this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
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I went through hiring several times at several companies, being on the interviewer side.
Typically it's not the talent pool as much as what the company has to offer and how much they're willing to pay. I referred top notch engineer friends, and they never made it past HR. A couple were rejected without interview because they asked too high of a salary, despite asking under market average. The rest didn't pass HR on personnality or not having all the "requirements", because the really good engineers are socially awkward and demand flexibility and are honest on the résumé/CV, or are self taught and barely have high-school graduation on there (just like me).
I've literally seen the case of: they want to hire another me, but ended up in a situation where: I wouldn't apply for the position myself, and even if I did, I wouldn't make it to the interview stage where I'd talk to myself and hire myself.
Naturally the candidates that did make it to me weren't great. Those are the people that do the bare minimum, have studied every test question (without understanding), vibe code everything, typically on the younger and very junior side. They're very good at passing HR, and very bad at their actual job.
It's not the technology, it's the companies that hire that ultimately steers the market and what people study for. Job requirements are ridiculous, HR hires engineers on personnality like they're shopping for yet another sales associate, now it takes 6 rounds of interviews for an entry level position at a startup. VC startups continue to pay wildly inflated wages to snatch all the top talent while established companies are laying off as much IT staff as possible to maximize profits.
I'm here from /all so I can confirm this is happening in non-tech too. Not too long ago, I interviewed to be a product photographer for an industrial manufacturer, and the people who were interviewing me knew nothing about the job I was interviewing for.
They couldn't tell me what camera they used in house, they couldn't tell me what editing software they used, they couldn't tell me about the lights, they couldn't tell me anything. It's like if the interviewers said you'd use 'computers' but couldn't tell you which OS they were running.
You were at screening level #1. When I applied for work in Manhattan in 1988 it was like that: 9/10 jobs you applied to weren't the actual employer, they were agents building a pool of candidates to be able to present to the actual employers at a moment's notice if the employer should ever actually call asking for candidates.
Today I bet it's rare to get hired without at least 3 screenings before you actually meet the people you might be working with.
Maybe, but that doesn't quite track with what I experienced. It was for a fairly well known company that builds industrial tools and machines, and I interviewed at their HQ, so I don't think it was an agency building a pool.
The screening part sounds right, but I think these guys were doing it in-house.
That tracks with expectations. Many larger companies don't use external recruiters at all, I'd guess the threshold is probably around 10,000 employees - more or less - above that they'll have it vertically integrated in-house.
I've worked with a 100,000 employee company where HR will pre-screen candidates at job fair type interviews, just to file them away against potential future openings. They won't usually task actual staff with doing interviews for openings that aren't funded, though sometimes it feels like they are doing that - sending so many bad-fit candidates that it takes us 8-10 to find one that might possibly be a net-positive asset to the team.