In our case we had a junior position in the data team, and advertised it in Linkedin and asked others to spread word to friends/bluesky/etc.
Somehow, that person heard about the position, and was already trying to transition from architecture to IT (had enrolled in an open university course of CS -- online, remote).
We really try to interview as many as we can, give a fair chance to all (ignoring background, gender, etc., focusing on what's needed for the position).
Human resources did the first triage (assessing character/personality [one of those simple psychology assessment tests], level of English, visa/work permit/etc.).
Then the managers for the position (department leader + group leader) reviewed CVs and prepared brief interviews, followed by a final technical interview. That's it.
That person did not have a lot of experience, little visible in GitHub, having only studied IT for a few months, but he was really trying hard. The managers liked his attitude, and believed he was the best fit for the position.
He's now learning Git, Docker, Python, NetCDF, etc. In fact, today we will have a quick chat near the waterfountain/coffee machine as he asked me if we could chat as he had questions about pyproject.toml and building Python packages.
I believe if instead he had showed some projects with Python and NetCDF, and said he was looking into enrolling in a CS degree or take some courses, that could have been a replacement for the CS degree.
So tell your friend to try to choose what s/he prefers (data, programming, performance, DevOps, web, algorithms, compilers, etc.), and try to either create a public portfolio, or study hard so that in an interview s/he can answer questions well, showing some knowledge & interest (e.g. in this case, knowing what's NetCDF is, what's GRIB/BUFR, xarray, etc., even without a lot of hands-on experience could have been an advantage).
Somehow, that person heard about the position, and was already trying to transition from architecture to IT (had enrolled in an open university course of CS -- online, remote).
We really try to interview as many as we can, give a fair chance to all (ignoring background, gender, etc., focusing on what's needed for the position).
Human resources did the first triage (assessing character/personality [one of those simple psychology assessment tests], level of English, visa/work permit/etc.).
Then the managers for the position (department leader + group leader) reviewed CVs and prepared brief interviews, followed by a final technical interview. That's it.
That person did not have a lot of experience, little visible in GitHub, having only studied IT for a few months, but he was really trying hard. The managers liked his attitude, and believed he was the best fit for the position.
He's now learning Git, Docker, Python, NetCDF, etc. In fact, today we will have a quick chat near the waterfountain/coffee machine as he asked me if we could chat as he had questions about pyproject.toml and building Python packages.
I believe if instead he had showed some projects with Python and NetCDF, and said he was looking into enrolling in a CS degree or take some courses, that could have been a replacement for the CS degree.
So tell your friend to try to choose what s/he prefers (data, programming, performance, DevOps, web, algorithms, compilers, etc.), and try to either create a public portfolio, or study hard so that in an interview s/he can answer questions well, showing some knowledge & interest (e.g. in this case, knowing what's NetCDF is, what's GRIB/BUFR, xarray, etc., even without a lot of hands-on experience could have been an advantage).