Oshri Cohen – Technical Recruiting is Broken—Here’s How to Fix It

Connect with Oshri:

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Connect with David:

• 
• 
• david.turetsky@salary.com

Connect with Dwight:

• 
• dwight.brown@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• RedCorner
• HR Data Labs Season 6 Episode 23
• HR Data Labs Season 6 Episode 21

• “Companies should have proper technical leadership where the CTO is a business-minded individual and understands how to talk outside of their technical sphere.”
• “If you ask ChatGPT to write a specify function that does one small thing, it can do that beautifully, but it writes code like a junior developer.”

Announcer: 0:02

Here's an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology. Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what's happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record for their discussions into a beaker. Mix thoroughly. And voila, you get the HR Data Labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate, and even irreverent, that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here's your host, David Turetsky.

David Turetsky: 0:46

Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky. And like always, we try and find for you people inside and outside the world of human resources to give you the latest on what's happening in the world today and how you can do your job better. Today we have with us Oshri Cohen, who is the fractional CTO and Founder of RedCorner. Oshri, how are you?

Oshri Cohen: 1:05

I am fantastic.

David Turetsky: 1:07

It's good to hear. So Oshri, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about RedCorner?

Oshri Cohen: 1:13

So I'm a 20 year veteran of the tech industry, and like all 20 year veterans of the tech industry, and we dream of farming and opening a coffee shop and never looking at a computer screen again.

David Turetsky: 1:23

That's right.

Oshri Cohen: 1:24

But for the time being I am the founder of RedCorner, which is a fractional CTO firm. We do technical recruiting, we do dev agency representation. And of course we position and support fractional CTOs across any number of industries.

David Turetsky: 1:42

Excellent. So Oshri, people may have known that about you, but what's one thing that no one knows about you?

Oshri Cohen: 1:52

I grow non fun plants in my garage.

David Turetsky: 1:57

Non fun plants. Okay.

Oshri Cohen: 1:59

Yeah.

David Turetsky: 1:59

What What are non fun plants?

Oshri Cohen: 2:01

Peppers? Tomatoes. Shishito peppers. I've had great success with hydroponically.

David Turetsky: 2:10

Oh, really?

Oshri Cohen: 2:11

Yeah, it's it's, it's quite a it's, it's a nice little hobby. It's an expensive hobby. But you know what?

David Turetsky: 2:16

So I've heard, yes.

Oshri Cohen: 2:17

There is, there's something about about growing about a kilo worth of shishito peppers every every month or so. And then you go,

David Turetsky: 2:25

Do you go to the local, like, farmers markets and sell them there?

Oshri Cohen: 2:29

No, no, it's just for personal consumption.

David Turetsky: 2:31

Really?

Oshri Cohen: 2:31

It's just fun. It's fun. It's fun to replicate Mother Nature, right?

David Turetsky: 2:37

Oh, it is.

Oshri Cohen: 2:37

You get a lot of respect for nature, when you have to replicate the whole thing.

David Turetsky: 2:41

I have a quarter of an acre, probably a little, maybe a third of an acre in the back of my house, where we actually grow corn and sunflowers and potatoes and cucumbers. And Dwight loves this. But I'm Farmer Jones certain times and I'm David Turetsky consultant other times. So there were a lot of times I actually have lots of dirt underneath my nails, which is always fun.

Oshri Cohen: 3:09

Yes, that is always fun. I want to be where Dwight lives because that's clearly not a background.

David Turetsky: 3:15

No Dwight lives in a beautiful city of Phoenix, Arizona. And well, it gets really hot there during the summer. But otherwise, I mean, he basically lives in air conditioning most of the time anyways. But he came from Minnesota. And so I think he would rather be in Arizona than Minnesota especially now when it's really cold.

Oshri Cohen: 3:36

Well, right now it's snowing here. So you know, it's like sand that falling from the sky. It's pretty it's pretty for the first day and then it just slushy, nasty mess the rest last three months.

David Turetsky: 3:46

If there's anybody who knows about snow, it's my friend and co-host Dwight Brown.

Dwight Brown: 3:52

So glad I'm out of it!

David Turetsky: 3:54

Yeah, exactly. That's what I was telling Oshri. Today, we have the really cool opportunity to talk about recruiting. And our topic is going to be technical recruiting and how it's broken. Oshri, what is technical recruiting?

Oshri Cohen: 4:17

Technical recruiting is the finding of candidates, the hiring and the onboarding of technical individuals, software developers, architects and so on and so forth, in the technical field, primarily IT or software development and or software development. That is technical recruiting 101.

David Turetsky: 4:39

Okay, so it's not, so it's people who can code, it's people who can lead those organizations.

Oshri Cohen: 4:45

Yeah.

David Turetsky: 4:46

It's not it doesn't get into like scientists and other things. It's just strictly people who are the developers, the programmers, right?

Oshri Cohen: 4:52

Yes. And this problem is, that we're going to be talking about, is indicative specifically to the software development field, because we have no way of qualifying someone's skill set in an appropriate manner. There is no degree, there's no certifying body that says, hey, this guy's a good developer, this gal knows what she's doing. Right? There is no way of achieving that. And so it's really lick your finger stick it to the wind and? So a lot of the HR processes around technical recruiting are borrowed from how they hire marketing individuals, business individuals, accounting, you know, many regulated fields that are easy. Hey, you have your CFA and you haven't been fired, you're hired!

David Turetsky: 5:41

Right. So then let's just get into it. What's broken about the technical recruiting? Is it that you can't qualify someone? Is it that, you know, testing and assessments aren't good enough?

Oshri Cohen: 5:54

So it's full circle. So we're going to start with with the primary problem is that technical recruiting is done by HR primarily, huge mistake. Because they don't have the technical skill to actually be able to read between the lines, we have so many acronyms, and so many names of technologies, and they change all the time. Two years ago, we were using technology that we're not using now, we're done, that's it. Two years ago! Two years ago, in marketing, you were still doing marketing the same way. Maybe now there's more influencers and TikTok, I don't know anything about marketing. But so they don't have the skill set to understand parallels between technologies to read between the lines, you did this, so you'll be able to do that. And because HR is, is doing the technical recruiting aspect of the candidate, pre screening, the hiring managers, your CTO, your director of engineering manager, whatever it is, needs to write a job description that looks like a grocery shopping list that, you know, you'd give your your partner before Thanksgiving. It's basically they don't trust HR to actually know what they're doing. So they're going to ask for everything.

David Turetsky: 7:16

Yeah.

Oshri Cohen: 7:17

Literally, almost to the point of this, there's this one requirement that keeps popping up and I see it and I lose my mind. Experience in Agile. Okay, I don't know what that means. First of all, and I'm in the field, I have no idea what that means, first of all, but the way I can explain it is, do you know how to use a keyboard? Yeah, I know how to use a keyboard that doesn't need to be in the job description. Everybody knows how to use a keyboard. Right?

David Turetsky: 7:43

Well,there was a day, Oshri, there was a day when we went from waterfall to Agile. I remember it because I was part of it. And we went from having a requirements document, which was a volume kind of like what, and I know this is gonna sound like an old statement as well, a phone book. We then went from that thickness of requirements to kind of requirements on the fly and being able to, you know, yeah, we had some stories we developed upfront, but, but really having the developer communicate more with the product manager and cover more fluidly. And then then it was, so I remember why that used to be asked. I don't know why it is today because pretty much everybody should be familiar with that.

Oshri Cohen: 8:24

My theory is that everyone is is sourcing from one job description, copy, paste, change this and then another one, copy, paste and change this, heck, I do that all the time. I don't want to write a whole job description. It's nuts. It takes a lot of time. But chatGPT is fantastic for this kind of stuff and you remove the BS, you know, you remove all the BS and that's it. But I tell them, hey, write a job description for this company, here's an overview of the company. I'm like, that's fantastic. How'd you know?

David Turetsky: 8:51

Don't ask.

Oshri Cohen: 8:52

We don't ask questions. So. So the problem is starts with HR. And then it's made worse by the hiring managers who don't trust HR. So now they're asking for everything, casting a very wide net, right? And saying, Oh, I guess you need to have three years of this technology and 10 years of that technology, because as if three years and 10 years actually makes a difference. 1, 2, 3 years tops, After that you're basically a professional. You're an expert in this field. You're an expert in this tech. So we don't we don't typically want to even put years of experience you have exposure or an expertise, done.

David Turetsky: 9:32

I'd be specious if anybody who said they had three years of, of generative AI at the moment, you know, because really, it's not really I mean, yeah, it's been around for a while. But But I don't think anybody really has that much of experience now.

Oshri Cohen: 9:46

No, literally no one can have this, this experience. And this has happened many times.

David Turetsky: 9:51

Sure.

Oshri Cohen: 9:52

There's there's a very famous guy he wrote beautiful, beautiful technology that we all use, fast API, and he saw job, and he's the guy who wrote it! He wrote, he created this technology, right? And he saw a job description of someone asking for seven years of experience in that tech. He's like, I guess I'm the right, I created this thing, I maintain it. And I wouldn't be able to get that job.

Dwight Brown: 10:16

Right!

Oshri Cohen: 10:17

For using it, right? And that's just one of like, 1000s and 1000s of job descriptions like that.

David Turetsky: 10:23

So do you think that even in the world of recruiting, when it comes to assessments where you ask people to do a practical, like, you give them a problem to take care of, and you watch how they do it, you time it so you know that they're not going off and getting a resource and coming back? So even in that circumstance, you still think that that that loop is broken?

Oshri Cohen: 10:44

Yes. So now we jump on to those screening. Right? So the HR person will get on the phone with the individual and say, Okay, and what do you do this? And what do you do there? And what do you have a, you know, career gap of 12 seconds? And, you know, Sam Altman, by the way, will have to explain why does he have a career gap as CEO for 12 seconds?

David Turetsky: 11:03

Yes.

Oshri Cohen: 11:04

He's not gonna be able to get a job after this.

David Turetsky: 11:06

Well I think he actually was hired by Microsoft for half a minute. So.

Oshri Cohen: 11:09

Alright, fair enough. But then clearly, he's not a team player, because he got fired afterwards again. I don't know what he did. There's gonna be an HBO movie about this guy.

David Turetsky: 11:17

Oh there will. Yeah.

Oshri Cohen: 11:18

You know, so. So they'll get on to, to a screening call. And they'll try to pre validate. Oh, do you have this checkbox? Yes. Do you have that checkbox. But you know what the problem with check boxing things, you miss a lot of nuances. Because a human can't be fit into checkboxes. You can't fit a human into a box. It's very, very difficult. So you have to be able to read between the lines without using an an ATS, right and automatic tracking system or whatever it's called, without using one of those read the resume and say, I understand what this person has done, because I'm in this field. So that's problem number three. Now, they get passed over. A lot of good candidates will get filtered out. I got filtered out all the time. Even though I was perfect for the job, I got filtered out why? Because I had consultant somewhere at some point in my career, and they don't like that. Yeah, right. Why would you want to hire free thinking entrepreneurial types that are very creative, and business minded?

David Turetsky: 12:19

And you're talking to two consultants too. So right, hire those consultants, they know what they're talking about. Right.

Oshri Cohen: 12:25

But what what why would you want such individuals working for you who can really contribute and be creative and drive your company forward? It's it makes it it's very scary for weak people. That's basically the way I

David Turetsky: 12:39

Never thought about it that way.

Oshri Cohen: 12:40

I'll you know, I'll put it that way. So they get filtered out this way. Because either they're not, they didn't go through the proper checkboxes, they didn't fit. Oh, are you 68% of the requirements? Oh, yeah. You know, which, by the way, for any, for any candidates listening, just copy the description, copy the whole job description, put it into your resume, put the font to white, and let the ATS have fun with it. And you're 100% guaranteed to be called, right there, done.

Dwight Brown: 13:07

Right. Right, right.

David Turetsky: 13:09

By the way, we've had lots of, lots of episodes with ATS technology masters who have said very similar things, because that's just the way that algorithm works.

Oshri Cohen: 13:19

It's search engine optimization, and it's bad at it, right? And so, so now you've got an entire industry around this helping candidates write proper resumes, but not proper resumes to really show their skill set, resumes to get through the ATS phase. This is like measuring click through rate at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if Google Analytics will come up with a technology to track whether your resume was read or not. Right? What's your CTR? 4.5%? That's not bad. Maybe we can improve it? I'll put an ad in there. I don't know. So

Dwight Brown: 13:55

Now there's a novel concept!

Oshri Cohen: 13:57

Right? So you've got candidates now writing completely bullshit resumes. Right? You can take 50% of it, maybe 50% is accurate. The rest is I have led this and I have done that. Buddy, you screwed in a lightbulb. You didn't, you didn't lead a lighting engineering team. Let's relax. It was a light bulb, right? So you don't even know what their role is anymore! What have they actually done. So you can't even gauge on the resume. It's basically useless at this point. Now, if they miraculously get in front of the hiring managers, because apparently there's not enough developers out there, because of all of these issues, the hiring manager will be forced to take them through an unbiased approach to technical assessments, we have to evaluate the human. We can't have any human input on it. But here's the problem with technical recruiting and developers, developers and software engineers are wildly creative individuals. They're basically artists that are forced to wear pants and work.

David Turetsky: 14:59

I've known some developers who didn't wear pants. But they wore like pajamas or they wore shorts, but

Oshri Cohen: 15:06

They have to wear something!

Dwight Brown: 15:09

Exactly.

Oshri Cohen: 15:09

You know? And so so they're artists, they're creatives. You ask 100 developers to build something 100 of them will build it in a different way.

David Turetsky: 15:19

Of course!

Oshri Cohen: 15:19

There is no way to evaluate. Right? And so they either do technical exams, hey, can you answer these questions? Why should I just Google? Completely useless retention of knowledge is so 1990s. We don't need this anymore, right? We need creativity and problem solving. How do you even measure creativity and problem solving? It's

Dwight Brown: 15:41

And how do you convey it?

Oshri Cohen: 15:45

Yeah, right. So they'll either pass them through a technical exam online or a take home exams. Yeah, that's so cute. Take home exams are for junior developers that haven't proven. You tell a senior developer, there's a take home exam, they literally hang up on you. I've hung up on interviews. I'm like, yeah, no, but see you. But a psychometric exam. Oh, even worse! No, no, no, you're not you're not even getting out of the out of the gate with this one, right.

David Turetsky: 16:09

Yeah, but Oshri, in that case, the psychometric goes to the team building, right, making sure that the people who have their personalities, how will they get along? And you have to admit, though, that it's important for the team to get together when there are multiple developers.

Oshri Cohen: 16:24

Absolutely. And the engineering managers job, the one who's managing that team, that's their job, to get a sense of the individual. They have to know their people they can't, they can't base themselves on the report is a team player. You know what? I did a psychometric exam. And apparently, I'm not a team player. And I'm not an I'm not entrepreneurial enough.

David Turetsky: 16:46

Really?

Oshri Cohen: 16:47

Really, really am not me, no?

David Turetsky: 16:49

You're founder of this company, right?

Oshri Cohen: 16:51

Yes. I'm the founder of this company.

David Turetsky: 16:53

Just wanted to make sure I remembered correctly.

Oshri Cohen: 16:55

Right? So the pass you through all of these hoops and sometimes multiple interviews, and sometimes they're redundant, because now the CTO wants to meet you, and this guy wants to meet you, and that gal wants to meet you over 3, 4, 5, 6 weeks, well the candidate is going to leave at some point, or he's going to get annoyed. Right, because you did all of this and then you probably going to shortchange them on their salary, very likely, depending on the company unless they have deep pockets. Right? So you've got this circular problem where the candidates hate the experience. HR hates the experience, and engineering managers and hiring managers hate the experience.

Announcer: 17:34

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David Turetsky: 17:45

Well, that's the next step. So what can people do about this problem?

Oshri Cohen: 17:50

You remove HR from the process, from leading the process to managing the process. They can manage, they can place the ads for job ads and whatnot, they can approve a job description. Yeah, the compliance, the the nitty gritty stuff, you know, you can't say I only want to hire men. Obviously, that's not allowed. I actually saw a job description recently. That must be male. I don't know why I saw that. Oh, and I'm like, That's No, that can't be.

Dwight Brown: 18:16

Someone's resurrecting something from the 1940s I think!

Oshri Cohen: 18:20

Yeah, seriously, right? And so what can be done about it is you remove HR from leading the process to managing compliance. And that's it. The job description is written by the hiring manager, because the hiring manager is going to evaluate the candidates that should be screened. The technical individual is going to see this, I want to speak to this guy, I'm going to dunk that gal, and so on and so forth. Right? HR will then schedule it all, they're assisting. But this is specific for technical recruiting. For any other role? Knock yourself out, give it to HR 100%, it's much easier to hire an executive assistant, this is not a complicated thing, right? Or a marketing manager or whatever it is. I assume. I haven't, I haven't hired an executive assistant.

David Turetsky: 19:07

It's not easy these days, Oshri. But okay, we

Oshri Cohen: 19:10

So this solves a lot of problems in that the job can keep going. description is written for a candidate to understand. Because we can see a job description it's a candidate than when it's Kind of a take on behavioral interviewing with it. a when it's HR that wrote it and when it's a technologist that wrote it, because there's passion in there. They're writing it properly. They're telling you about why this job is good for your career, like these elements in job description that should always be there. And we see immediately technical, the technical requirements is like four or five lines, tops, because this is exactly just what we need. And that's it. And usually, even then, there's no years of experience. There's, you've done a project with this or you have exposure to that, and that's it. Right? And then we move on to the technical assessment. What really matters for hiring managers is how your mind works. Because that you're human. How does your mind work? Right? How do you solve problems? Right? So I advise every CTO that I coach and every hiring manager that I coach, and, and so on, ask them a technical solution question, ask them to design something verbally. Because that answers a lot of questions. Do they understand the technology? Right? Good? Can they communicate effectively, because if they can't communicate effectively, they don't belong on the team, they need to communicate effectively. Sorry, buddy. Otherwise, there are other companies if that's something important for you, but if you want a quote, unquote, code monkey, who's nine to five, just and you're chatting with them, if that's what you need, great, then you can do a technical assessment the traditional way. But if you need a thinker, you need to evaluate that on the spot. And it's not through a question. It's through a situation. We need to design

David Turetsky: 20:54

Yeah, right. this web application or this mobile app, it has to have this

Oshri Cohen: 20:55

Exactly! Because I have hired plenty of people who this this, this, this and that. How would you put it together? Go. There is no right answer and there is no wrong answer. have given me the wrong answer in in a technical assessment. But I'm like, but you're thinking in that matter. It's okay. If you didn't know the tech, that's fine, that you can Google. But the fact that you knew to go into that particular way of thinking tells me you know what you're doing, right? Now, if they give me the right answer, I throw money at them. I try to throw money at the screen. I'm like, I want to hire you. Right?

David Turetsky: 21:36

But that currently doesn't work, yet.

Oshri Cohen: 21:37

Currently, that does not work. I do tell them give me your bitcoin address, but also.

David Turetsky: 21:43

Well, but that brings up another point, though, which is you mentioned about, you know, HR not having not running that part of the process. In listings, you now have to put for the perm, many states, you have to put a pay range? So are we asking HR to help with that? Or is that still coming directly from the technical team?

Oshri Cohen: 22:01

So HR can validate it. The bigger the company, the more HR's involved. Clearly, right? If it's Microsoft, you're not talking to a tool to anybody before you talk to three HR people, right? It's just going to be impossible. But, you know, the majority of the industry is small companies, not Microsoft, and Google and YouTube. There are small businesses with 10, 20, 30, 50 developers, that's the majority of the of the world's economy. Right. And so HR has to dot the i's and cross the T's make sure we have to have a salary range, what's the salary range? Usually you have a breakdown of the salary range, right? And that's as far as it goes, and you give a nice range, not not something stupid, like one to a million dollars, because we've seen, we've seen that before.

David Turetsky: 22:46

We have seen that, yes.

Oshri Cohen: 22:47

Right? That's just that. I think they get sued for that at this point, because it's

David Turetsky: 22:51

They get fined, certainly, yes.

Oshri Cohen: 22:53

They get fined at the very least. So they need to do that part. And they need to read through it and make sure that there's no legal snafus, right? There's no legal snafus but they don't get to rewrite the, the job description. That's

Dwight Brown: 23:06

It's interesting, because we, you know, we work for sure. with a lot of companies doing what we do. And we work with a lot of tech companies. And it's interesting hearing this perspective, and also having been in the rooms with the HR people working with the technical teams. And there's definitely a push and pull that's consistent across all of the clients that I've ever worked with in this where, you know, HR is also tasked in, this gets to what you were talking about, with the compliance side of things, HR is tasked with looking at the pay equity component of things. So making sure that what we're hiring somebody in at is fair and equitable within the organization, not only looking at some of the pay transparency things, and it's also interesting because we always hear HR complaining, God, these technical managers are just, it's like, it's like trying to herd cattle, trying to get these guys all to go in the same direction.

David Turetsky: 24:10

Right.

Dwight Brown: 24:11

So it's an interesting point that you bring up and I'm, I'm curious about what, what your experience and perspective is with that push and pull and what you know, how do you how do you get past that?

Oshri Cohen: 24:25

You change the leadership. If you have a cultural problem, it is 110% the leaders fault. It is, you know, bleep rolls downhill. Yeah, big time, especially when it comes to culture. That means the CTO or the co-founder or whoever it is, isn't doing a good job, because technology and business should be attached at the hip. They should be talking the same language and when they are not, and that is 95, 98% of companies, right? This is not, I have no data to prove that, just based on empirical evidence of what I've seen in the, in 20 years, have proper technical leadership where the CTO is a business minded individual, and understands how to talk outside of their technical sphere of this technical bubble. You bring everybody into the fold. But that's what a proper leader does. That's what a proper CEO will do. Right? Isn't it? They'll bring everybody in together, they're not just gonna run sales. And that's it. They want to make sure everyone's working together. Well, the CTO is the CEO of technology. And more so than any other C level role, apart from COO, They have to make business decisions as well. Right? They have to make business decisions, organizational decisions, cultural decisions, more so than any other role. Right? I would say COO, because they tend to be the right hand of the CEO anyways. Right? So

David Turetsky: 25:54

Let me go back to the process for a second. So we're saying that when we're dealing with technical teams, and technical hiring, your suggestion is that there's a partnership between HR and the technical team. HR runs the administrative side of the process and the compliance side of the process, and that the technical team owns the description, the the, the candidate choice, you know, who we're going to pick to bring in, they do the initial, so they do the initial screening, then they are responsible for doing the interviewing process, obviously, not the scheduling, but they do the processing of the, you know, bringing them in doing the assessments and then choosing them, as well as the negotiation around pay, right? So you get to the end of the process and obviously, there's going to be that teamwork between HR and the and the business. So you're seeing that that's a, it's a teamwork, but let's let the technology group take it for themselves. Let's let them lead it. And we help them out.

Oshri Cohen: 26:58

Because for the for the very simple reason, that technology is not limited to a bunch of acronyms, right? You know, in my job descriptions, by the way, I put in acronyms, and to make sure candidates actually read it, I also put in some Pokemon names, right? Because believe it or not, there is a technology called pig and Hadoop and I shove in Snorlax in there. And like, Hey, did they catch that one? If they caught on to that one, I like them. They read my job description. Otherwise, they just applied really quickly. And that's, you know, so it's so much so far beyond an acronym, right? Because if you tell someone, hey, I need, okay. I'll give you an example. You hire a plumber, and you tell them you can only use you have to be proficient in this brand of screwdriver.

Dwight Brown: 27:51

Yeah, well, yep.

Oshri Cohen: 27:52

Well, I don't use screwdrivers. I use a drill. I'm more efficient. I'm sorry. That's not the requirement. You need to have 7.5 years in a Phillips screwdriver. You can't, you can't use, yeah, no, we're not. We don't we don't talk to people who use drills.

David Turetsky: 28:08

Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, Man, I wish I could talk to David about this? Well, you're in luck. We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast, or whatever is on your mind. Go to Salary.com/HRDLconsulting, to schedule your FREE 30 minute call today. So Oshri, how does the world that you just described change with generative AI? I mean, AI comes up in every conversation we have. How does it come up in this? How does it help? Or does it does it get in the way? Is it just a pain in the butt? What is what is this do to the world of technical recruiting given the fact that now we can actually code from asking, you know, chatGPT, hey, put together a script that does this.

Oshri Cohen: 29:03

Yeah, chatGPT in coding is cute at the very least, you know. So you know, if you ask ChatGPT to write you a book, it's going to be a problem. If you ask ChatGPT to write to a very, very specific paragraph about something that's very clearly defined, it can do a pretty good job at it. Same thing happens with code. If you ask it to write a specific function that does one small thing, I want you to write a function that counts down from this point and whatever, right, it can do that beautifully, for most part, you'll copy paste it, you'll make a couple of changes and that's it. But it writes code like a junior developer.

David Turetsky: 29:38

Right. And you also have to make sure the prompts are right. You can't you can't miss a prompt. You have to really understand what you're asking for.

Oshri Cohen: 29:45

So and I push a lot of companies to use chat GPT,

David Turetsky: 29:47

You bring up a good point, because you know, yes, it's a fantastic productivity booster. How much is it going to boost productivity? I have no idea. there are there are traits that we want to see in developers. There's no way to measure that because at the end of the day, the developers still have to read to code. So the thing is with generated with, with the way technical knowledge and There are traits we want to see in other people like consultant experience needed to be before I can use the analogy of a mile deep, an inch wide, you really needed to be an absolute expert too. And your point about them needing to be creative and in it, because you have to go to university, it's engineering, bla bla bla bla bla bla, however 99% of the developers I've hired don't even have university degrees, it's unnecessary needing to think differently, is definitely something that we anymore, unless you're going into the sciences. Because there's a difference between development and engineering, have been talking about. And especially, there are lots of engineering, you do need the sciences, development, you're slapping together code, and you're building cool stuff all day long, right? So that was the that was pre internet, you organizations that are now pushing for people to hire needed to have all that knowledge in your head. You needed to pass exams and you needed to get certified all of people of all mental abilities, as well as any, you know, what those things. But now with the internet, and with generative AI, because you can just ask it a question now, and it will just do it for you. Right? You need to have a knowledge that's a used to be called disabilities. But they're not. They're mile wide and an inch deep, a little bit of everything. And across the board, you need to know how to ask the right different abilities. And we definitely encourage on this question, and you will be fine. There are resources on the internet for you, you do not need to remember all of this. It's not necessary anymore. It wasn't necessary for the last 15 podcast that people treat people similarly and treat them fairly. years. Surely it is not necessary now. So that's why I'm saying you need creatives, you need people who can actually And so a lot of people who, you know, may have ADHD or have some think and really solve a problem from multiple angles. kind of Spectrum Disorder, to actually encourage them into things like development, because they think so differently, but actually thinks much more effectively solving different types of problems. So it's actually good point, we should we should emphasize it that, yes, we should hire people who have those different abilities, because they actually could be able to solve problems in ways in which we wouldn't think like.

Oshri Cohen: 32:35

Technology is the great equalizer. It equalizes all of humanity. Because even if the person is deaf, the person is mute, the person cannot communicate in a coherent sentence verbally, doesn't matter. 99.9% of my communications with my developers, and I've managed hundreds of them, and teams across the board, is through chat, email, and task management. So if that person is brilliant, but you know what, can't communicate properly, right? So what I tell them is, in my technical interviews, the way I run them, would you like to write it down? Take your time, you know what? Take your time, here's the question, record it, I'll send you a recording link, you record it, I'm not there. You can try as many times as they would like, go record it. And I do I ask you even give people a second chance. You know what you didn't do very well. But I think you would be able to do very well. Would you like another chance? Now you know, me, you're less stressed. You've got people with anxiety problems.

David Turetsky: 33:36

Absolutely!

Oshri Cohen: 33:37

Basically all developers at this point, because we have to deal with all this garbage. Right? In this industry. It's a mess. Yeah, you, you seem you seem a little anxious today, let's redo the interview, I want to give you a chance. We change the perspective of technical recruiting and recruiting in general from, I want to filter out the masses to I want to find a position for you. There is a position for you, you fit somewhere. I want to try and fit you somewhere. And so when you're really strong hiring manager, you're a really strong leader. And I find those people tend to be parents, because parents really understand that everyone's got a skill, everyone's good. We just have to find where they're good at. So they'll be able to try and find the position for them. You apply for a software development role. Okay, you know what, that's not really your skill set. We have data modeling, we have a whole department just for that. Let me try and find that role for you. Maybe I can, maybe I can't. You have to be on the side of the candidate. And it's mentally exhausting, it's so exhausting to do the right thing.

David Turetsky: 34:46

I think that's great from my perspective as a parent because then hopefully someday my son will find the Roblox developer job that he so desperately will fit quite well because he loves playing Roblox and that's not going away anytime soon. So.

Oshri Cohen: 35:00

I, my, my kid is nine years old, and I'm programming with him. And I told him,

David Turetsky: 35:04

That's great.

Oshri Cohen: 35:04

Now, we're just going to write code that does your homework for you. Because if you can explain, if you can explain long division in code, you've got it, buddy.

David Turetsky: 35:14

Yeah, exactly.

Oshri Cohen: 35:15

You have taught a machine how to do it. You're good.

David Turetsky: 35:18

That's great.

Dwight Brown: 35:18

Yeah.

David Turetsky: 35:27

Well, Oshri, thank you so much. This has been delightful to have this conversation with you. And maybe we'll have to get back with you on another topic around recruiting as things evolve. But thank you so much for your time

Oshri Cohen: 35:41

Anytime. I love it. today.

David Turetsky: 35:43

Dwight. Thank you.

Dwight Brown: 35:44

Thank you. Good to be with you today, Oshri.

Oshri Cohen: 35:47

Thank you very much, Dwight.

David Turetsky: 35:48

Take care everybody, and stay safe.

Announcer: 35:51

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