Hiring Strategies

***

If in case you missed the first part of this blog, I have been talking to our CTO Vishwastam Shukla about how more recruiters and hiring managers need to use skills as the primary criterion for developer hiring. Vishy knows the importance of skills from his days as a coder, and from a very personal experience, which he narrated during our tête-à-tête.Read the first part to know more about this, and scroll down for the rest of our conversation.

***

Question 4: Sometimes when you hire based on skill, you might need to upskill and train an employee to adapt to the nuances of the business. We’ve heard this before from recruiters. Isn’t this a monetary loss to the company then?

For many recruiters, the cost of hiring a candidate is an important metric that influences their decision making. Look at it this way though: a candidate from an Ivy League college would ask for higher compensation. You can use the same money to upskill a lesser-educated candidate and mold them to your organization’s needs. In the long term, the cost: benefit ratio remains the same.There are also some intangible benefits to skill-based hiring which few talk about. It helps in building a stronger bond between employer and employee. The trust and belief you place in a candidate’s skills translates directly into ownership at work. Developers like to let their code speak for them, rather than a piece of paper. Focusing on skills also ensures the candidate values you more as an employer because you're giving them an equal opportunity to showcase their ability - something that every programmer worth their money would love to do.

When you let skills be the only differentiator rather than what's painted on a resume, you show a candidate the respect they deserve. In return, you gain a brand ambassador for life.

Vishy reiterates this with his own example. He spent 6 and a half years at the company he joined as a rookie, learning to be better. Even today, he remembers his team fondly and always gives them their due for making him the engineer he is.

It’s time we placed an equal focus on such softer aspects of employee hiring, as we do on productivity and other metrics. An IBM study shows that employees lacking opportunities to grow and develop (i.e upskill) in a role are 12 times more likely to leave. In that sense, skill-based hiring and upskilling processes can also help you retain your employees longer.

Question 5: Skills versus pedigree, which one wins then?

[ebook2]Vishy graduated from IIIT Allahabad, a premier college in India, at a time when tech education was still firmly formal. With online tools and courses available now, he thinks that there is NO justification for high-expense degrees anymore. Tech education needs to move away from the concept of formal classroom teaching, and recruiters need to understand the actual, rather than the perceived value of a college degree.

Today, a developer could join an online course that runs cohorts for different tech stacks, teach themselves new skills via YouTube tutorials, or use practice platforms to upgrade their skills and go beyond classroom learning. Do they not deserve an opportunity to prove their skills just because their resume says they didn’t study in a Tier-1 college?

It’s also true that college degrees can be used as a proxy for social class and status, thereby reducing social mobility and augmenting inequality. 2020 has brought the conversation around unconscious biases to the fore, and as more recruiters adopt technology to ensure bias-free hiring, we’ll see the predilection towards academic lineage reduce even further.

If intelligence wins over degrees every single time, will we then see a demise of the IITs and Harvards of the world? It might not happen in our lifetime, but there is a definite need for colleges to evolve their curricula and ‘get with the times’. They cannot be charging big money for courses that are available online for cheaper.

Instead, they should aim to roll out a niche set of programs for which the general competency is not available freely. Colleges should also introduce tailor-made programs to help students hone their skills, and include methods to objectively measure progression within their curricula. (Harvard, if you’re listening, we’ve got a new business model for you!)

Question 6: How does someone used to hiring developers based on resumes shift to an objective, skill-based hiring process?

It’s definitely hard, especially for someone who’s been doing this for a while. Up until eight years ago, resumes were the only signals recruiters and hiring managers had about a candidate’s credibility. The first step, therefore, is to look for the same signals but in different places. Look for contributions on open-source forums like GitHub, and other developer communities. Check if a candidate believes in upskilling and what their choicest modes of doing so are. Many developers join hackathons, coding challenges, and boot camps to keep themselves updated with the latest developments in tech.With experienced developers, you can also look at the flavor of work they have done at previous organizations. Most importantly, always have a wide talent pool to choose from instead of restricting yourself with selection mandates. This can be hard to do. The trick lies in using automated tools that help you reach out to a wider candidate pool and create a wide talent funnel. This way, you can significantly improve your chances of hiring right by identifying the right candidates through objective skill-based assessments and choosing the ones that match your company’s requirements for skill.Don’t forget to check if your preferred candidate can write well, in any form or shape. Vishy believes this to be a hugely underrated skill in the tech role; one which most companies wouldn't even mention in their JDs. Even when software developers write code, they are required to document it. Not just because someone else will find it hard to read their code one day, but more so because writing down what you intend to do through your code needs clarity of thought. It needs conviction. It needs you to exercise your cognitive muscles and forces you to be more right and less wrong.

****

---

Recommended Read: 4 steps to pick the right tech recruiting software

---

After this long discussion, our CTO had to go back to doing his CTO-y things, and I went back to wondering about how just a generation ago, we were trained to put so much emphasis on 'where' someone had studied, or had worked. It influenced every sphere of our lives; so much so that we forgot to check for the 'what' and 'how' at times.Skill-based hiring brings back that focus on the 'how'. Vishy says a coder's attitude is never taught. It's something they possess innately or learn subconsciously. I think the same is true of recruiters, too. We were taught a certain way of hiring, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know the process is flawed. If you've known that innately, or subconsciously, we hope to aid you in your shift towards a more fair and unprejudiced tech hiring process.

To SkillsVille, y'all! And let's all take a cab for good measure :)

Growing up, this is what I heard often: Creativity is innate. You don’t necessarily need to go to a school to learn fine arts; if you have a passion for it, you will find a way to do what you love. When it comes to the sciences though, a college degree and the right training is a must. You couldn’t dream to do well in life if you didn’t have the right academic background.

Circa 2021. I am part of a company that believes in hiring based on skills rather than resumes alone i.e. one’s pedigree and academic laurels. Being brought up the way I was, this sat a little uneasy with me - HackerEarth hires people who write code to build things even if they don’t have the ‘right’ educational qualifications? Wait! HackerEarth also builds products to help other tech companies do the same?

Was there a conspiracy going on in the tech hiring world against systemic education that I hadn’t heard of? I decided to investigate this thoroughly. My primary informant: HackerEarth’s Chief Of Engineers, Vishwastam Shukla, or Vishy as we like to call him.

---

A Bit About Vishy

A passionate coder and programmer, Vishy calls the notable IIIT Allahabad his alma mater.For him, the allure of computers was a childhood fascination, and it boiled down to one thing: the ability to create something new in a short timeframe with just a few lines of code. It's a fascination that still holds him in its grip.He heads the entire engineering function and the quasi-engineering, or the technical content team, at HackerEarth, and is a passionate proponent of skill-based hiring and using technology to match the right developer to the right teams.

---

A scientific analysis ensued, in which I asked the questions, and Vishy, very generously, answered. The following is what ensued during our discussion.

Question 1: What does the word ‘skill’ mean for engineers and developers?

What a software developer essentially does is solve problems with the help of code. Now, coding has its own language and grammar. The most desired skill, therefore, among the developer community is the ability to write clean, functional code that doesn’t need to be sanitized against bugs. An understanding of the fundamentals of computer science is also necessary.A good developer understands the development environment and the tech stacks used. Hence, a working knowledge of the set of processes and programming tools used to create a software product is important for entry-level engineers. Of course, if you are applying for more experienced roles then Vishy would want you to have more extensive knowledge of these.Just like a good copywriter (i.e. someone like me) understands their varied audiences and tweaks their style to match, a good coder also knows how to alter code writing to suit various environments.

Apart from this, Vishy places a lot of store on raw aptitude - the ability to think through first principles, conduct thought experiments, and mentally work your way through a problem.

And most of all, he values attitude. Which, as we all know, is never taught but always learned.

Question 2: What does Vishy have against resumes, really?

Resumes have also become a dumping ground for all sorts of information - both relevant and not. Imagine this scenario - a developer applies for a role and doesn’t get it. The recruiter says it’s because they lack a certain skill. We know the community talks, and when said developer narrates the story to his peers it creates a negative feedback loop among others. Candidates begin to think it’s better to create a checklist of skills on their resumes. There is, however, a stark difference between ‘knowing’ a skill just to beef up your CV, and actually being good at it.

Back in the dark ages, when technology hadn’t penetrated our lives to the extent it has now, a resume was the only tool recruiters and hiring managers had. Today, there are better ways to hire the right talent. When a candidate mentions on their resume that they ‘know’ a particular tech stack, for instance, you can use community platforms like GitHub and StackOverflow, or use an assessment platform to evaluate their expertise.

---

Recommended Read: A hiring manager’s guide to hiring the right developer

---

Question 3: Interesting, but now I’m wondering if there’s any real-life validation here. Was there ever a time when Vishy hired ‘for skill’?

Turns out, there is a strong real-life connection to everything our CTO has said. The story takes us back some years, when Vishy was working at a well-known e-commerce brand, and hiring for quality analysts. A young man from one of the smaller towns of Karnataka, India, reached out to him on LinkedIn to apply for the role.

[ebook2]

Said man had completed his B.Sc in Computer Sciences from a small college and had been working in Bangalore as a cabbie. One day, on one of his trips, he met someone working in one of the many IT firms in the city, who gave him a dose of advice and asked him to upskill himself. Our cabbie did that, took some online courses to refresh his knowledge, and then found the courage to apply for jobs. The kindness of strangers, as they say, brought him to Vishy’s door (or interview room, rather), and needless to say, he landed the job.

I ask Vishy why he found this particular applicant perfect for the role? Weren’t there others more qualified? Of course, says he. What this ‘particular applicant’ had, however, was the zeal to learn and grow, and a passion for coding which many others didn’t.

This is also a perfect example of how technology has democratized skill-based learning. America’s Lambda School and it’s ISA model (Income Sharing Agreement) have helped many find better opportunities in the tech world.

The company’s 2020 Diversity Report states that “33.7% of Lambda School students identify as Underrepresented Minorities (URM)*, with 12.7% identifying as Black or African American, and 11.9% identifying as Hispanic or LatinX. Female students at Lambda School are slightly underrepresented relative to the tech industry as a whole (25.1% of our students identify as cisgender female, and 4.4% identify as transgender, non-binary, or two or more gender identities; the industry benchmark for women at technology companies is closer to 36%).” In a nation with a student debt of 1.6 trillion dollars, such models are proving to be extremely helpful for minority communities that do not have the ability to pay for a fancy college degree.

What this also tells me, and everyone reading this, is that tech education has undergone a radical shift. Consequently, so has the tech hiring process.

In our annual State of Developer Recruitment 2020 survey, we noticed that skill-based hiring has been gaining popularity with 21.5% of recruiters choosing this over other options. Experience is still by far the most important metric when choosing to hire someone, but skills ranking second on that list really does warm the cockles of our hearts.

Cabbie or college graduate, skills will trump pedigree every single time. As we at HackerEarth believe, the gods of good code do NOT discriminate.

***

There's a lot more that Vishy and I talked about. Head on to Part 2 of this blog to know more about his thoughts on the technical education system, upskilling, and the skills versus pedigree debate.

This article has been updated on 8th December 2021.

---

Many things are easy in life; hiring and building a competent technical team is not on that list. However, including pre-employment or technical assessment tools in the recruitment process can greatly help recruiters identify talented developers.

When leveraging pre-employment tools, the key aspect is to be able to create accurate tests for a given role. Choosing an appropriate assessment tool that allows flexibility as well as automation while generating online coding tests is much needed.

To help you get an objective measure of ability in potential candidates by creating coding tests as per your specific requirements, HackerEarth Assessments allows the creation of coding tests in four different ways:

1. Based on skills
2. Based on job descriptions
3. Based on job roles
4. Custom tests

Let’s break it down for you:

Creating tests based on coding skills

We understand that many developer roles are similar across organizations, but specific skills can vary significantly. Hence, HackerEarth allows skill-based recruitment test creation for over 50 different skills ranging from basics such as C and C++ to more advanced topics such as Big Data.

Let’s say you want to recruit a frontend developer with tech skills such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. All you need to do is:

Step 1:

Log in to your HackerEarth Assessment account by using your admin credentials.

Step 2:

Click on Create new test and select Skills.

Step 3:

Select the desired experience level.

• Junior hire (0 to 3 years)
• Mid-level hire (4 to 6 years)
• Senior hire (more than 6 years)

Step 4:

Choose the required skills from the drop-down menu or search for a skill by typing it in the search bar.

For more information on HackerEarth Recruitment Test, click here.

Creating tests based on job descriptions

A job description enables you to put together a list of skills and criteria that a candidate is expected to meet and it can form a great base to evaluate and benchmark a candidate’s performance.

Job descriptions include the following information:

• Job title
• Summary of the role
• Desired professional experience
• Skills required for the job
• Educational level and desired qualifications
• Job ID
• Other details like a company overview, responsibilities, work environment, perks, and more

HackerEarth Assessment lets you create carefully-curated tests based on job descriptions. Built on NLP, the platform extracts the skills and experience from the description (mentioned above) and creates an assessment best suited to evaluate a candidate.

This feature extracts five crucial or majorly-required skills to select questions. The numbers and difficulty level of questions are determined based on the years of experience mentioned in the job description.

To create a test based on your job description, follow these steps:

Step 1:

Log in to your HackerEarth Assessment account by using your admin credentials.

Step 2:

Click on Create new test. Select Job description (JD) to upload your requirements for the role.

Step 3:

Click Add your job description to write your requirements between 100 and 1000 characters. You can also upload or drag and drop a file from your system file that contains the required job description by clicking Upload your job description.

Step 4:

You can view and edit the following details in this step.

---

To know more about creating tests based on job descriptions, click here.

---

Creating tests based on job roles

HackerEarth Assessments lets you create tests based on specific job roles or profiles that your organization requires. This method helps you create a standardized test for a given job role. The platform will suggest the skills relevant to the selected job role and add/modify the skills and experience to create the test.

For example, if you are required to assess software developers, the platform will suggest the required skills for a software developer and create a test based on those topics or skills.

To create a HackerEarth test based on the job titles, follow these steps:

Step 1:

Log in to your HackerEarth Assessment account by using your admin credentials.

Step 2:

Click on Create new test and select Job role.

Step 3:

Select the job title for which you want to create the test (For instance, Software Developer.)

Step 3:

Once you select the job role, this is how it appears on your screen.

Step 4:

You can view and edit the following details in this step.

---

To know more about creating tests based on job roles, click here.

---

Creating custom coding tests

Custom tests on HackerEarth Assessment allow you to create a test customized to your needs. It allows you to build a test from scratch by selecting desired questions from the library or adding your own custom questions.

To create a custom test on HackerEarth, follow these steps:

Step 1:

Log in to your HackerEarth Assessment account by using your admin credentials.

Step 2:

Click on Create new test and select Custom.

Step 3:

You will be redirected to a dashboard where you can create your own questions or select questions from the pre-built question library. Additionally, you can change and modify the settings as per your requirements.

Advantages of using HackerEarth for creating coding tests

1. Extensive skill coverage: Offers over 1000+ different skills ranging from basic to advanced topics, ensuring comprehensive test creation for various roles.
2. Customization and flexibility: Allows for the creation of custom tests tailored to specific needs, along with options to choose from pre-built questions or add custom ones.
3. Integration with job descriptions: Utilizes NLP to extract skills and experience from job descriptions, enabling tests that are closely aligned with role requirements.
4. Role-specific test creation: Facilitates the development of standardized tests for specific job roles, with suggested skills relevant to the selected job title.
5. User-friendly interface: The platform's intuitive design makes it easy to create and manage tests, enhancing the user experience for recruiters.
6. Advanced analytics: Provides detailed analytics and insights about candidate performance, aiding in more informed hiring decisions.
7. Scalability: Suitable for organizations of various sizes, supporting both small-scale and large-scale recruitment processes.
8. Enhanced candidate experience: Focuses on a smooth test-taking experience for candidates, which can positively influence their perception of the hiring company.

---

To learn more about custom tests, click here.

---

Try using these features and let us know how they work for you.

If you need any help on how to use them, write to us at support@hackerearth.com and we will be happy to help.

If you’re new to HackerEarth and want to create accurate coding assessments, sign up for a 14-day free trial.

An eye-opening look at hiring strategies during a recession: What to expect and how to prepare yourself for it.

Do you remember the Great Recession? The hemorrhaging of American jobs accelerated at a record pace at the end of 2008, bringing the year's total job losses to 2.6 million or the highest level in more than six decades. Fast forward to today—countries around the world are feeling significant economic pressure and talks about another recession in 2020 are only getting louder. Many employees have lost their jobs and companies have withheld pay.

In contrast to the underlying financial cause of the 2008 recession, the current crisis is rooted in a health emergency. Many believe that it might cause far-reaching, unexpected economic repercussions.

However, Lou Adler, CEO and founder of The Adler Group, says that the scale of temporary unemployment and lay-offs today is a short term problem.

"In 2008, the business crashed and there was no financial support. Now we have people who do not want to hire anybody and save money. But I see it as a short term problem and not a long term one. Given this scenario, I advise recruiters that their hiring strategy has to be different. We have a different set of financial conditions and we must take a more strategic approach." — Lou Adler

Lou laid out a few pointers on the approach that recruiters and hiring managers should take during a global economic crisis, especially if they plan to hire people.

Strategy 1: Know where you stand

Not all businesses feel the same pain during economic downturns. There are some organizations that do not go out of business and are financially stable. On the other hand, there are some organizations where the business model is fundamentally challenged and they fight for survival. Hence, it is imperative to realize where you stand and take measures accordingly. If your business is done and you want to keep on growing, pause for three to six months. For those that are facing a recession for the first time, it is important to stay focused and become more agile. Your plans may have been scrapped, but the change in the economic climate can also foster new areas of opportunity.

Strategy 2: Always treat your candidates well

Hiring during a recession is a whole new ball game. Usually, it is a candidate-driven market, but now there are more job seekers than jobs available. This gives you the liberty to attract and recruit talent at lower pay, relocation, and so on. However, you must always keep in mind that this approach could cost you in the long run. The same hire you lowballed into a low salary will be the first to leave when the economy bounces back to normal.

Strategy 3: Be quick and efficient

In current times, your candidate management and selection process need to be quick and efficient. One way to do this is by not relying on resumes. A resume is not an indicator of what a person is capable of. Hence, you must ensure that an automated email goes to every candidate’s inbox when they apply for a job at your organization. The email should ask candidates to describe a system or project that they have worked on—something that they are proud of or one that they have worked on recently.

“It doesn’t make any sense to try to match a resumé to a person. However, if you look at someone's best project work, you have a good sense of what the candidate is like. There's a lot of people out of work today. I just want talented people out of work. But you cannot figure how talented a candidate is from a resume.” — Lou Adler

Strategy 4: Build a talent pipeline

Tough times need a proactive recruitment strategy, and one way to do this is by building a strong talent pipeline. Understand which roles are critical to reaching your business goals, and gain visibility on any future growth and expansion plans, or planned projects. Start by building a talent pool of internal candidates who have the potential to succeed in any key role. Identify key competencies or skills that need to be developed to ensure they're ready for the next step. Also, encourage an employee-friendly referral program.

“Recruiters must build a pipeline of top, very strong candidates for potential jobs that they'll be hiring for when the economy bounces back. They should use referrals for building networks with potential candidates. They should talk and reach out to them and build a good relationship.” — Lou Adler

Amid economic downturns, recruiters around the world are facing some obvious difficulties and struggles. When asked about what recruiters can do if they have been laid off, here’s what Lou has to say:

• Learning and upskilling should be a critical area of focus for recruiters. First, recruiters should list down their skills and figure out what’s in high demand. Secondly, they must understand and work on an approach on how they can be an expert in that field. This way, they will be in a position to eventually get a job when the economic recovery starts.
  
  “I don't mind someone who is out of work, particularly when it's not their fault. My advice is, get better, take training, do project work, volunteer for something. But don't just sit around complaining that you're not getting paid. And if you're really good during a training program, somebody will find out that you're really good and they'll hire you.” — Lou Adler

• Track what the market looks like every week. Leverage the rich repository of data that is available easily on the internet and find out about the number of relevant open job positions available in the market today.
  
  “Research. Read reports. How many open positions are there for jobs that I want to be in? And then when you start to see those jobs opening up, you know that the recovery is a month or two away. And I would probably do it for three or four different jobs in my area of expertise and my location. That would be a pretty simple way of figuring out whether the market is welcoming jobs.” — Lou Adler

Every recession has presented various challenges for everyone, making it difficult for organizations to strive and survive. However, they have also ushered an era of opportunities for new-age industries to sprout and shape consumer behavior for decades. We should remind ourselves that this too shall pass and prepare your strategy for hiring in a post-COVID world.

Every corporate job opening receives about 250 applications. Google receives millions. And only about five thousand candidates are actually hired every year. Though Google’s hiring process is quite similar to any other company, some specific features make it unique.

The most essential one is Google’s automatic screening process and this article will help you learn more about it. Knowing how to get through it will prepare you for landing any corporate job as a programmer.

What You Need to Know About the ATS

What is Google or any other company looking for in their potential employees? Does age or social background matter much? First and foremost, organizations are on the lookout for talented, creative, team-oriented candidates who can think outside the box and resolve complex issues to get meaningful results.

Apart from the importance of standing out during an interview, let’s first consider some preliminary processes of sorting out candidates’ resumes. It’s about beating the ATS! The interview may be hard, but getting to it is still much harder. However, a great programmer resume can help you overcome this hardship.

An ATS is applicable for enterprises and small-level businesses. It works similar to customer relationship management (CRM) systems and is used for recruitment tracking purposes. An ATS uses special criteria such as keywords, information about schools attended, former employers, years of experience, and skills to filter applicants. These criteria should be considered while optimizing a resume to the needs of a specific company. The whole system is a screening bot, and your first task is to get past it.

That is why you need to focus on creating a perfect resume. Try to make it as short and clear as possible, highlighting your hard and soft skills, gains and achievements, and successful school projects and coursework if you are a newbie in the job market.

In the case of Google, no one knows for sure how its automatic screening process is organized due to the “super-secret” search algorithm. However, there are some keywords that are undoubtedly relevant to a specific job description.

So, to start with, read the job description thoroughly and visit the corresponding website to get some extended information about the job opening and its requirements. Some other minor tips may hint at making your resume as concise and well-organized as you may need to improve the chances of your resume getting through bots.

To beat any job tracking system, you need to follow some essential recommendations concerning structure, style, and keywords.

Structure is everything

The first tip is about making your resume structured and easily browsable. Keep it as simple and friendly-looking as possible. Bear in mind the following key features to get this result:

1. Start your resume with your full name and the job desired/you are applying to.
2. Use common headings and subheadings like education, skills, work, experience, etc.
3. Try to avoid tables and charts, columns and graphs, pictures and other images.
4. Do not utilize specific colors and fonts (keep it black, Font 12).
5. Avoid spelling mistakes because they can prevent your resume from being scanned accurately.
6. Place your contact details in the resume body.

In short, avoid everything that may confuse the bot.

Focus on keyword optimization

Bots are usually looking for keywords, and this is indisputable. Hence, do the research! Find keywords that are most relevant for your industry and for the position you are applying for. Try to provide plenty of them to be sure, but keep your resume sounding natural.

You may want to visit the company’s website and find the list of qualifications needed for the vacancy. If you do not want to be tracked immediately while doing this research, use a reputable VPN that allows P2P traffic to make yourself unrecognizable. If there is still a lack of information, regarding reviewing some other vacancy descriptions on reliable job sites or use a certain keyword finder to make this optimization process easier.

Stay away from buzzwords

Don’t use generic terms or buzzwords such as ‘engaged’ or ‘highly motivated.’ They have become so trite that some companies put them in their blacklists.

When describing your soft skills, try to use words that highlight your personality and some specific traits that may be useful or required for the software developer or programmer position you are applying to.

Career consultants often recommend using AI resume builders to avoid clichés, grammar, and spelling mistakes, and help you pass the ATS and land your dream job.

LinkedIn profile matters

Most companies will check your social media profiles before hiring you. Make sure your LinkedIn profile is perfect because it is the first place they will look at. Take care of all the information and photos there—they need to be consistent and relevant to the purpose. If you still don’t have a LinkedIn profile, try to get it instantly because this is a basic tool used by employers to search for their potential candidates.

Even if you know how to answer all the basic programming interview questions, you may get lost while being asked about some specific details in your profile which do not coincide.

Pro tip

Last but not least, don’t be too specific. Of course, you should not omit all your employment dates, experience and education, personal qualities, and contact information from your resume. However, all this data needs to be relevant to the position you are applying for.

Show that you can provide value for the company, and HRs may get interested in hiring you even if you do not have all the necessary skills for the job. On the other hand, if the information given by you in the resume contains many minor details and specifications that do not correspond with the requirements of the position at all, you may be rejected by screening bots at the first stage of hiring already.

To conclude, proofread and check the relevance of your resume to the company’s needs and requirements. Remember that your task is to go through the whole recruitment process smoothly and to bag the position you have been dreaming about for a long time.

Even if you don’t mean to get hired by Google, getting past the ATS is the primary concern because it is widely used by companies nowadays. Using some tips from this article, you may spare yourself from the need of rewriting your resume over and over again.

Once you learn how to avoid common mistakes in your great programmer resume and how to make it friendly and acceptable for any screening bot, you will feel that your further interviews will become the easiest part of the whole hiring process.

Now that I’m older and my resume

is too long for you

Will you still be sending me a meeting invite?

Strategy session with a quick bite?

If I’ve been out on caregiver leave

Would you lock the door?

Will you still need me, will you still hire me

Now that I am 54?

Kerry Gates is the Director, MCB Community Professional Development and Communities Executive Event Producer at Microsoft. She has been a prominent voice in the space of Diversity and Inclusion and has been instrumental in building diverse teams and organizations resulting in high-impact, result-oriented workplaces. We first came across Kerry's poem on Ageism, When I'm 54, on Linkedin. These are her views on ageism in tech.

1. People have different definitions for ageism. Some define it based on stereotypes, some on prejudice and some on age. How would you define it?

   Well, the dictionary says and I am paraphrasing a bit, the discrimination of a person based on their age. In this instance I’d say anyone over 45 /50 is headed into the ageism in tech.

2. Is ageism a myth or does it actually pose a serious threat to the tech industry?

   Yes it does pose a threat. Why? The industry will miss out on a great deal of the market if they are not looking at the over 50 demographic and to do that effectively you need to have the over 50 demographic working on the solutions.

   It is pretty simple; almost all new technology is designed for use by younger people. Designers and manufacturers are deliberately ignoring the over-50s when creating new products and services. Quite logically, older people choose not to use products that have nothing to offer them. By not targeting products to an older demographic, the industry is reducing the customer base by half, not to mention dollars.

   This data is old, like 4 or 5 years but the 50+ population has an estimated $2.4 trillion in annual income. Don’t know about you but I am not keen to leave that kind of cash on the table. So why is tech? If you don’t understand me I am not buying from you.

   

3. Wow! ageism in tech is a real problem which needs to be tackled right away. Kerry, do you know of any instances where candidates were biased due to their age?

   Yes but not people who are willing to go on record. That’s the issue, so many people are embarrassed. Many people remove jobs from resume’s to not look like they have been in the workforce for as long as they have. You won’t even get a phone interview.

   Every year since the early days of the dotcom bomb, when I lived and worked in San Francisco, I interview regularly-at least once a year. Not that I want another job, but to keep my skills fresh and my interviewing up to date, it changes. I should mentioned my search tends to be outside of Microsoft as I am not really looking to leave and want to have a tougher experience in the interview. Internal can be tough but it is still internal, so a bit more open.

   What got me going was this last year I could not get a bite at all-The recent experience, well it sucked. Once I removed 10 years off of my resume and downplayed my longevity in the industry, I was able to get a phone interview and some feelers, but no in person. I mean what do I do, take off 20? That’s just so screwed up.

4. How can candidates overcome age discrimination in a job interview?

   I think sharing how you are keeping your skills up to date, the way you view learning. Give examples of how you are always learning and experience does not breed complacency.

   

5. What are some ways companies can tackle ageism in tech?

   Set up reverse mentoring. Be honest and highlight it. Recently our CMO did just that and invited an older worker to share their experience with the rest of the org. It was great and eye opening for others. Just like any kind of discrimination, meet it head on with honesty and address it. I also think make the case for those dollars not coming to your business. It is the ethical thing to do, including others and not being judgmental on someone’s age, but also geez the group 55-64 outspends all adults in nearly EVERY category. * US Consumer Expenditure report/ survey

It is about time companies took measures to combat ageism in tech. Tech’s youth driven culture and workforce could make some developers and engineers feel obsolete. The best way for developers to combat ageism is to never stop learning and when you’re hiring senior engineers, it’s always good to consider the whole story and incorporate a bias-free screening process. Let our go-getter's guide to diversity hiring in tech lead the way.