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Ask HN: Effects of hiring based on GitHub

28 points by fraserm ↗ HN
A growing part of the industry over the past several years is making github or other open source code examples mandatory for the application process.

Since I am interested in recruitment what changes have HN users noticed?

- Has the average quality of interview candidates increased?

- Do impressive open source contributions correlate with high performance when hired into your company?

- Do employees now push to open source internal tools to demonstrate their work?

6 comments

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shubhamjain
A related question to this. While I have started putting up my code on Github but they are rather small hacks which I do in my free time. I find it hard to be persistent in extending them or contributing to existing projects. Does that reflect negatively on me?
daken
I work in the gaming industry, and recently have been spending a lot of time between reviewing resumes and going through Github code. What I did notice is: - The best profiles I've seen were not Github publishers - Doing a dev-test prior to interview is a better sorting - I believe open-source contribution is a state of mind and not of performance
fraserm
Has any Github code or practices put you off interviewing someone so far? What kind of dev test do you do? Question and answer or give them a spec to implement?
daken
I give them a dev test (Node JS) with their choice of database to create a small service (front end and back end).

Deliverable is code + db scheme + additionnal questions (mostly how they would improve if they had time, choice on tech etc.)

We also have in interview "do this function for me" to see how they think

allworknoplay
- yes - yes - yes ... but that's not to say it's a must or even a terribly significant factor. It merely makes you easier to say 'yes' to from afar, and that's it. I think people generally realize that the "github profile is a must" mentality is extremely likely to pass by highly qualified candidates in a hiring market where nobody can afford to do that. Willingness to torch any candidate that doesn't behave like a 25 year old groomed in the silicon valley of the last few years is not a successful hiring strategy.
Peroni
Making it mandatory to have appropriate examples of your work on GitHub is foolish. There are a huge number of talented engineers who simply don't have the time or the ability to maintain a decent OS repo.

Sure, it certainly helps to be able to see real samples of code but it should never be a mandatory requirement.