When hiring programmers, recruiters will often try to be “clever”. Sometimes, this results in a memorable trick, like EA Canada’s job posting billboard.

Other times, these stunts don’t go nearly as well. Andrea recently got this job posting from a recruiter. Note, they’re hiring for a PHP job.

using System; using Php; namespace agency { class Senior Developer { static readonly uint THRESHOLD = 5; static uint Question(string text) { Console.WriteLine(text + ” [y/N]”); string answer = Console.ReadLine(); return answer != null && answer.Equals(“y”) ? 1U : 0U; } static void Main() { string[] questionTexts = { “Looking for a new challenge?”, “Want to work in the heart of London?”, “Do you enjoy solving hard problems efficiently and creatively in PHP?”, “Would you like to work where you can make a difference?”, “Want to work on building the latest interfaces with HTML, CSS & JavaScript used by millions of people?”, “Would you like to know more?” }; uint score = questionTexts.Aggregate<string, uint>(0, (current, text) => current + Question(text)); Console.WriteLine(score > THRESHOLD ? @”Contact JohnRecruiterGuy@AnonimizedEmailAddress.com today” Console.ReadLine(); } } }

There’s so much to hate here. Using C# code as a way to hire PHP candidates is bad enough, the fact that they’re hiring PHP developers is arguably worse (I wouldn’t wish PHP on my worst enemy ), but this code wouldn’t even compile.

I also have to wonder, do they think they’re being clever? Or maybe they think that they’re somehow weeding out candidates who couldn’t figure out how to apply because they’ve encapsulated the job posting in code, thus making it impenetrable to the normal run of man?