the candidate present themselves?
What do they value most?
What's their working style
Why are they interested in the role?

Full interview

Often used for roles that will likely turn into full time, or the org's first junior role.

Generally 1 or 1.5 hours

For both interview types, prepare questions to ask employers about the team

Grad day/Open day

Come into office to do a bunch of activities with other candidates, Hunger Games style
Assess team work
Test flexibility
Observe reactions/attitudes

Deciding who to offer

Not a time waster
Semi-autonomous learner
Empathetic communicator
Collaborator
Enrich team's culture (not 'fit' into team)
Team can offer valuable skill
Likely to have a good time

✅ Ranked 3-6 candidates to give an offer

Lets say I have a candidate with stellar performance in technical assessment

I'd choose one who makes me want to work with them during interviews

I'm hiring a team mate.

As mentioned, everyone in this process are busy people. Did the candidate respect our time by being punctual?

Will they need much handholding on the job? Or will they be able to pick up things as they go with minor mentorship

Especially in a multicultural team, will candidate be able to work effectively with people of differing comm styles?

Are they likely to respectfully/pragmatically raise issues or ask for help?

Ahh, the detestable 'team fit'

When hiring for people who are the same as us, we'll create monoculture.

Very thing which resulted in discrimination and lack of diversity.

No, we're looking for someone who could help shift the scale a little. But not too disruptive

If the team is full of introvert, I'd be weary of adding yet another introvert, or an extreme extrovert in which could create too much conflict.

Want to create healthy tension between styles that will help elevate the team.

What can WE offer candiate?

If the candidate already knows all tech stack of the team, wouldn't this be a waste of their time?

Are they likely to be happy with the team, and with the company?

Internship is a form of a PR activity, and investment in future reputation

Phase 5: Hiring

Most preferred/top ranked candidate gets offer via SoT

If offer refused or not accepted in 24hrs,
next one in the ranking gets it

If ono one accepts, start all over

Closing thoughts

Help me hire you... Pretty please 🙏

Thanks!

@PraeSongprasit