Sifting CV's out in industry

I’ve written a couple about recruitment campaigns we've had at villagesoftware.co.uk to get in graduate programmers and we are in the middle of another one. Again bringing people in at the bottom of Software development for £15,000. This superstar starting salary attracted 55 cv’s sign of the times. Last time we did this 2 years ago the split was

50% were expats looking for first UK job.
30% bog standard graduates with relevant degree.
10% were experienced but out of work local developers.
10% Random people with no relevant capability

This time we had many less expats applying, perhaps a weaker pound or perhaps the job centre had advertised thing less widely. Aside from this group , the proportions stayed much the same.

10% were expats looking for first UK job.
50% bog standard graduates with relevant degree.
20% were experienced but out of work local developers.
20% Random people with no relevant capability

My colleagues and I having been through the CV’s and covering letters some things are apparent.

Firstly the obvious things are true. A properly written CV and personable covering letter opens up well. We had one guy who didn’t even give a surname, several who didn’t give a real address.

Very narrow interests do not excite, programming (fair enough), computer game playing, keeping up on technology developments (web surfing), not a collection that point to a rounded candidate. An amazing number led with the fact that they liked socialising with their friends as their main interest, presumably to distinguish themselves from the candidates who ‘don’t like people’. Some watched movies!

Clearly those who had done relevant work experience or a sandwich year stood out from the crowd. My Business School colleague Alistair Beere commented if only we could convince the students of this.

There was some annoyance around the table here at the number of graduates of computer science related degrees who did not have relevant skills. The big surprise was that those who went to the ‘lesser’ Universities (in Liverpool the traditional league is Liverpool, John Moores, Hope, Edge Hill) seemed to have the better skills. Perhaps their lecturers are more in touch with the commercial world than those at the higher brow outfits. It must be frustrating for the student who has paid and studied and are not being rejected by us for a lack of relevant background. I felt frustrated that Universities are sending their graduates out poorly armed to enter their chosen profession. While degrees are not only about employability I am reminded that we must work hard to teach what the students need to know not what we happen to know.
The perception of grade inflation was apparent with most students with 2:2’s being kicked into touch, where degrees were an issue it was considered that if students couldn’t get in the 63% of students now given 2:1’s they were unlikely to be fliers, despite the many fine adjectives they deployed on their C.V’s, it shows that not getting a 2:1 is a problem in the job market.

Interviews later this week, fingers crossed we find the right person, having previously published on this blog how we do interviews interviewing-graduates.html we will have to make a few changes.

I will hopefully take some of the lessons learnt back into my interactions with the various modules I teach on.