Joel on Software

Sorting Resumes

“To top programmers, the most maddening thing about recruiters is their almost morbid fascination with keywords and buzzwords. The entire industry of professional headhunters and recruiters is bizarrely fixated on the simple algorithm of matching candidates to positions by looking for candidates that have the complete list of technology acronyms that the employer happens to be looking for. It becomes especially infuriating to realize that most of these recruiters have no idea what any of these technologies are. ‘Oh, you don’t have MSMQ experience? Never mind.’ At least when real estate agents prattle on about Subzero refrigerators and Viking stoves, they at least know what these things are (although any stainless steel refrigerator counts as ‘Subzero’ these days). The easiest way to catch-out a technical recruiter is when they inevitably insist on 5 years of experience with Ruby on Rails, or refuse to consider someone for a ‘Windows API’ job when they only have ‘Win32’ on their resume.”

-- From today's third and final installment in The Guerrilla Guide to Hiring, Sorting Resumes.

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You’re reading Joel on Software, stuffed with years and years of completely raving mad articles about software development, managing software teams, designing user interfaces, running successful software companies, and rubber duckies.

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I’m Joel Spolsky, founder of Fog Creek Software, a New York company that proves that you can treat programmers well and still be highly profitable. Programmers get private offices, free lunch, and work 40 hours a week. Customers only pay for software if they’re delighted. We make FogBugz, an enlightened project management system designed to help great teams develop brilliant software, and Fog Creek Copilot, which makes remote desktop access easy.