Spruce Up Your CV Or Just Bin It? Survey Finds Recruiters Are Considering Alternatives

A survey of nearly 14,000 coders and recruiters has shown that 70 per cent of devs prefer remote work while some headhunters are considering dropping the curriculum vitae (CV) from the hiring process.

Although more than half of the recruiters that responded reported a budget increase (and 35 per cent were planning to hire more than 50 developers), actually finding qualified candidates is a struggle. Filling vacancies for full-stack and back-end engineers are predicted to be particularly problematic.

Rather than going by the CV's take on work experience and educational accomplishment, live interviews and assessment tests are being proposed as ways of spotting the most skilled candidates for the job. That said, while 30 per cent of respondents said they would be willing to remove CVs from the process and 27 per cent thought "maybe", a chunky 34 per cent gave a very definite "No," showing that there is life in the old dog yet.

Europeans were apparently least keen to ditch the paperwork, while South American recruiters were most enthusiastic about a bonfire of BS. Not that we're suggesting that some CVs are peppered with, er, exaggerations.

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As for how interviews should be conducted, it was of little surprise to discover that whiteboard interviews were disliked by both candidates and recruiters, while live coding interviews (replete with discussion as well as code) were preferred.

Other interesting statistics in the survey include the finding that less than half of developers who responded did not learn programming at university or an engineering school and that nearly a third were self-taught.

The survey also repeated the oft-quoted finding that having gone remote, developers were often reluctant to return to the office, with the happiest being those able to work 100 per cent remotely while 33 per cent of those back in the office were either "not very happy" or "not at all happy."

Overall, the surge in demand for developers looks set to continue into 2022 and recruiters will have to find ways of expanding the talent pool. Switching to a more skills-based approach will help matters, and remote working means recruitment can go global; 50 per cent of recruiters said that they would be searching globally, up from 2020's 35 per cent. ®