Hiring engineers is truly a sourcing problem. Bad ad-copy is part of this problem.
When I interview companies, I almost always find something that makes them special (young engineers, exceptional tech-stack, real engineering-driven culture etc.). This is what I pitch to potential candidates.
Maybe ad-copy of (great) company is often bad, even if engineers write them because authors ca not see the peculiarities of their company compared to other companies. (In German we call this "Betriebsblindheit" and there seems to be no translation to English (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betriebsblindheit). Maybe this is one reason why recruiters / staffing firms still exist. Good recruiters know the companies in their market well, can judge them more or less neutrally and match accordingly.
Full disclosure: I am well-connected tech-recruiter in Zurich and if you're thinking of moving here and getting a tech-job, feel free to contact me - you find my email address in my HN profile. Also you can read my blogpost "8 reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT": https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...
> In German we call this "Betriebsblindheit" and there seems to be no translation to English.
The literal translation would be "business-blindness" or "working-blindness", and you're correct that there's not really a good immediate translation that I can think of. It's maybe a kind of sensory familiarity -- the non-perception of things that are familiar. Like how you forget that the loud air conditioner is blowing, because it's been constantly droning for a while.
When I interview companies, I almost always find something that makes them special (young engineers, exceptional tech-stack, real engineering-driven culture etc.). This is what I pitch to potential candidates.
Maybe ad-copy of (great) company is often bad, even if engineers write them because authors ca not see the peculiarities of their company compared to other companies. (In German we call this "Betriebsblindheit" and there seems to be no translation to English (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betriebsblindheit). Maybe this is one reason why recruiters / staffing firms still exist. Good recruiters know the companies in their market well, can judge them more or less neutrally and match accordingly.
Full disclosure: I am well-connected tech-recruiter in Zurich and if you're thinking of moving here and getting a tech-job, feel free to contact me - you find my email address in my HN profile. Also you can read my blogpost "8 reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT": https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...