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Updated August 24, 2022Youβre reading an excerpt of The Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring, a book by Osman (Ozzie) Osman and over 45 other contributors. It is the most authoritative resource on growing software engineering teams effectively, written by and for hiring managers, recruiters, interviewers, and candidates. Purchase the book to support the author and the ad-free Holloway reading experience. You get instant digital access, over 800 links and references, commentary and future updates, and a high-quality PDF download.
The same principles for collecting signal from resumes apply to LinkedIn profiles, if the profiles are sufficiently filled in.
βcautionβ An incomplete or out-of-date LinkedIn profile presents a challenge. Itβs common for people with significant experience to have a minimalistic profile.* As a recruiter or hiring manager, you may want to ask a candidate if their LinkedIn is current . At the same, demanding that they update it before entering your process can create unnecessary friction. Itβs wise to be flexible.
With an ever-growing number of engineers contributing to open source, GitHub profiles and GitHub contributions have become a potentially powerful complement (or even a partial replacement) to LinkedIn profiles. Looking at someoneβs code output in the form of an open-source project or GitHub repo can work well at the top of the funnel, if the candidate has produced a large volume of codeβeffort on the candidateβs part is small (they just have to show you where to look), and signal is high. (Later on, you may ask the candidate to dive deeper with you on one or two projects, as part of a past work sample interview.)
While GitHub stars and published code are powerful signals, itβs worth remembering that most engineers donβt have meaningful projects they can publish. A notable exception is students or other nontraditional candidates who deliberately publish projects on GitHub.
If an engineer has built a personal website or online resume it can be helpful to look at the site itself, both for links to projects and as a demonstration of frontend design or engineering, as appropriate.
Cover letters (and whether to include them when youβre a candidate or consider them when youβre an employer) have historically been a bit of a contentious topic, mostly because of the purported time they take reviewers to read. As a recruiter or hiring manager, youβll be able to tell quickly if itβs a generic, copy-pasted form letter. If it is, the letter canβt tell you much. But if itβs not, then itβs absolutely worth readingβthe candidate just gave you a huge window into who they are and how they communicate, in a way that a resume cannot. If the letter reads like a thoughtful, passionate human wrote it, then wise hiring teams will seriously consider talking to the candidate. This holds true even if youβd be on the fence just judging from their resume alone.
The converse doesnβt always hold true, however. If a candidate looks competent but isnβt over the moon about your company yet and hasnβt gone out of their way to show their enthusiasm, thatβs not a reason to reject them. If you feel strongly that theyβd be great in the position, itβs best to let them know you want to talkβyouβll have plenty of chances to sell them later.