As you may have noticed on our homepage, we’re hiring. We’re looking for a programmer to join our team. The ideal candidate will know Java, Spring & friends, but crucially will be able to think for himself or herself, be systematic and sceptical. I have indeed received five CVs in the last week. (I was hoping for a few more, especially considering that there aren’t supposed to be “any IT jobs around”.)
So, how were the CVs? The CVs were fine, the experience the candidates listed was impressive. To evaluate their practical skills, I sent them an exercise to implement. The exercise is a simple Java EE web application, using trivial domain and calling on some XHTML, ORM and Spring experience. I only ask for the code to build autimatically and to have adequate test coverage. Nothing the candidates who claim to have many years’ Java EE expertise should find difficult.
What were the results? Nothing. That’s right, I have not received a single response! I find it very frustrating that the candidates do not even have the courtesy of saying that they do not wish to proceed with the application. Especially since I do reply to every applicant, even the ones whose CVs I feel are too weak to even attempt the test.
In summary, if I hear anyone say that “there are no jobs in IT”, I will probably say something rather unpleasant.
That’s terrible, if they wanted the job they should at least have submitted an attempt at it or said they couldn’t be bothered.
I hope you find someone suitable soon!