How to Attract Good Candidates (and what not to do)

Let's talk about a bunch of mediocre job descriptions, and some good ones. Useful for the job searchers as well as you know which positions actually value your time, and which ones won't.

Table of Contents:

1. Who this is for

2. What separates them

   1. Compensation

   2. Day to Day Life

   3. Technical Skills Required

   4. Quick To Apply

3. Conclusion

Who this is for

This is for hiring managers that have a few DS/DA positions, and are struggling to figure out how to get talented candidates to fill the spots. You should read this if you have had candidates flunk basic SQL, R, and Python tests, or if your current candidates do not understand concepts like survivorship bias & lookahead bias.

What separates them

Compensation

Although I keep it hidden here for confidential reasons, one of the things you should showcase early on in your job posting is what the compensation is for the position. Compensation does not mean benefits (you can’t pay for rent with benefits), it means what is the salary range, and what is the bonus, is it cash, or is it stocks options.

Regardless of how much hocus pocus the candidate says about how passionate he is to work for your position, at the end of the day, they are only there because they think you pay the highest in the industry (especially if they are talented).

Remember, the advice that most candidates are told is to swap job positions every 2/3 years, if you want the guy you hired to stick around for the long run, you must continue to ensure you pay above the average rate at all times, or you can consider that 1 full year worth of training to be completely wasted.

Day to Day Life

The good positions here straight up tell you what you will be expected to do. In one of them, you will be expected to run some simple SQL queries to run some basic analysis reports depending on what the higher ups want. Some of them also tell you that you will be expected to use Python (flask), or R (Shiny) in order to craft some sort of a dashboard that C-Suite managers can use in order to run some SQL queries instead of bugging you, if you stick around for the long run.