Ask HN: Finding tech talent is getting harder. It's not a Bay Area problem only
As a developer who has recently been through the hiring process, I think the problem is not a shortage of talent, but rather that companies are awful at hiring. Here are a few of the main issues:<p>1. Don&#x27;t limit your potential talent pool to the miserable and the unemployed. In theory, any developer who is currently employed might be interested in leaving their job to work for you. Perhaps you will offer them more money, or perhaps a better quality of (work) life. However, most developers won&#x27;t bother to talk to you if they already have a job. Why is that? Simple, if they do talk to you, you&#x27;re going to offer them a homework assignment. You&#x27;re going to tell them that it shouldn&#x27;t take more than an hour, but it will actually take two full days to do right. Giving someone a homework assignment isn&#x27;t a way to woo them away from their current job. So you are left with a candidate pool that consists mostly of people who are desperate enough that they have to agree to jump through your hoops (i.e. unemployed, miserable in their current job, etc.)<p>2. Don&#x27;t discard capable people. The average interview begins with a remote code challenge whereby the candidate, who is probably nervous, has to pair program a completely contrived problem with a complete stranger watching them over a webcam. There are tons of developers who are good at coding solutions to real world problems in real world situations but simply don&#x27;t perform well in this type of situation. This type of scenario is not really assessing a candidate&#x27;s skills. It&#x27;s assessing their familiarity with specific contrived interview problems and their ability to perform under duress.<p>Of course, the points you raised are fair as well. Recruiters are not technical people, they are sales people. You will have to find a good recruiter. They are out there, you just have to find the right ones. But my point is, once you find the good recruiter(s) don&#x27;t waste the human capital they can being to you by having a terrible interview process. Here is my advice. Once your recruiter has a handful of resumes you like, carve out half a days worth of 30-minute sessions to meet with them at the recruiter&#x27;s office. Ask them about projects they&#x27;ve worked on. You&#x27;ll find out much more about what they know and what they&#x27;re like to work with than you would with the typical remote code challenge. One you narrow the pool down a bit bring them in for on-sites.<p>Best of luck!