Evaluating GitHub Profiles: A Recruiter’s Guide

For technical roles, GitHub profiles have become a vital component of assessing a candidate’s skills and experience. As a recruiter, understanding how to effectively review a GitHub profile can provide valuable insights into a candidate’s coding capabilities and technical expertise. Here’s a guide on how to evaluate a GitHub profile to make more informed hiring decisions.

What is GitHub?

GitHub is a web-based platform that hosts and manages software development projects using Git, a version control system. It allows developers to collaborate on code, track changes, and share their projects with the global coding community. GitHub profiles showcase a user’s Open Source contributions, projects, and coding skills & quality, making it a critical tool for assessing tech candidates.

Are the Green Squares Enough?

Recruiters often review GitHub profiles of candidates and shortlist based on the number of green squares on their profile and their distribution over time. These green squares represent contributions made to repositories, such as commits, pull requests, or issues resolved. While a profile filled with green squares may seem impressive, it’s essential to look beyond these indicators to gauge a candidate’s true skills as it can be contributions to personal projects as well and might not be a direct reflection of open source contributions. 

Evaluate the Type of Contributions

Examine the nature of a candidate’s contributions to determine their expertise and interests. This includes:

• Code Commits: The actual code changes they've made to a specific repository.
• Pull Requests: Suggestions to improve code in other people’s projects. A Pull request is a combination of Commits.
• Issues: They have reported issues with other repositories (Doesn’t involve any code)

High-quality contributions often reflect a deeper understanding of software development and problem-solving skills.

Example: If a candidate frequently contributes to complex open-source projects or participates in challenging discussions, it may indicate advanced problem-solving skills and a strong grasp of coding concepts.

What About GitHub Stars?

GitHub stars are a way for users to show appreciation for a project. While many stars can indicate that a project is popular, it’s important to consider:

• Relevance: Is the project related to the job they’re applying for?
• Role: What role did the candidate play in the project?

Example: A candidate’s personal project with numerous stars may demonstrate their ability to create valuable and innovative solutions that are appreciated by other developers. Similarly, if the candidate has contributed (have a merged pull request) to open source projects with a lot of stars - it can signal a higher quality contribution.

Assess Personal Projects

Personal projects can offer significant insights into a candidate’s skills, creativity, and passion for coding. Look for well-documented, functional projects that showcase the candidate’s ability to solve real-world problems.

Example: A candidate who has developed a popular tool or application as a personal project demonstrates initiative and technical expertise. Reviewing the project’s code quality, documentation, and user feedback can help assess their technical skills.

Review Documentation

Review the Documentation/Readme/Instruction document. A good documentation is a must have for a good software engineer and a really well structured README file.

Additional Points to Consider

• Code Quality and Documentation: Review the candidate’s code to assess its readability, maintainability, and adherence to best practices. Is the code clean and easy to understand? Good documentation and clear code are signs of a professional developer.
• Collaborative Skills: Have they worked with others on projects? Collaboration is important in many tech roles. You can review this from their comments
• Technologies Used: Pay attention to the technologies and frameworks used in the candidate’s projects. This can help determine if their technical skills align with the requirements of the role you’re hiring for.
• Empty GitHub profile: While this might reflect no activity, it is not necessary that the candidate has been inactive in making any contributions. A lot of times the organization that they work for might be using other similar tools like GitLab, BitBucket instead of GitHub.

For an in-depth exploration of reviewing GitHub profiles and evaluating tech candidates, consider watching this session by Raj Patel, Founder of Reczee. It offers additional insights and practical tips for screening tech candidates from their GitHub profile.

Conclusion

Reviewing a GitHub profile provides valuable insights into a candidate’s technical abilities, contributions, and coding practices. While green dots and stars are helpful indicators, it’s crucial to delve deeper into the quality and relevance of their contributions, personal projects, and overall coding skills. By thoroughly evaluating a candidate’s GitHub profile, you can make more informed hiring decisions and find the best fit for your tech roles.