Developers nowadays are in charge of their own careers. Developers are one group of people that can afford to be picky in today’s job market. Developers choose who they work for and, most of the times, on what terms.
Companies need tech talent. They are taking notice, adapting and trying to become as attractive as possible for candidates. With that said, developers are surely not immune to being exploited by poorly put together recruitment processes or unethical behaviour. Even though the things I’m going to talk about have happened to a lot of people in this industry, I think this isn’t as widely discussed as it should be! Let’s shed a light on some of them!
We should try to shut down abusive processes and methods. Let me share three of them with you today:
- Recruitment processes with way too many steps
- Unbelievably long tech assessments
- Working while not hired, disguised as “Coding challenges”
Some recruitment processes can be a demanding quest where you meet the HR team, the management team, the CFO, the CTO, the CMO, the CEO, your possible future team mates, your possible future clients and their friends… you get the idea. People! Is the 15th interview really necessary? Are you trying to find the most patient and available person in the world to come and work for your company? Or just someone with no Plan B? You’re probably losing a lot of great candidates between each of those 100 steps on the recruitment funnel. Personally, I wouldn’t want to go through 6 interviews and put in 8+ hours of my time just to be dropped as a candidate somewhere along the way. Try to find the steps that are truly meaningful and drop the ones that aren’t. I guarantee you it’s easier than it looks at first.
On a side note: Fellow recruiters, please provide feedback to everyone. It doesn’t matter if the feedback is positive or negative. If someone invested their time to go meet you and learn a bit more about the company you represent, you must tell them something. It’s the right thing to do. Getting a “no” is far better than not getting any information and no closure.
On to the second topic: unbelievable long tech assessments. What is your expected tech interview length? 1 hour? 1.5 hours? You wouldn’t expect longer than that, right? Well, unfortunately, some companies have 4 hour long interviews (or even more…) to assess your skills. The same goes for “coding challenges” that are sent for you to solve wherever you want. That might not be an issue for some people, but the shady part is that these companies do not tell you it is going to take that long and expect you to be prepared and available. In my opinion, that is utterly disrespectful and no way to start a possible relationship with an employee/colleague. I get that your process might be long and you want to be extra careful, but please give people a heads-up and ask them if they’re available for X hours on that day. People might have other plans.
Another nasty trend in the tech industry today is getting some work done through candidates. This is usually disguised as a “code challenge” where the candidate is unknowingly trying to solve a problem the company is being paid to solve. Some are even a few days long!
Don’t get me wrong, I get that people use common issues they face day-to-day as an assessment tool. It makes a lot of sense! A totally different thing is having candidates for a developer role in your company do your work for you. When you use your position as an advantage and give them a feature to do, a problem to solve, or even a ticket that you should’ve done yourself, that’s the point to stop and think about what you’re doing and if it is ethically acceptable or not. To be perfectly clear, in this case it’s not!
In this day and age, as a developer, you are one of the most sought after professionals in the workforce, but this doesn’t mean you’re immune to unethical treatment from companies. Stay safe and know your worth, my friends!
I follow a strict no bullshit approach to HR and I’m glad Runtime-Revolution supports it. If you are interested in who we are and what we do, make sure to reach out! I’ll make sure you get a clear picture of our way of doing things.