Reading candidates’ GitHub profilers
We are hiring again (this time for Junior C# Dev positions in Israel). That means that I go through CVs (quite a few, actually). I like going over the resumes directly, to get a feel for not just a particular candidate but what is, for lack of a better term, the state of the market.
This time, I noticed a much higher percentage of resumes with a GitHub repository link. Anytime that I see such a link, I go and look at what they have there. That is often really interesting. Then again, you run into things like this:
On the one hand, this is non production code, it is obviously a teaching project, which is awesome. On the other hand, I find such code painful to look at.
In the past, I would rate highly anyone that would show a GitHub account in the CV, since I could expect to see some of their projects there, usually unique ones. This time? I’m seeing a lot of basically homework assignments, and those aren’t really that interesting to review or look at. Especially since a lot of the candidates apparently had the same courses, so I saw the same 5 projects repeated over and over again.
In other words, just a GitHub account with some repositories are no longer that interesting or meaningful.
Another thing that I noticed was that a lot of those candidates had profiles with profile pictures like:
A small tip, if you expect people to visit your profile (and I assume you do, since you provided the link in the resume), it is worth it to put a (professional) picture of yourself there. The profiler readme on GitHub is also surprising attractive when looking at a candidate.
Another tip, if you see a position for a C# Junior Developer, it is acceptable to apply if you don’t have all the requirements, or if you exceed them. But if you are trying to find a new job as a lawyer specializing in family law, maybe don’t try to apply to a tech company.
And yes, I’m using this post as a want to vent while going over so many CVs.
Most CVs are dry, but one candidate just got bumped to the next stage based solely on the fact that in they had a “Making awesome pancakes” in the CV, which made me laugh.
Comments
Very nice. Is this remote position ?.
well, at least he wrote the "using" statements!
After reading this, I won't never want to work for you. What a moron.
Were they code identical?
I'm junior C# developer and I really like this posts so we can see where to improve, thanks Ayende!
johndoe,
Not an issue, I wasn't aware we extended such an offer to you, but in that case, you may consider it rescinded.
Udiee,
Probably not, but they all had the same structure (I assume the instructor gave them the first template)
At that point, it didn't really matter and digging into each of those to find actual meaningful differences was too much work
I guess it depends whether you understand 'Junior C# Dev' as somebody that has between 1-4 years of commercial experience or somebody that is straight out of university. Or rather, number and quality of received cvs is driven by how the applicants understands the term, if it doesn't fit your view then it might be worth clarifying in the job ad.
For somebody with less than 1 year experience, do you expect them to know about SQL injection attacks? That's not really taught at universities, might be mentioned here and there but I wouldn't take it for granted. Or do you frown on using ADO.Net instead of an ORM? IMO it's better for students to learn the foundations (i.e. raw sql) first, frameworks and orms come and go and they will have plenty of time to learn it. Having multiple candidates with the same project is good IMO, you can compare the quality of code. Although, I can see how this gets boring after a third or so project.
You might also be spoiled by the quality of code produced at your company, or open-source projects you look through from time to time. If you saw bad code written by (allegedly) professionals with years of experience on a regular basis, you would be more forgiving for the homeworks you look at currently:)
Adrian,
I mentioned that this is a student that is using this as a teaching tool. As such, it is perfectly fine code, as a non production code.I write a LOT of ugly code for one off / testing scenario, sure. And some of that ends up as real repositories.
I was talking about my reaction to this, not putting down the candidate.
Can you please elaborate what exactly do you find painful in that code snippet?
Bill,
The SQL injection. The working with raw ADO calls. This is the type of code that I would see in 2004.
Is the professional real picture of oneself really that important to you? I use the very same "violin" avatar everywhere on Internet from GitHub to Twitter and even LinkedIn... I understand it's common practice to attach a real picture to an application and resume mail (although I still don't get why we do so...), but on the public Internet, I may not wish to show my real face, and btw this avatar of mine also tells I'm not only into dev: this gorgeous violin of mine is my own "awesome pancakes" :)
And concerning the 2004-ish ADO.NET code, maybe the issue is also with teachers that did not upgrade to (micro or macro) ORMs yet, or wanted to teach first the basic ways... I discovered from experience after my studies in the late 90s how unaware of "real-world issues" my university cursus was, I suspect things did not change that much in 25y
Olivier,
The image isn't that important, that it isn't the default really helps, yes. It shows a certain level of attention.
Some people had real portfolio that were beautifully crafted. Not always applicable to the position, but made sure that I would look into them in depth.
As for the code, yes, that is probably the case, although I would write similar code to teach people how things work under the hood.
Thanks for the reply, I suppose we are on the same page here!
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