Have a personal web site

Re:Have a personal web site by paxys on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @02:53AM (#19785696)

I'm not going to judge someone for having other obligations/jobs/hobbies or whatever else, but if I find a candidate with lots of great blog posts and GitHub projects/contributions in the area I'm hiring them for, I'm definitely going to factor that into my hiring decision vs someone who has none of those.

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Re:Have a personal web site by scottishfiction on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @03:39AM (#19785868)

Well then you're likely missing out on good candidates - and those good candidates you're missing out on are likely to be under-represented. Parents, carers etc. - possibly very competent developers, who just have other commitments. I smell affinity bias.

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Re:Have a personal web site by paxys on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @01:32PM (#19790047)

Yes, but that is happening regardless. Everyone is missing out on good candidates.

Some people can't afford to go to a fancy school and don't have big companies come recruit on campus. Some people can't get certification or evening degrees because they have sick parents/kids to take care of. Some people can't do unpaid internships or make open source contributions that look good on their resume because they rely on the income from a job in retail. Some people can't do well in interviews because they have anxiety or other similar conditions.

I'm sure a lot of them are competent developers, but the reality is that there is no good selection process that tells you that with a good degree of confidence, so you have to look for other signals.

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Re:Have a personal web site by scottishfiction on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @02:23PM (#19790558)

I largely agree with you aside from the final point about resigning ourselves to using these really poor signals. Recruitment is tough to get right, but we should keep improving.

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Re:Have a personal web site by JacKTrocinskI on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @04:40AM (#19786121)

@scottishfiction absolutely agree.

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Re:Have a personal web site by tachikomagenius on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @04:47AM (#19786157)

Indeed. We should not make it something mandatory or a reason to deduct points from the dev if they don't have those but it would definitely be a good help if they do have it.

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Re:Have a personal web site by loup-vaillant on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @07:54AM (#19787086)

Hiring (for a single position) is a zero sum game. Giving extra points to some people is the same as removing points from all the others.

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