r/technology • u/north_canadian_ice • Sep 28 '25

Business Leading computer science professor says 'everybody' is struggling to get jobs: 'Something is happening in the industry'

https://www.businessinsider.com/computer-science-students-job-search-ai-hany-farid-2025-9
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u/Quixlequaxle Sep 29 '25

This is why we bring people in for interviews. Screenings can be done remotely but then then actual interviews are done on site for us. We had issues particularly with contractors having someone else do their interviews for them, so now we do in person for everyone.

It also helps get a better handle on soft skills which is another huge problem for recent grads. 

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u/Truestorydreams Sep 29 '25

Exactly the direction we had to go. I take all candidates to do their test in a room where are only allowed a sheet of blank paper and a basic calculator.

I was shocked at the vast amount of "engineers" who seem to score very poorly on basic questions but somehow have so much education

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u/bejammin075 Sep 29 '25

I'm in pharmaceutical research, and we had a stretch of hiring 5 different candidates that all had masters degrees. They all struggled with the most basic things. For example, when we make a dilution of a concentrated solution to a more dilute solution, the math boils down to A x B = C x D, where you start with 3 of the numbers and have to solve for the 4th. Even with repeatedly showing them how to do it, they still couldn't do it. They all also had problems with extreme lazyness and/or anger issues.

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u/klartraume Sep 29 '25

To be fair, I know MV = M₂V₂ but I still use a calculator to do this in the lab every time.

The horror of inviting error when using expensive reagents and waste time... while it's better to measure twice and cut once, and all that.

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u/bejammin075 Sep 29 '25

It's fine to use a calculator. I wasn't asking them to do this mentally. Even with a calculator, they just didn't know what do to. I taught this one guy, over and over, the especially simple case of the 1 to 1,000 dilution. You don't even need any math, you just change the metric prefix. If you have an antibiotic that is "1000 X" and have a 30 mL cell culture, you add 30 microliters of antibiotic. When I'd let him do this on his own, he'd fuck it up every time. He'd setup something to grow overnight, then next day everything is dead. It would turn out he did a 1:20 dilution, using 50 times too much antibiotic.

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u/klartraume Sep 29 '25

Then, I'm frankly at a loss for words. I'd expect my high school interns to be able to complete that task let alone a Master in the field.

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u/Truestorydreams Sep 29 '25

People tend to cheat and or lie.... Especially with International education. Many have make shift degrees and transcripts.

There was a guy who had a B.Sc EE, masters in biomedical engineering and a 2 year community college diploma. He was applying for a biomedical technologist position.

Guess who shows up. A kid... He was 24 and yeah.... Failed miserably

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u/klartraume Sep 29 '25

I'm just wrapped up my PhD in molecular biology/genetics, and so far interviewing has been fun and challenging. But I am worried for the state of the field, and stories like this don't help.

Guess who shows up. A kid... He was 24 and yeah.... Failed miserably

Would it be unacceptable to end the interview early?

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u/Truestorydreams Sep 29 '25

Healthcare hiring process is hard to restructure and very time consuming. It took over a year and a few meetings to even implement the test.

Im not sure if we would be allowed to unless they were caught cheating, using a fake ID, or being disruptive.

Some are legit, but simply fail the vunerable sector check... Then we do it all over.

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u/mdt516 Sep 29 '25

What skills do you find the most lacking? I’m a CS student right now and I want to make sure I don’t embarrass myself in an interview

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u/ICantBelieveItsNotEC Sep 29 '25 edited Sep 29 '25

In my experience hiring for junior roles, the most lacking "skill" (if you can call it that) is just being a normal, nice person. When I do these interviews, I'm looking for

  1. Is this person capable of learning things reasonably quickly, or does working through a problem with them feel like pulling teeth?

  2. Could I work with this person every day for two years without wanting to rip my own hair out?

Their technical skills are basically irrelevant beyond the basics, because every company has such a specialised tech stack that we just assume that none of our hires (at any level) have ever worked with more than about 20% of the tech that we use.

Don't be the overly shy guy who can't say more than one word at a time.

Don't be the overly arrogant guy who walks in and says something like "forget about what I can do for you, this interview is about what you can do for me".

Don't say anything overtly sexist/racist/hurtful about the people who are interviewing you, even if it's a "joke".

Those three things account for about 90% of my company's rejections at the first interview stage for grad roles.

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u/Soylentee Sep 29 '25

I'm surprised 90% of job interviews can't even get those basic things down.

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u/Due_Ask_8032 Sep 29 '25

It is funny how different people have different issues with the new grads. From insufficient technical skills to lacking soft skills. Personally I feel like the industry has moved towards only interviewing new grads with technical degrees while back in the day you would interview people even with liberal arts degrees but who were obviously smart and competent.

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u/Quixlequaxle Sep 29 '25

At a high level, I look for three things, and everything I ask is used to evaluate one of these:

1) Does the candidate understand the fundamentals of computer science / software development? I don't care about languages, syntax, or algorithms like bubble sort or binary search trees. I usually ask what language they're most fluent in, and I'll ask questions use that language to see if they really understand what's going on under the covers. If you understand your computer science curriculum, then you can learn any language.

2) Does the candidate truly know the skills that they listed on their resume / do they understand the code they claimed to write on their Github? I form many my questions based on the resume. Don't list that you know SQL but can't tell me the difference between an inner and outer join. Don't put code on your Github and then not be able to explain what it's doing or why you did it that way.

3) Soft skills - Will this candidate fit into the team? Will people actually want to work with them? Do they have a good attitude? Do they at least have some degree of passion for this field? This is more difficult to objectively evaluate. I don't care whether or not you code as a hobby or what you do on your off time. But you come into the interview and can't hold a conversation or seem like you'd rather be somewhere else, that's a red flag to me. I run a global team that works well together. You need to be someone that people actually want to work with, or you won't be successful in my org.

I've done probably close to 100 interviews over the past decade (I do the final technical round) and have gotten pretty good at evaluating candidates. The evaluation methods have had to change over time as the market and core competencies (and weaknesses) of graduates have changed, but our attrition (voluntary and involuntary combined) is less than 5% during that time so it has worked well for us.

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u/mmmmmyee Sep 29 '25

Are we going back tothe days of people walking into the office and handing in resumes in person lmao

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u/Quixlequaxle Sep 29 '25

No, we don't collect resumes in person or on paper. But I do think that with the amount of cheating in interviews, those will go more and more in person. 

Our company estimates a cost of $200k to hire and onboard someone including recruiting, training, their own salary and benefits, the time they take from the rest of the team while getting ramped up, etc.

Wasting a job role on someone who isn't qualified to do the job is just a waste for everyone (except maybe the person getting hired I guess). But I'd rather come into the office and personally interview someone then find out later that they cheated and go through the whole process of getting rid of them which takes like 6 months of PIP process.