I recently posted a job on jobs.perl.org. In the post the applicants are asked to send along their best and worst code. I got a couple of cv without those. Dear people, if you fail to read the post carefully or simply ignore the request, why shouldn't I ignore your cv?
And the answer is...
sigzero on 2007-10-01T11:21:33
You shouldn't. It is clear you wanted to look at some code examples.
I'm writing about this now
petdance on 2007-10-01T16:48:53
I was writing about this very topic in my book last night. The instructions given in the ad are the very first assignment given to you by the new employer, and not following them to the letter tells the employer that you are unable or unwilling to follow instructions.
This applies across the board, but my specific example was about sending in your resume in a format other than Word when the ad asks for Word documents.
Re:I'm writing about this now
petdance on 2007-10-01T16:50:25
That being said, I couldn't possibly send you the worst code I've ever written, as I no longer have it. I've written tons of crap in my 30+ years of programming, and possess a relatively small percentage of code from my past.
Re:I'm writing about this now
Alias on 2007-10-01T19:42:45
I think I've managed to keep everything from my 10 years so far, the good the bad and the ugly. Fortunately I started when the age of pervasive version control had already begun.
Because you want the best person
link on 2007-10-01T18:17:15
There could be any number of reasons they didn't include what your requested in their email , mark them down for the inability to follow simple requests but still read the CV.
As an employer, find someone you can mold :)
brian_d_foy on 2007-10-01T18:22:38
A lot of people don't have code that they can send. Not everyone codes for fun or as a hobby and their code doesn't belong to them. Since your solicitation is for a junior level programmer, this situation may be even worse for the applicant. A junior level person probably doesn't have a lot of experience in job applications, and who knows what sort of advice they are getting ? Everyone says something different, thinking that their advice applies to every employer when each employer really has their own ideas about what people should do.
In screening resumes, I don't let myself get too caught up in this sort of stuff. You want to find the best person possible. You can act like a logic gate and filter out everyone who doesn't follow an unusual request, or look at all the resumes and decide if you want to ask some of the applicants to send along that code. Perhaps they never saw that last bit. Someone may have forwarded the job to them without that information, or many other possible scenarios. If you find a resume that otherwise looks promising, ask why they didn't send code. They might have a good reason.
Were I an applicant, I would hope that you'd be a cool employer, but by posting this weird sort of complaint to public forum, you don't look like that. I know that your post makes sense to you, but other people can also see it as a topic for a Dilbert cartoon or any of the other things people complain about when it comes to human resources.
If you want to find a good junior-level person, be a bit more forgiving. Maybe that person has some rough edges now, but you'll be able to train a good person with potential. Or, don't, but if that's your filter, don't complain that it doesn't work. Why even waste time thinking about people you aren't going to hire and don't pass your initial test? It's just wasted time for you?
