Comment by kelnos
4 years ago
So you seriously don't believe that the difference between spending ~1 month or ~12 months or ~24 months at a company (all are possibilities, when a date range reads "2012-2013") isn't important information for a recruiter?
This isn't strictly about experience; it's also about whether someone a company is going to invest time in is going to stick around for a while, or is going to hop around a lot.
But regardless, years worked, when coupled with title/promotion history, is actually a decent proxy for experience. It's not perfect, but neither is the resume itself. No one is going to make a hiring decision solely on it, but it's a signal that can be useful.
Unless there is pattern of short stints, no. And if there is pattern over time, you see pattern.
I have seen quite dysfunctional toxic workplaces or teams. If you leave within one month, you have good social understanding and likely have better ethics then those who stayed. Those who stayed for long were all eventually compromised (meaning their ethics changed and they started to accept or do things they should not).
Our company have also few "trap" positions. The people there change quickly, because our hiring manager talks about positives (all true) and does not mention significant negatives. The more capable you are, the quicker you recognize the situation and leave.
It is perfectly fine to have some short stints.
It's not about believing, it's about knowing. You have to couple that time interval with the company they worked for.
At one company it took them 2 weeks to set-up my email, 3 months to decide on which project to work on and in about 6 months I was delivering something. So 6 months "experience" actually meant zero. I was ready to deliver from day 1 but...
At another company I had all the accounts created by the end of day 1, already working on bugs the second day. Some projects took 1 month in total. 6 months could mean 6 projects. The amount of skills accumulated in that time was way over the skills accumulated at the first company.
As you can see the time interval is useless. I think it's fairer if the recruiter simply rolls a dice.
it seems you've presented a single data point, yourself, and decided that this universally applies, which seems unreasonable.
I think most people's experiences of onboarding in new companies are somewhere in between, thus the tenure length provides another data point.
Furthermore, some hiring managers look for people that stick around for various reasons, e.g. hiring in that company is difficult due to bureaucracy, so knowing that somebody was at a company for two years vs 1 month is an important data point.
It seems you’ve presented zero data points, and decided that this does not universally applies, which seems unreasonable.