Hiring Graduates
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
We offer internships to students from a local university for a year before their final year - this works very well, as they learn lots of real world stuff, and usually come straight back to us for a proper job. You could consider it a big year long hands-on interview
-- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit! Buzzwords!
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Yeah that's all true. I wonder why they don't teach practical things at university in addition to the technical stuff? It would sure make life easier for the employers. I guess that's why doing a co-op is such a good idea as others mentioned, for both the potential employer and the student.
standgale wrote:
Some great people I knew at uni probably WOULD have a problem with customers and timeframes because they just program all the time and creatively and they really DO know a massive amount - and you can't let anything, like eating, or customers, get in the way of programming the thing, whatever the thing is. True hackers. Of course, if you can control them and get them to work on their work, then they will be brilliant and you'll get a lot of random extra contribution besides.
I used to be one of those guys, not necessarily brilliant but very hackerish, running your own company will grind off those rough edges pretty quickly, but in this day and age it's rapidly becoming the only choice for an uber hacker type person. Programming has become corporatized so heavily and programmers have become a near commodity (not the great ones but the adequate ones) that no corporation really want's to tolerate a classic hacker type antisocial sort of programmer any more. They expect meetings and cubicles and reports and all that foofarall that drove me away from working for the "man". All you really need these days to make a good living with that type of personality is several good ideas or one great idea, an excellent business partner who can tolerate you and a computer with high speed internet access.
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon
Hi, This topic is really interesting to me (I am a recent graduate - I spent a 6 months as a chalet host in the alps before moving onto a development role). I studied Electronics at uni and now work primarily in c#. When i moved into the role i understood the basic syntax of c, c++ and c# and have done a little bit of programming in each(embedded system and windows programming). Although i try to keep up with best practises for code layout and use it is a tough job learning how to use different IDE's, general concepts of SW engineering, good code use, the .NET API and other APIs etc. I suppose this should be in its own topic but what would the experienced users of this forum say is a good way to develope my career. Become more focused on .NET SW or continue dabling with windows programming, embedded system and hardware development?
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
The company I'm starting with today said they can't find any .Net programmers with the level of experience they require, so they had to lower the bar in terms of what they were looking for, and they STILL couldn't find anyone. I guess it's so bad they had to settle for me (no real .Net framework knowledge, but can write in any language you might care to mention). :) We're in San Antonio, and they advertised the job in Austin and Houston, and evidently, anyone that *did* meet their requirements wanted to relocate/commute, much less come to San Antonio to interview. At my last job, we had a Stanford graduate who was one of the best natural programmers I'd ever seen. He had that kind of programming skill that they don't teach in any school, if you know what I mean. As to your question, the problem would be finding the guy that can adapt to your requirements. I think the best way to approach it is to 0) Call them in for a face-to-face interview. Tell them the interview may last all day (so they have to be there early in the morning - testing promptness here). 1) Ask if they have a laptop, and if they do, tell them to bring a it with all of their preferred development tools on it, and a wireless card if their laptop didn't have a built-in one. 2) Tell them to bring any books they think they'll need. 3) Prepare your network to allow a wireless connection that disallows anything but web access. If the interviewee doesn't have a laptop, provide a desktop machine that contains all of your company's dev tools on it. You may also have to allow access to a database server if the project requires database functionality. 4) Prepare a project with a detailed list of requirements that the interviewee will have to implement. The object of this project isn't to produce anything really useful, or even necessarily to be finished. It's more to see if the interviewee can follow specs and see how he responds to nebulous requirements that don't specify any/many details about how something needs to be done. You can also see if/how he comments his code. I think you get the idea - come up with something that could be finished in about six hours by someone with the desired level of experience, and see what happens. Highly motivated programmers should be able to finish the project before the end of the work day. This is much better than asking prospective employees how to reverse a string in place.
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Yeah that's all true. I wonder why they don't teach practical things at university in addition to the technical stuff? It would sure make life easier for the employers. I guess that's why doing a co-op is such a good idea as others mentioned, for both the potential employer and the student.
standgale wrote:
Some great people I knew at uni probably WOULD have a problem with customers and timeframes because they just program all the time and creatively and they really DO know a massive amount - and you can't let anything, like eating, or customers, get in the way of programming the thing, whatever the thing is. True hackers. Of course, if you can control them and get them to work on their work, then they will be brilliant and you'll get a lot of random extra contribution besides.
I used to be one of those guys, not necessarily brilliant but very hackerish, running your own company will grind off those rough edges pretty quickly, but in this day and age it's rapidly becoming the only choice for an uber hacker type person. Programming has become corporatized so heavily and programmers have become a near commodity (not the great ones but the adequate ones) that no corporation really want's to tolerate a classic hacker type antisocial sort of programmer any more. They expect meetings and cubicles and reports and all that foofarall that drove me away from working for the "man". All you really need these days to make a good living with that type of personality is several good ideas or one great idea, an excellent business partner who can tolerate you and a computer with high speed internet access.
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon
You might consider that some of the best technical skills out there are not Graduates. I have seen this often .. really brilliant folk who drop out college. I think rembember one famous 'Non-Graduate' - ahh ... 'Will' something or other - you know the guy. Anyway he dropped out of Harvard to start a software company. He was technically brilliant and eventually became the wealthiest man in the world. Sound like a fairy tale! Don't let the next 'Will' slip through your fingers, because he was not a graduate. ;-)
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bryce wrote:
some of us clever trouser types to be found here on CP have quite some experience in it :)
...and I do it in the nude while drinking beer!
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash 24/04/2004
:shudder:
Graham Sally: It's a scientific fact that if you say "naked" three or more times, to any man, he has to cross his legs - Coupling
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
Odds are, as soon as the kid gets trained by your company, he/she will leave for a higher paying gig.
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
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Odds are, as soon as the kid gets trained by your company, he/she will leave for a higher paying gig.
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
I've notice that with some of the recent grads we've hired and friends of mine have hired, although they only lasted a year before they left for twice the salary. And speaking of salary has anyone noticed that almost every college grad, at least in the US, comes out expecting to be given te job simply because they have a degree and expect to be paid $50,000 USD+ a year to do it, hell when i graduated almost 2 years ago my first job and the one i'm still at paid me 30k now they've given me some nice bonus's and very nice raises, but i'm only now coming close (might be there in a year or so) to what most of these people think they'll get by having a piece of paper which is rapidly becoming as meaningful as a HS diploma. Also if any of you know of a way to nicely burst their salary expectations bubble i'd love to hear it.
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Hmmm..normally I would think you're taking the right approach. I'd take a seasoned developer with no formal training at all over a recent graduate. In fact I'd rather have a keener with almost no experience over a graduate but that's probably just me. I feel like it would take at least a year to rub all the ivory tower stuff off the graduate so they could be half ways useful. You may run into the problem that a graduate will expect a ridiculous salary right out of the gate and may take the experience they get with you and move on to something higher paying since you obviously can't pay them what you would pay an experienced developer. That's a tough one. I think if you choose to do it then you should go all the way and make it a big deal with your company, liase with the universities, maybe co-op and stuff. Seriously...you can't even headhunt someone with experience from another company? Or let someone work remotely from home? Perhaps you're not offering enough incentive? -- modified at 1:11 Thursday 16th August, 2007
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon
I work with and have worked with in the past a lot of graduates and the like and the main problem I see is not the ivory tower thing (although that can be a problem for those students who graduate and go on to work in the University environment) but the enormous void between university and the 'real world' From my point of view as an engineer and developer/programmer (by default since nobody else will do it here!) it seems obvious that a particular idea will translate into a workable solution but is often the case that a graduate just does not see that a solution is not practical. If only universities ran courses in experience!! :)
Apathy Rules - I suppose...
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I've notice that with some of the recent grads we've hired and friends of mine have hired, although they only lasted a year before they left for twice the salary. And speaking of salary has anyone noticed that almost every college grad, at least in the US, comes out expecting to be given te job simply because they have a degree and expect to be paid $50,000 USD+ a year to do it, hell when i graduated almost 2 years ago my first job and the one i'm still at paid me 30k now they've given me some nice bonus's and very nice raises, but i'm only now coming close (might be there in a year or so) to what most of these people think they'll get by having a piece of paper which is rapidly becoming as meaningful as a HS diploma. Also if any of you know of a way to nicely burst their salary expectations bubble i'd love to hear it.
SomeGuyThatIsMe wrote:
Also if any of you know of a way to nicely burst their salary expectations bubble i'd love to hear it.
Yeah right. The problem with bursting the bubble is that companies are so desparate to hire devs, that they will hire recent grads with one year of professional experience at a higher salary than their first employer out of school. A year later another company hires them for even more than the second employer. So in reality people with practically no experience can quickly work their way up the salary ladder, which is most likely why so many fresh grads have such high expectations. But I'm not complaining. I've only been out of school for about five years and have already tripled my initial salary. And, I studied music composition in college! :laugh:
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
I think hiring graduates is a very good decision, but make sure you get a good C++ Guy with an above average aptitude for puzzles There are only 10% in all the batch. WE hired two graduates once and they did a great job in one of the product. but another one we hired was a total failure. Regards
Omit Needless Words - Strunk, William, Jr.
Vista? Photoshop Preview Handler
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
i'm with the same company and my salary has already increased 50%, i can understand making more once the have experience, but i just cant understand why they think they're worth more than what i make now with little to no knowledge or experience. there some that may be worth it, but the vast majority couldnt program they're way out of a paper bag.
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
Colin Angus Mackay wrote:
Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
we did this, but ended up switching to the co-op practice. A) you get the student only for the summer, if you don't like him/her, you move on after the summer B) if you get a good one, you train them before they graduate! C) you snag a graduate trained in your business!!
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
I've found that the really good programmers are the ones that love to program. A good way to find this out is to have them give you a list of programming books they have at home, if they give you a list that are not college books you know their spending time on their own learning new things. You could also ask them the web site's they visit... of course if they answer with codeproject.com they must be a good programmer.
Terence Dwyer
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
As a soon to be graduate in Computer Engineering I have found this topic to be quite interesting. I was hoping to get some feedback on how I can sell myself in future interviews. My biggest fear is that potential employers will focus too much on grades. My grades are, in one word, terrible. I have been working on my own developing ASP.NET pages as well as some small windows apps. What are some qualities I can highlight that might counteract my grades? I really do believe that I could be a quality software developer. Its not my nature to be arrogant or a know it all, but I am still very confident in my abilities. Also, do you think its best to explain my grades or just leave that topic alone?
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Hi, This topic is really interesting to me (I am a recent graduate - I spent a 6 months as a chalet host in the alps before moving onto a development role). I studied Electronics at uni and now work primarily in c#. When i moved into the role i understood the basic syntax of c, c++ and c# and have done a little bit of programming in each(embedded system and windows programming). Although i try to keep up with best practises for code layout and use it is a tough job learning how to use different IDE's, general concepts of SW engineering, good code use, the .NET API and other APIs etc. I suppose this should be in its own topic but what would the experienced users of this forum say is a good way to develope my career. Become more focused on .NET SW or continue dabling with windows programming, embedded system and hardware development?
Bypass83 wrote:
I suppose this should be in its own topic but what would the experienced users of this forum say is a good way to develope my career. Become more focused on .NET SW or continue dabling with windows programming, embedded system and hardware development?
Those are specialisations. Specialise on what interests you. From my perspective as someone hiring devs I want to see a good grasp of the fundamental principles. A good dev will have a good grasp of the fundamentals and can pick up any technology on the job. A dev that just specialises without the fundamentals will stick there and if the market changes they will have a much tougher time. Fundamentals are: * OOP / OOD * Database design (ER Diagrams) * Design patterns * Development lifecycle (design, build, test, deploy, etc.)
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
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You might consider that some of the best technical skills out there are not Graduates. I have seen this often .. really brilliant folk who drop out college. I think rembember one famous 'Non-Graduate' - ahh ... 'Will' something or other - you know the guy. Anyway he dropped out of Harvard to start a software company. He was technically brilliant and eventually became the wealthiest man in the world. Sound like a fairy tale! Don't let the next 'Will' slip through your fingers, because he was not a graduate. ;-)
lxrocks wrote:
You might consider that some of the best technical skills out there are not Graduates
Quite true. I'm using graduate to mean someone just arrived on the Software Development job market. Can be fresh out of uni' or fresh out of school. Naturally, if they didn't go to uni' then they will need to be able to demonstrate some understanding of software development concepts.
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
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Colin Angus Mackay wrote:
Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Be prepared to spend an awful lot of your time reading CVs, and precious little of it interviewing. God knows where universities get the gall to come up with course names that even hint that they teach people how to code. Have you considered setting up a remote-working system?
Mark Wallace wrote:
God knows where universities get the gall to come up with course names that even hint that they teach people how to code.
I don't doubt that. I remember some of the projects my fellows did for their final year. I spent practially all my time writing software and they were spending it all writing bizzare essays on "ubiquitous" computing.
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
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The company I work for is having a terrible time hiring quality software developers. It seems that they just don't exist. We received in total about 20 CVs from various sources. We interviewed 5 of those, only one got to the second interview stage. We are thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to spend our budget on a couple of graduates fresh out of university and train them up. The previous company I worked for did that, but I wasn't involved with that aspect. Does anyone have any advice for hiring graduates?
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
I'll make your quest easy. I'm a graduate (many years ago), and available. Before graduation, a large company's recruiter came on campus and visited some tech classes, asking any to-be graduate that wanted a job to come interview. What the company did was set up a 9-month *paid* training program - 6 months of class work (RTOS, Assembly, microcode, OS development, hardware debugging, software debugging, release procedures, etc.) and 3 months of OJT alongside an experienced employee. There were 13 of us in the first class, and the company got 13 creative, trained, EXCELLENT employees that knew and followed all company standards. Being top in the class, I took on a full-time position after 6 months as the regular employee was quitting in two weeks. I picked up his project in those two weeks and never looked back. The program was so successful, they held a second class a year later. Of course the 6-month training took some coordination, with university professors coming in to teach, the company experts, hardware, classrooms, a full-time program manager, etc. but it was well worth it for the company.
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why not get someone to work remotely? some of us clever trouser types to be found here on CP have quite some experience in it ;) bryce
--- To paraphrase Fred Dagg - the views expressed in this post are bloody good ones. --
Publitor, making Pubmed easy. http://www.sohocode.com/publitorOur kids books :The Snot Goblin, and Book 2 - the Snotgoblin and Fluff
bryce wrote:
some of us clever trouser types to be found here on CP have quite some experience in it
It could be an option. We do have the odd person that works remotely and comes into the office from time to time.
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: Agile in the Enterprise Vs. ISVs, Mock Objects, SQL Server CLR Integration, Reporting Services, db4o, Dependency Injection with Spring ... * Reading: SQL Bits My website
