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Наталя ХандусенкоWork
30 June 2025, 15:00
2025-06-30
“Out of about 100 applications, I get a few that somehow pass the technical level.” Why it’s so hard to find an IT specialist — Team Lead explains from his own experience
Team Lead and Product Engineer Yevgeny Turovets shared his own experience in finding a developer for the team: hundreds of resumes were submitted for the vacancy, but only a few showed good results in technical interviews. There are many IT specialists on the market, but their quality is frightening, says the Team Lead. What do IT professionals themselves think about this?
Team Lead and Product Engineer Yevgeny Turovets shared his own experience in finding a developer for the team: hundreds of resumes were submitted for the vacancy, but only a few showed good results in technical interviews. There are many IT specialists on the market, but their quality is frightening, says the Team Lead. What do IT professionals themselves think about this?
"Yes, there are a lot of candidates. A lot. A hundred resumes can arrive for one vacancy. But you know what's really scary? Quality," Yevhen Turovets wrote on LinkedIn.
Over the past six months, Team Lead has been looking for a developer to join the team twice. After being selected at the HR interview stage from approximately 100 applications, over 30 candidates were called for technical interviews, and only 4 of them showed good results.
"Not 14. Not 10. Four! And this is after a tough screening at the HR interview stage. That is, out of ~100 applications, only a few reach me who at least somehow pass the technical level. As a result, there are 3-4 adequate people in the entire market who are not ashamed to hire," said Yevhen Turovets.
He also added that truly strong candidates can now dictate the terms because there are not enough of them on the market.
"If a company is looking for a programmer who will simply fill a vacancy, and there are 99% of them on the market, then companies can dictate their conditions. But in the crisis that has been going on in the world for a long time, companies have realized that simply hiring someone is no longer enough, because the only person in the team who is pulling everything together is simply running out of steam. But really strong candidates can now dictate the conditions, because there are simply too few of them."
In addition, Yevhen Turovets emphasizes the need for constant development.
"People come to me with over three years of commercial experience, but they don't know how their core technology works, they only understand the tasks they worked on. I ask, 'Why did you decide to choose this architecture?' - 'We always do it that way'... the person doesn't even want to know..."
What IT professionals say
Maybe the problem is not in the candidates and their quality, but in the selection process?
“Are you sure that out of 100 people screened out by HR, there weren’t any who would have been suitable for the job?”, — asked Front-End Developer Yevgeny Pashchenko. — “I’ve seen a bunch of posts saying that at 25 you shouldn’t talk about your experience in technology, you should tell how you changed/improved the business. Now take the average person and put them in this framework. How many businesses has he changed? He will tell you: “I didn’t change anything. I wrote code, high-quality code and the application works according to the requirements, that’s all.” Ask about the functionality that this sales dev implemented and he will be able to present it as an incredible breakthrough in the industry. Why? Because selling is not a dev’s job.”
Back-End Developer Oleksiy Yevchuk believes that the problem is not only with the candidates, but in the selection process itself :
“I have many cases when a technical interview goes perfectly, but there is no answer. You write to them: “we agreed that the feedback would be 2 weeks ago”, in response there are several options: silence; sorry, the tech lead/hr went on vacation - there will be no feedback; you showed yourself very well, but as it turned out we had already found a candidate a long time ago. There were also cases when they tell you “feedback in 3 days” and tomorrow morning they call: you passed, let's move on. Also sometimes it happens that they are not clear who they are looking for, first they ask a bunch of technologies and approaches (and different backend frameworks, and devops, do you understand React, do you understand the physical level of the Internet), and then “we generally need a manager, not a developer”. It's harder to get through a technical interview not because you can't get through the previous stages, but because HR/recruiters won't let you through because you're too lazy to work/circumstances, etc. "
Full-Stack Developer Yana Zagoruyko wrote that it would be interesting to conduct an experiment to check if there is a problem in the candidate selection process itself : "It would be interesting to conduct an experiment purely for yourself and look through all the candidates once and understand whether all relevant candidates really reach you. Or maybe the problem is not in the candidates and their quality, but in the selection processes. Because it works both ways: "Are you sure that the problem is in the candidates, and not in your company's selection system?"
“The abyss… they got everything they wanted. You built it for 10 years, and you have to rake it up. So their quality is a direct result of the work of previous generations. The smart ones were driven away like grasshoppers, those who knew how burned out from the pace and workload like they needed it yesterday, and now, oh, the quality of those who remained is not very good. The question is what is being done to make their quality better. Nothing but the words “work harder”. At one time, I conducted interviews and hired employees and my team. And I understood one thing - a person is not a piece of metal to which you can apply the template that AICHA uses. Draw conclusions,” Embedded Developer Ruslan Klimchuk shared his opinion.
Recruiters rely on management requirements.
" By the way, about the recruiter. They are often confused by applications from the manager, where, conditionally, "I want everything." They are looking for "everything", rejecting candidates who do not have "everything". It helps to thin out the list of requirements for the candidate and leave only what you will not hire a specialist without 100%. The number of candidates will increase significantly," wrote HR expert Natalia Sokolova.
The painful topic of automatic resume selection
" And how should we treat the automatic method of selecting candidates when no one may read your resume at all?... And it doesn't matter what merits are listed there. Everyone is familiar with the only format that the ATS will supposedly see, when you have to insert keywords or requirements directly from the job posting - and we get "CVs often seem to be generated by copy-paste," - noted Agile Project Manager Iryna Kozak about another problem.
"This is a really sensitive topic. Sometimes a living person won't even see your resume, because everything is decided by an algorithm. But this is not a verdict - it's a new game with new rules. Keywords, a CV adapted to the vacancy, a cover letter - everything matters," added Head PM Yulia Ginzburg-Shakir.
"On the one hand, we're not looking for anyone anymore. And on the other, it's somehow inhuman." The IT community is debating whether to hold scheduled interviews with candidates if the vacancy has already been closed
"I don't know if there's any point in me looking for any job right now. There isn't any." Senior with 18 years of experience is ready to work even for $2,000, but there are zero offers
