Happy Tuesday! In the late 1990s and early 2000s, recruitment practices started to change, placing more emphasis on personality traits and examples of past actions to assess what type of employee you are.

So even for highly technical roles, employers are now looking for “all-rounders” - people who have strong hard skills and demonstrate excellent soft skills like communication and teamwork…

IN THE NEWS

The Tech Job Market in 2024

The number of software development job postings has sunk to peak pandemic levels. The competition is fierce for job seekers as the number of vacancies has decreased by 70% since their peak in 2022.

Were job postings in a bubble (a rapid rise soon followed by a collapse) after the pandemic? Perhaps companies were overly optimistic about growth prospects or were aggressively hiring. Whatever the case, it’s tough out there!

The tech industry has the highest rates of candidate ghosting. This is when job seekers drop out (leave) the hiring process or even don’t show up for interviews - not to be confused with ghost jobs, which we spoke about a few weeks ago.

And what were the top reasons for candidate ghosting? (Withe)

1. 33% The interview process was poor

2. 29% They received another job offer

3. 23% The job was not what they expected

4. 16% A mandatory return-to-office policy was implemented

Referrals are 5x more effective than any other means of hiring. This is why networking is key: stay in touch with your old colleagues, reach out to people in your industry and utilise platforms like LinkedIn to give yourself an advantage in the interview process.

CV AND INTERVIEW

How do you explain technical concepts to a non-technical audience?

The interviewer is asking this question to check the following soft skills¹:

• Communication: Can you explain things clearly?

• Empathy²: Can you put yourself in the shoes³ of your audience?

• Collaboration: Can you work well with non-technical people too?

• Problem-solving: Can you simplify complex problems?

• Leadership: Are you patient and effective when mentoring others?

You can read more about what your response should include here. We’re going to focus on your language…

(verb) tailor = to adjust or adapt for a particular person

Note: ‘Tailor’ can also be used with the suffix ‘-made’ to form an adjective, e.g. a tailor-made solution. As a noun, a tailor is a person whose job is making clothes to fit individual customers.

(noun) jargon = special words that are used by a particular group of people

(phrasal verb) dumb down = to make something more simple so that more people can understand it*

*Note: “dumb down” usually has a negative connotation, it suggests that something has been oversimplified and even that the audience is being treated as less intelligent

(verb) gauge = judge or assess (a situation or feeling)

Note: the pronunciation is /ɡāj/. As a noun, it’s a device for measuring something, e.g. a car has a fuel gauge.

(verb) following = understanding the information being explained

1  soft skills = non-technical skills that describe how you work and interact with others

2  empathy = the ability to understand and share the feelings of others

3  put yourself in someone’s shoes = imagine how someone else feels, especially in a difficult situation

QUIZ

(Answers at the bottom of the page)

When responding to behaviour questions in interviews, it’s recommended to use the STAR structure for your answer.

Question: What does the STAR acronym stand for?

A: Situation, Target, Assessment, Resolution

B: Strategy, Task, Application, Review

C: Scenario, Technique, Analysis, Response

D: Situation, Task, Action, Result

LEARNING TOOLS

English For Programmers