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Businesses Open Source Red Hat Software

How Red Hat Hires 113

Posted by timothy from the hands-off-my-foot dept.
New submitter markfeffer, Senior Editor at Dice, writes "Red Hat's hired about 600 people in its last three fiscal quarters, and it's going to keep hiring – about 900 to 1,000 more this year. The company's primarily looking for software and technical support engineers, along with salespeople who can help strengthen its cloud-technology capabilities. They want people with strong technical skills, of course, but the company puts a premium on those who've taken the time to research its business and send in a resume that's custom-tailored to the job opening."
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How Red Hat Hires More

How Red Hat Hires

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  • Nice Ad (Score:5, Insightful)

    by adturner ( 6453 ) on Thursday February 07, 2013 @06:10PM (#42826471) Homepage

    Love this ad by Dice/Red Hat in an attempt to attract talent. I mean, I sure hope it's an ad, because if it's a legit bit of "news" then slashdot's standards have really fallen.

    • Re:Nice Ad (Score:5, Funny)

      by OhANameWhatName ( 2688401 ) on Thursday February 07, 2013 @06:16PM (#42826541)

      then slashdot's standards have really fallen

      Since when?

    • Re:Nice Ad (Score:5, Funny)

      by mwvdlee ( 775178 ) on Thursday February 07, 2013 @06:21PM (#42826635) Homepage

      It's advertisement for a Linux company.
      I'd say Slashdot's standards have risen.

    • Re:Nice Ad (Score:5, Insightful)

      by steelfood ( 895457 ) on Thursday February 07, 2013 @06:37PM (#42826823)

      It's just a slashvertisement. We get these every so often. At least this one's for a respected, FOSS company. And it's a fairly transparent slashvertisement.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by SomePgmr ( 2021234 )

        And it's a fairly transparent slashvertisement.

        Agreed. If they're going to do that, the, "New submitter markfeffer, Senior Editor at Dice, writes [...]" part was at least an honest way to handle it.

        Maybe they should add the disclaimer at the bottom like we used to have for parent and sibling companies, too.

      • Re:Nice Ad (Score:5, Insightful)

        by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Thursday February 07, 2013 @07:39PM (#42827413)

        I'd be a lot more comfortable if there was an explicit acknowledgement as an ad, for all we know timothy saw Red Hat in the title and was friends with the Dice guy so decided it would make a good submission.

        Even as an ad it's kinda pointless, all it does is say Red Hat is hiring, then gives some extremely general job application advice. Why not make it interesting by mentioning something about how Red Hat differs from non-open source companies in its hiring, or giving tips on how contributors to a big project could get themselves hired to work on that project.

        • I know a lot of you won’t believe me, but this isn’t an ad. Slashdot wouldn’t have posted it if it was, even if we're sister companies. I oversee the editorial side of Dice, and I don’t accept advertorial or take story ideas from customers, and the rule here is I’m not even supposed to be asked to. I admit we’re not muckrakers, but if you look at news.dice.com, you’ll see it’s not happy talk. It’s certainly not meant to be. We cover layoffs, or dumb move

          • I do believe you that it's not an ad (I didn't think it was an ad to begin with though didn't really express that well in my post).

            I admit I'm not familiar with dice.com so I just guessed you were operating as a recruiting company. If I were to offer some constructive feedback it would be this. Slashdot has an anti-corporate reflex, even Red Hat, an open source company that contributes a ton of resources to open source, gets a lot of flack. So coming in with posts designed to direct traffic to your company'

            • Quantaman, Thanks. I haven't met Timothy in person, and I'd hate to do something back to him the first time I do, but I'll bear it in mind. And, actually, it's not his fault, as it were, anyway. Since we're sister sites now, we're trying to figure out ways to work together and sharing posts is one of them. I appreciate you feedback, and am going to go look at the story format again. I wish you would check out our stuff, though (news.dice.com). I like to get any comments I can (just be gentle, OK?). These p

    • Slashdot is OWNED by Dice.

      When they were running anything VA/SourceForge related, they would actually bother to flag the conflict of interest. Now they're not even bothering with that.

  • As someone who's been involved in various stages of the hiring process, my question is, does it work? It's great to hire people who are interested in the position, I'd do that too. But how do they find people who would be interested in the position? Do they just pay a lot, or what?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 )
      Oh, I figured it out. They hire by getting an ad posted as a story on Slashdot. Go work for Redhat!
      • And more seriously i have seen a site penalized for spammers posing links that Google doesn't like - though i think that was the spammers reporting the site in a fit of pique when our editorial team noticed and started banning users.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Yoik ( 955095 )

      There are lots of ways to find people who are likely to be interested in the positions you have open: advertise in the right places, look at people who have made visible contributions, get your existing staff to recommend friends etc.. It takes time and effort and the work is commonly contracted out to headhunters by larger companies.

      News coverage is the best form of advertising and lots of media are happy to cover hiring news involving large numbers from decent companies. Some readers are going to be ver

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Karzz1 ( 306015 )
        High pay by itself isn't going find anyone....

        Speak for yourself!

        Seriously though, I have a job I love and while not startup/rockstar pay grade, I am quite comfortable and happy.

        • Re: does it work? (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          I worked for a startup at rockstar paygrade. They moved me to another country, and then decided I wasn't producing at the level of 3 people, and stranded me in the other country...

      • I've been out of work for a while, now.

        high pay? pay AT ALL? where? when can I start?

        (yes, the job market still pretty much sucks. getting better but its not an employee's market yet by any means).

        • (yes, the job market still pretty much sucks. getting better but its not an employee's market yet by any means).

          If you're good, and you're in the Bay Area, it definitely is. Try something like putting Erlang on your linked in profile if you are having trouble.

    • Re:does it work? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) * on Thursday February 07, 2013 @07:26PM (#42827321)

      As someone who's been involved in various stages of the hiring process, my question is, does it work?

      I have been involved in hiring hundreds of people, at several different companies, and I have found that idiosyncratic hiring practices rarely help. It is much better to follow the KISS principle:

      1. Screen the resumes and pick the top 10%
      2. Email them and set up a phone call.
      3. Chat for a few minutes, and if you like them, set up a face-to-face interview.
      4. If you like them at the interview, and they can demonstrate competence, then offer them a job at the end of the interview.

      I have worked for companies that did much more elaborate interviewing, including multiple interviews, lunch meetings, etc. We seldom changed our opinions after the first interview, it was time consuming, and the candidate pool was shrinking as the best people were accepting jobs elsewhere.

      • offer the job at the end of the interview? that happens?

        rarely. RARELY! any company these days is going to do due dilligence and perhaps even the week long (or longer) 'background check'.

        I'd love to meet a company who can hire on the spot. never seen it happen in my 30+ years of working in software.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tibit ( 1762298 )

          Background checks using databases are an instant thing. Whatever you do past that is IMHO a waste of time.

          • Background checks using databases are an instant thing. Whatever you do past that is IMHO a waste of time.

            Indeed. Background checks take five minutes, and an interview can take an hour or more. So you do that background check before you waste time scheduling an interview. I would never interview someone without googling them first. I also like to check Linkedin, and see if they already know someone in our company, or someone I may know in another company.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          I can do better than that. My current employer hired me on the first phone contact. No face to face interview needed. Rare as it may be, there are companies out there that actually have a clue as to what it is they're looking for, and when they find it they don't play stupid games.

          • Staffing firm? also interviews are to be a 2 way thing not just looking for a seat filler.

            I had something like that one a quick phone call from a Staffing / outsourcing firm and then a few days later a call saying why are you not in city that is like 150 miles away in the phone call they said maybe some places up to about 75 miles away. And I did not even fill out any paper work at all.

            Some times when they want to hire with just a phone call it may be a scam or a body shop where it's sink of swim or at time

        • Re:does it work? (Score:4)

          by seifried ( 12921 ) on Friday February 08, 2013 @05:18AM (#42830341) Homepage
          You also have to remember when it comes to technical talent red hat is an open source company and we tend to hire open source people. One huge advantage of open source is we can easily see what people have worked on and contributed. Meaning for most of my coworkers you can plug their name/alias into google and find the projects they work on. Also the communities we work within tend to be quite well connected, for example in the Linux security community we all know each other because we help each other and work on issues together constantly. It makes hiring a lot easier when you can actually see with strong evidence that the person you're hiring is actually capable of doing the job you want to hire them for and even better that they are already a cultural fit.
  • And not even very well disguised spam at that - wonder if thats a paid link now where did i put Matt Cuts mail address :-)

  • Wanted Installer Engineer (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Extensive experience in spelunking, cave diving, labryinth design, byzantine cryptology and chinese calculus.

    Must be a self starter able to absord intense criticism, derision and scrutiny.

    Prior work experience in self generated realities and distorted truth dimensions a plus.

  • Oh dice (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Desler ( 1608317 )

    New submitter markfeffer, Senior Editor at Dice, writes

    Not even trying to hide things anymore? Fail Dice ad is fail.

  • The constant upgrade treadmill put me off! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Thursday February 07, 2013 @06:55PM (#42827019)

    Congratulations to Red Hat though I definitely won't among the hires. I am uninterested.

    Here's why:

    Most of these tech companies require that a [new] hire remains up-to-date. This isn't the problem, though. The problem is that the costs involved are pushed to the employee. The time/energy spent is enormous. If one has little ones, it's worse.

    Time came when I was absent minded, thinking about a function that just could not work properly. Exposure to newer ways of solving tasks like the one I had would have helped, but I had to foot the initial cost!! Imagine that in this economy. My company agreed to reimburse the costs if I passed, and remained with them for at least 2 more years. In the mean time, deadlines were exerting enormous pressure.

    Guess what, I quit, and I am a happier fella.

    • Soooo most countries red hat operate in give you 2k personal training budget as well as free premium courses like RHCE etc... I'd say you can stay up to date and then some and not have it wreck your pocket

  • Customized resumes?????! (Score:3)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipakNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Thursday February 07, 2013 @07:11PM (#42827181) Homepage Journal

    I do not, will not, customize a resume for Red Hat. The Starship Enterprise could be flying over and hiring, but they would get standard and that is that.

    Those who have spent any serious time applying for jobs know that numbers matter. It is ALL a numbers game. There may be ten thousand, or maybe a hundred thousand, people who will apply for the position who technically qualify. The job market is overflowing with programmers who have "mad skillz" (and maybe even spelling skills). The odds of getting the job are very very slim and you will have taken 8 hours to customize the resume, format it perfectly, etc. It takes about 2 minutes to fire off the appropriate standard resume (I assume you've three or four standard resumes) and a marginally modified cover letter.

    Assuming the probability of getting a specific job is about the same, you do the maths on which is the more productive approach.

    Sure, Red Hat is a major prize, but so is the lottery. And you know how that is a really crappy investment.

    • Re:Customized resumes?????! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dingman ( 126949 ) on Thursday February 07, 2013 @08:49PM (#42827927)

      If you are looking for some job, any job, this attitude may make some sense. Say, because you are unemployed or because you are truly miserable in your current position. Even with a pretty crummy employment market at the moment, this is not most people.

      If you are looking for a next position, say because you have a big life change coming, want career advancement, or just plain feel like it's time for a change, this doesn't make sense at all. Spewing uncountable copies of your resume to the four winds and hoping might land you a job. If so, my guess is at some company you have no connection to, no passion for, and likely no reason but the pay check to keep going. This is not a recipe for happiness OR success in the new job.

      I frankly can't imagine being willing to leave my current position for another one unless it was more than sufficiently exciting to justify customizing a resume and cover letter. Heck, the last time I did that it was for an internal transfer. Probably the next time, too. Red Hat is an excellent fit for me. Of course, I also find the whole idea of finding jobs through any form of job add rather improbable. I've literally never been hired for a job that I had seen an add for before I had talked with the hiring manager. Do people really get jobs that way in statistically significant numbers?

    • It doesn't have to be the choice between "8 hours to customize" and "2 minutes to fire off". I've, too, used several templates while looking for a job last year, but I also took time to write a paragraph or two for more interesting offers.

      As for formatting etc.: LaTeX does a good job making the resume look good with minimal effort. Word processor would've taken much more time for similar results, that's for sure.

    • Not sure about where you are, but I've found that places in Tampa are generally having a hard time finding the right person. Last couple times I've hired somebody, it took months until we finally found somebody from out of town in both cases. I also recently changed jobs and heard that I was pretty much the only qualified person they talked to.

      Also, there is the difference between looking for "a job" and "the job you want". I've only worked a handful of places, and I can see that the company can make a huge

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 0racle ( 667029 )

      Red Hat is a major prize

      They're going to be like any other company.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jd ( 1658 )

        True, but it doesn't matter what the company is like. When people look at your resume in the future, be it on paper or on LinkedIn, they notice the names. Having Big Names on your resume is significant, and anyone applying for a job involving Linux is applying for a job at a company that knows Red Hat and probably uses their enterprise products.

        In the end, a resume is all smoke and mirrors anyway. Accurate, yes. Truthful, yes. But market-speak just the same. It has no relationship to your ability to do thin

  • I was genuinely interested in what RedHat were looking for and especially curious to see what the implied clever resume was. This "article" is just bad form.

  • As someone who worked for Red Hat (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    You're better off not sending them your resume.

    Captcha: leftists. Yup.

  • So it's the PHB who run the show the that means that the minimum of five years’ experience and other BS like we want a masters or phd comes from non tech managers?

  • Complete farce. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07, 2013 @10:23PM (#42828573)

    Having worked at Red Hat in 2 different departments, I can certainly say that this article is 100% bullshit.

    Last line in the article:
    "In essence, Red Hat wants to know that you’re going to make a commitment to the job, not simply get a bit of experience and jump somewhere else
    Dice News in Tech"

    RedHat takes full advantage of it's brand to sucker and lure unsuspecting and gullible people into working long hours for low pay. Everyone is overworked at the low to mid levels, management is dysfunctional, and voicing your own "ideas" is a frowned upon form of insubordination that is likely to get you blacklisted/fired.

    If you want to form a real opinion about the worklife there without a bunch of marketing nonsense, take a look through the reviews on glassdoor.com: http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Red-Hat-Reviews-E8868.htm

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Actually this comment is a complete farce - I work at Red Hat as an 'individual contributor' pretty far down the chain and am constantly amazed by how seriously my ideas and suggestions are taken. To the contrary of getting blacklisted/fired, I've received awards for voicing my opinion in a frank manner. We are constantly encouraged to voice our opinions, as well. This is not your traditional top-down hierarchy kind of company at all; you can easily get involved in a project or work directly with people who

      • Keeping your mouth shut has less to do with job performance and more to do with not pissing off someone that has the power to fire you.

        It's not good for business, just your career.

    • They have a 3.8 rating on Glassdoor....that is pretty good. Google's rating is 4.1.

  • $ellouts! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How dare a Linux & open source company try to hire employees and make money! Who do they? Decadent monsters.

    BURN THEM AT THE STAKE!

  • Now how about Novell/SUSE and Canonical?
  • The link to the article (that's custom-tailored [dice.com]) that talks about customizing your resume refers to a study conducted by TheLadders.com, a recruiting agency. There are no details there as to how the study was conducted and no way to determine whether or not the results are in any way significant. YMMV.
  • First time, they flew me out, rented me a car, interviewed me for over 5 hours. Once I arrived at the HQ on campus at NC State, I wasn't allowed to leave. I wasn't given anything to eat. I was given a bottle of "red hat" water (I took 2 more as I left to get on my return flight). So needless to say, once the HR rep came around (she was the last interviewer) I was pretty tired and pretty snippy because I hadn't eaten anything all day (the person who was going to be my boss was to take me out to lunch, but he

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