What companies will hire people with a criminal background?

Why don't product based companies hire people from services based companies?

• I mean, let alone hire, getting interview calls is also very difficult for a service based company guy. Why don't the product based recruiters realize that what they call products, we call solutions? And a person from a services based company can be good in coding, so why this discrimination?

• Answer:

  Interesting question, and here are a couple of perspectives on why this might be so, though I have seen enough exceptions to note this might not be a general rule. Product based companies focus on building a product or set of related products, positioning it correctly in the product portfolio, roadmapping and feature phasing it per client requirements, landscaping the market, studying standards readiness, and putting in place a machine with product, project and program management, solution analysis and design, systems engineering etc - some product based companies build one product and customize per client, while others build only a stock product and sell it to clients who have to learn to use it off the shelf and tweak it to their requirements on their own. A services based company is many a time (and again, there are no hard and fast rules), focused on executing a process or set of processes repeatably at high efficiency. There are of course opportunities for innovation here as well, but the scope and type of these kinds of inventions are very different from what you'd find in a pure product shop. To answer your question, having worked in both, I think while both need programmers and CS grads, they tend to use them very differently, and like I said, while it is definitely possible to make a transition from one to the other, this definitely requires a bit more of a sales job (selling your skill-set I mean) and working your network than you otherwise would. Having said that though, this isn't impossible, and you really need to demonstrate a passion for the kind of role you want, why you're making the switch, and how you'll deliver in your new role. Organizations want to know they can rely on you as a new hire in the new type of role to perform to expectations, hence the harder barrier to entry than otherwise, assuming you've got the skills. Thanks for the A2A, and good luck.