I’m Danish so that may have an impact, but basically every company I’ve been with has had some sort of HR onboarding system where applicants submit their cv and letter of application to.
A typical process is that you or your manager sets down a group to hire. This group fills out a HR form of what sort of responsibilities, challenges and opportunities the applicant will meet as well as the requirements and wanted level of experience. Then HR puts up the position in various places and people apply online.
Once the period closes (sometimes while it’s running) the hiring group logs in and rates all applicants 1-5/7/10 (depending on the system) and then the system automatically moves the best x to the final group.
How people handle the first step variates and this is probably where the person I was replying to got the 8 seconds. But around here, people read the letter and look over the CV and often spend the most time on this step because it’s where you “grade” everyone.
The next step is group discussion about the top x where the people we want to talk to are selected. Then come the interviews and possible HR personality tests like DISC profiling and the occasional technical interview/test if there is doubt as to the applicants ability.
Here in Denmark the most important part of getting an interview is the letter you write. If it’s generic people will grade you lower. Your CV is sort of important, but only in the sense that “I know this skill, and these people recommend me” - LinkedIn style. In fact, people with good LinkedIn profiles might as well be submitting those as their CV as far as I am concerned (but still make a pretty one yourself because not everyone agrees with me).
Unless you’ve done some extraordinary work that actually sees real world use, nobody is going to look at your GitHub. Even if you have, write about it and how it makes you a good applicant instead of linking to it, because 99% or the time nobody is going to look at your stuff. This isn’t because hiring groups aren’t interested, it’s because it takes a lot of time and the process is already resource demanding.
Once people get to the interview, here in Denmark, it’s 95% about finding the person you think will fit into your team the best. Sometimes people will fall through because they’ve “hacked” their way and aren’t as capable technically as we thought, but that’s not often.
There are no rights and wrongs here, but I personally like applicants who seem to be “grading” us. As though they’re figuring out whether or not the job we’re selling is something, they, will want. Even if it’s a junior straight out of an education I like this, even when everyone knows they will kill for the opportunity it’s good to see people actually be curious.
It’s obviously a situation where the power dimension is insanely tipped to one side, but it’s important to remember that good teams are shopping as much as you are. We want the right match, because the most expensive mistake any manager or hiring group (at our level) will ever make is hiring the wrong person.
So be honest, be yourself and hope you’re seen as a good fit. And train your interviewing skills by applying for jobs that aren’t “as” important to you so that you’re not a completely nervous wreck when you apply to that one dream job. (This isn’t advice for new people), I recommend everyone doing a few interviews every 2-3 years.
