Waiting to hire the Perfect fit

I started seeing the job match emails in July. The ones that say "We think you're a good match for a job at Company X". Most of the time I either wasn't interested in Company X or their algorithm wasn't all that great at finding a good fit. But this one was intriguing.  There was a wide range of technologies involved that ranged from very close to the metal to very high level development. It was actually a pretty good fit - not a perfect fit, but pretty good. It seemed like interesting work.  I was pretty happy with the current gig, but I was curious and after a few weeks of seeing this job post, I finally gave in and applied on their online site. Crickets.

Another month or two passes and I'm still getting these job alerts. It's going to be tough for them to find someone with that mix of qualifications. At that point I realize that I know someone who used to work for someone probably connected to the group in The Company that's trying to do the hiring.  I send him an email and, sure enough, he does know the people who are trying to hire for this position and he introduces me via email. I send that person my resume and he says he'd like to bring me in for an interview, but it would have to be after he gets back from some travelling. I wait a few more weeks and email him again and he apologizes and says he still wants to bring me in, but they're kind of busy at the moment. I'm in no particular hurry.

Now it's mid-November and I've still been getting the job alert emails for this position every week or so.  It appears they're doing some A/B testing of the ad as the job title sometimes changes, but it's clear that it's still the same general position. Finally my contact gets back to me and sets up an interview for just after Thanksgiving.

Monday morning 9AM. Waiting in the lobby for Mr. A who is supposed to meet me and take me up to a conference room for the interviews. He apologizes and says he's got a cold so he shouldn't shake my hand. I appreciate the consideration. We get into the room and he reads over my resume for a minute and says "You're not a perfect fit for this position." And I agree that I am not and mentally add, But apparently you've been having a tough time finding a perfect fit for this position.

Mr. A then zooms in on a project I did ten years ago and asks me to talk about it. It was one of the more interesting projects I had done and I jumped right in explaining it, though some of the details were a bit fuzzy and I needed to recall them.  But Mr. A wouldn't let me finish a sentence without interrupting. I'd try to explain something about the project and he'd be like "Yeah, but what about ...?" Well, I was about to get to that... I'd then try to present more detail and he'd interrupt again. The interview is going south pretty quickly, it was almost like the guy just wanted to have an argument. Maybe it was his cold that led to this impatience? I'm an anxious interviewee in general but when I checked in on my mental state it wasn't panic I was feeling. Strangely, I was pretty calm and I wondered about this because I'm usually not calm in an interview. And then I realized why: Mr. A had managed to convince me that I did not want to work with him in less than 5 minutes and so I had no reason to be nervous because there was nothing at stake. First impressions go both ways, Mr. A.

Mr. B comes in next. He's the software architect. He asks about teams I've worked in in the past and how they managed their work. Scrum, agile processes, standups, unit tests, etc. that's what he wanted to hear about. When I mentioned that in one of my previous jobs I had been a software guy for a hardware team he asked something along the lines of: "But could they have done your job?" No, they weren't software people, they didn't know C++ and there was a good bit of C++ to be written. "Could you do their jobs?" Maybe bits and pieces as I had been a hardware person in the past, but I wouldn't be anywhere near as efficient. To which he replied: "But on a team everyone should be able to jump in and take over for anyone else." Oh, no, one of those shops where all the workers are just interchangeable cogs. "I don't agree." I said. "It's OK to have specializations especially when you're working on a project which requires such a wide range of skills."  He then went on to lecture me on the dangers of specialization (and I agree with some of them). Strike 2! Now I'm starting to see why these guys can't hire anyone.

Ms. C was the next interviewer. She was the software manager. She actually did a good job of explaining what they were up to and what they needed. They actually needed to hire 2 or 3 people she said. Good luck with that, I thought. It was a much better interview than the first two and it seemed like she would be a good person to work with. She also explained that they had a very tight schedule with an alpha release in mid-January (a month-and-a-half away) and a beta a couple of months after. They really needed more people to get there and it was imperative that they meet these deadlines to secure further funding.


Finally, I spoke with Mr. D who I had communicated with via email and who had set up the interviews. After talking to Mr. D I concluded that he was someone I could work with. 

To cut to the chase: In the current hiring environment it's near impossible to find a perfect fit for positions that have many technical requirements. If you're trying to hire in this environment you need to be creative about fitting applicant skill-sets with your requirements: for example, so they don't have Ruby experience, maybe their Python experience is applicable? And you also need to be careful that you're not scaring people away. You can wait around to find the perfect fit who may or may not exist while your deadlines are looming, or you can hire someone who is a pretty good fit and have them start coming up to speed and actually make progress.