The Insider Guide to Careers
Insider information, secrets and tips about getting hired and building careers. For employees and job candidates.
I recently read about the travails of a tech recruiter, Lusely, who was scouting for a software engineer on LinkedIn. This is a good case to discuss the inner workings of the HR team, and I will discuss my experience in the recruiting world. Few understand this world.
There were 3,360 applicants for the role. This indicates how tough the current market is, even for less well-known companies. Layoffs have ensured that the applications have shot up abnormally.
There were only 7 referrals for the role. This indicates that even today, applicants think that direct applications are the best way to go and do not try to get a referral. For an individual in the open market, the chances of being noticed were 1 out of 3360. For a referral, the chances are 1 out of 8. Referrals give the applicant a 400 times better chance.
When there are so many applicants and just one recruiter, how can one expect a recruiter to be fair? Typically, a recruiter fills about 30 to 35 positions at any point in time. They are vetting around 90000 applicants at any moment. With all the technology available, the experience of the recruiter has never gotten easier. Individual perusal is still the best way to filter.
The recruiter removes 50% of applicants because the job and applicant locations do not match. This may sound unfair, but the recruiter can justify it by saying they are avoiding relocation costs. If you really want a job, relocate and then search. Or at least provide a local address. This is half the battle won.
People apply for jobs even if the job description (JD) says no visa sponsorship. These applicants are treated as spammy, as they did not read the JD properly. This group is 50% of the balance applicants, and they are filtered out. Around 9000 are left.
The resume and cover letter should match 70% of keywords regarding the language used to define skills in the JD. If one does not use the skills of the JD in the resume, the chances of being shortlisted for an interview are zero. Remember that the candidate is a salesman selling his candidature to the company. It does not matter what he brings to the table; it matters what the customer wants. Another 75% are removed. Not reading the JD ends up in massive culling. Be smart and avoid this blunder. At this point, 125-odd applicants are left. This is the group that has survived HR shortlisting and get passed to the hiring manager.
The tech manager further removes people whose resumes do not reflect the skills defined in the JD. They look at the quality of work experience, internships, open source contributions, competitions won, and other factors that reflect skills. Around 70% of applicants are again removed in this manner.
The balance of 43 applicants is passed to the recruiter to be contacted directly for an initial screening. Most recruiters ask basic questions like why this company, which this role, and maybe 1 or 2 basic tech questions. Recruiters are looking for confidence, enthusiasm and someone who displays genuine interest. Most recruiters are good at analysing people skills but poor with tech skills. Hiring managers understand the tech side much better. So, applicants should not worry about tech skills before the HR team. Instead, they should focus on practising their STAR stories in advance. Only 50% of folks get through this stage.
Most hiring managers do not want to deal with a shortlist of more than 20, irrespective of how many applicants apply for the role. The hiring manager or team members talk to all applicants, shortlist half, and then call the shortlisted for actual interviews. In this case, 9 came for on-site team interviews.
After everyone is interviewed, the interviewers get together and discuss each candidate. Everyone is asked similar questions to make comparisons easy. Every candidate faces opposition from at least 1 or 2 interviewers in the evaluation committee. The trick is for the winning candidate to have at least one great interview and for that impressed interviewer to act as a champion for his candidate. That one person tilts the case in 90% of interview evaluations if that person can convince the nay-sayers. An offer is not made unless everyone agrees.
Typically, one offer is made, and one or two are shortlisted in case the top candidate rejects it. Invariably, the top candidate also has multiple choices and may not accept.
Hopefully, you now know better how the hiring process works!! Again, this is my analysis based on my experience of big tech in Silicon Valley.
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