If HR has no idea what the job means, they also shouldn't be the one selecting candidates and conducting interviews.

HR doesn’t really conduct interviews beyond maybe a quick high level screen. They select candidates, but also only as a high level screen, it’s up to the engineering team to screen more deeply and do interviews.

Of all places, Facebook had a pretty clearly non-technical person screen me over the phone.

Apparently they gave her a list of questions and answers. The questions were structured so that none of the answers were open-ended. ("What is the OSI seven layer model? What is a Unix signal?")

So, yeah, I'm not sure I would call it a real interview, but sometimes HR does get called upon to screen candidates.

This is different. The engineering team provided those questions so that the recruiters stop wasting their time on people who have no chance at all. They're just implementing the filter. HR themselves did not come up with any of them, and don't make the decisions. Also, recruiting and HR are not quite the same function.

I talked to a person in a similar situation... ironically some of the questions could have multiple answers. Pre ES5 and Post ES5 JS has changed a lot of the "rules". Specifically to scope/closures.

But yeah, for the most part, those kinds of questions help. It does depend on what your needs are.

I’ve been screened by a Facebook recruiter without that experience. Sounds absolutely dreadful.

I had a very similar experience with LinkedIn a couple years ago.

At my company if a candidate doesn't check all the reqs but comes close, HR shows the resume to the relevant department and asks them how important the missing boxes are. We're willing to train employees, so we usually at least give the candidate an interview.

If I see a position that has been open for longer than a month, I assume they are not serious about filling it. Either they aren't really hiring or they don't want to pay the market rate.

That isn't right. We did hire, several times. More please!

I've been posting this for ages: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18358038

We have well over a hundred people doing that sort of stuff.

This idea of "filling" a "position" is wrong. There is a need for competent technical staff who can contribute to the team. We hire them as we find them. There isn't a fixed number of slots to fill with warm bodies.

Your ad is a “looking for people” type ad. The ads I skip are the ones with fairly specific skills that haven’t been filled after a month.

Looks like you do some interesting work! If I was a US citizen you'd be hearing from me.

Most of the job positions all of FAANG have posted have been open for months, some for over a year. They are really hiring and have no problem paying market rate. That's a counterexample.

If a company is really hiring and paying market rate, what's the situation leading to positions open for over a year? Unicorn-hunting?

I've been part of a hiring process that took a couple months (and by the end had management breathing down our necks to just hire -someone-), but that was because we were hiring into an out-of-the-way location that generally lacked the skills locally that we were looking for. Neither of which would apply to FAANG.

HR just leaves the same position open because it's not really a position, it's a category and they are too lazy to remove and add the same ad over and over.

Maybe they're willing to hire in depth for those particular positions?

The company I work at has an ad for "Senior Full-Stack Developer" and if 5 amazing candidates show up they'll probably hire all of them (or if just 1 shows up and gets hired the ad will remain online).

They are just being picky, and can afford to be picky. I’ve heard FAANG interview pass rates are pretty low, frustrating their recruiters to no end :).

Just because there is a job posting doesn't mean there is position open.

"keep in mind you might want to move some of those to a "nice to have" category"

I would add be more general if possible. Someone with 5 years of postgres sql will pick up sql server pretty quickly. So maybe just: Relational Database experience. Somebody who has used 5 different ui frameworks will pick up the whichever you use pretty quickly. So perhaps: Web UI development. Etc.

I've never worked for a startup, but when my company leaves a long-standing position open, it usually means that there's some work sitting on the back burner that isn't important enough to make it on to an existing employee's task list. Even in my small group, there's plenty of work that would be "nice to have", but isn't mission critical. If we find the right person to do some of that work, we will hire them on a short-term contract to do the work. If we don't find the right person, one of us will get to it eventually.

I have a feeling this isn't any different at a startup.

No, startups just never get to the "nice to have".

Sometimes in a startup the posting stays up for a year because you can't identify and successfully hire a good candidate. I'm thinking of more niche roles, sure, but I've seen it happen multiple times.

I disagree about startups not leaving it up for a year. I have seen plenty that do exactly that. I don't know what the motivation is but I'm guessing they just want to fish for their pipeline. And they don't need someone next week.

My experience has been that HR just passes the resumes to all the hiring managers who make the call to proceed. There are some more competent HR recruiters that could also prioritize candidates that are a better fit to the top of the pile.