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Ask HN: As an employer, what do you wish applicants did more often?

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Re: Ask HN: As an employer, what do you wish applicants did more often?

#41

Post by ggruschow »

Send me cookies, or really, do anything that shows you're more (better) than your resume. Fresh homemade chocolate chip cookies are probably best though unless you know my humor or work and send me something even more personalized.

My opinion is unlikely to match with big corporations. Also, I'm not a skittish woman, so I don't care if you Google-stalked me to figure out what to give me. Besides, I think everyone I've interviewed in the past year has anyway, so I'd rather I got something out of it.

I did send my HR contact at my last employer cookies, and she just loved it. It's not a huge place, but it's big enough to have an HR dept.

Re: Ask HN: As an employer, what do you wish applicants did more often?

#42

Post by nailer »

keyist wrote: post #39
adnam wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if asked to provide code in an archive, don't splatter files inside my pwd I think that displays the typical pickiness of people that do hiring. I mean, you could just type 'unzip -l' to check the contents of an archive. Similarly, the resume format. Practically every hirer requires a different format nowadays - pdf/txt/doc/odt/html - that simply maintaining a CV becomes a massive time sink.

Actually I specify tar.gz. This is actually a subtle test -- the job requires *NIX fluency and those who had ever compiled a few packages would have noticed the convention. That's my train of thought anyway. As for resume format, it is an open source job and my main machines are all MS-free, so it is extra trouble (especially if it is docx). Just a preference, that's all. I didn't advertise otherwise. Tip for maintai…

Off topic, but might be useful if you're worried about tarbombs: '-C /dir' will extract to a particular folder without having to change there first.

Re: Ask HN: As an employer, what do you wish applicants did more often?

#43

Post by nailer »

As a previous poster said 'can you do that? Have you done that?' is the first thing I look for.

I also look for people who know why rather than just how. I'm looking for someone who understands the platform (generally a flavor of Linux) rather than someone who is great at rote-learning commands (which a lot of lower-quality Unix people get by on).

Another poster mentioned APIs rather than languages, and I agree: on both sides of the table I've bonded with the other person over specific Python APIs and their benefits and drawbacks.

I use progressively harder questions like a lot of candidates but make sure that the interviewee understands this, so they don't feel as if we're wasting time on the simple stuff or above their heads on the really difficult final questions.

I also look for people who are still passionate about technology outside of work. This rare, but sorely needed, in corporate environments.

Re: Ask HN: As an employer, what do you wish applicants did more often?

#44

Post by nickelplate »

keyist wrote: post #5

I do technical hiring for my company. Here's a bunch of things that I personally like to see -- may not apply to larger, non-startup employers though. * mention in the initial e-mail whether you're applying as local or remote * mention in the initial e-mail your availability (immediate, two weeks on notification, etc) * have a non-generic cover letter/e-mail that shows me you spent at least a couple minutes finding o…

"* pdf, text, or webpage: no .doc"

I personally think this is being overly picky, but as long as you make it clear that you only accept resumes in these formats there is no problem. I once sent a cold job application to a company that had no resume format requirement on its career page. I sent my resume in .doc. I could have sent it in PDF or something else, but in my experience most companies prefer to receive resumes in .doc unless otherwise stated. This company also sells a product for Windows (and other platforms) so I expected it to use Word internally. A few months later I found a job ad from them on Monster where they very clearly stated that they would only accept resumes in PDF. To this day their career page still does not specify a file format preference for resumes.

Re: Ask HN: As an employer, what do you wish applicants did more often?

#45

Post by kirubakaran »

ggruschow wrote: post #41

Send me cookies, or really, do anything that shows you're more (better) than your resume. Fresh homemade chocolate chip cookies are probably best though unless you know my humor or work and send me something even more personalized. My opinion is unlikely to match with big corporations. Also, I'm not a skittish woman, so I don't care if you Google-stalked me to figure out what to give me. Besides, I think everyone I'v…

Hope no one sends you a batch laced with horse laxatives.

Re: Ask HN: As an employer, what do you wish applicants did more often?

#47

Post by retroflexzy »

maddalab wrote: post #24

I wonder if you are asking the correct question. Your frustration from the process seems to stem from not having received an offer yet. Would you not rather ask the question, what can applicants do to obtain an offer from prospective employers every time? You might want to keep the discussion focussed by providing a link to your stack overflow profile.

To be honest I just wanted to see if I could get a few good stories out of people on the other side. I expected some good advice to come out of this regardless, but certainly had no intention of making it about me.

Re: Ask HN: As an employer, what do you wish applicants did more often?

#48

Post by pseale »

nickelplate wrote: post #44
keyist wrote: post #5

I do technical hiring for my company. Here's a bunch of things that I personally like to see -- may not apply to larger, non-startup employers though. * mention in the initial e-mail whether you're applying as local or remote * mention in the initial e-mail your availability (immediate, two weeks on notification, etc) * have a non-generic cover letter/e-mail that shows me you spent at least a couple minutes finding o…

"* pdf, text, or webpage: no .doc" I personally think this is being overly picky, but as long as you make it clear that you only accept resumes in these formats there is no problem. I once sent a cold job application to a company that had no resume format requirement on its career page. I sent my resume in .doc. I could have sent it in PDF or something else, but in my experience most companies prefer to receive resum…

Yeah, it's somewhat frustrating how some people will screen you for sending a .DOC, and some people will screen you for NOT sending a .DOC. For extra fun, let's ask whether we should wear a suit to the interview: must wear for consideration, or immediate disqualification/no-hire? There's disagreement there as well.

The only safe advice is to ask ahead of time; unfortunately for you, there was no one to ask. Dysfunction is unfortunately common.

Re: Ask HN: As an employer, what do you wish applicants did more often?

#49

Post by pseale »

citizenparker wrote: post #34

I read resumes all the time, a few tips: * At your level of experience, you should ABSOLUTELY have only one page. If your LinkedIn profile is a reflection of your current resume, there's a fair amount you can cut from that if you need to make room. Things like "Tool was eventually taken up by QA team" isn't terribly relevant, and the BCCampus Research Assistant unfortunately sounds a bit like fluff. * Don't expect an…

I just read your blog post and couldn't leave a comment there for whatever reason, so here goes.

Regarding interview attire, people ask because some teams are flip-flops and gym shorts casual while others wear suits every day. Wearing a suit to the flip-flops team interview is almost as bad as dressing down for the business formal team. Given the interviewee can't divine ahead of time with which type of team he's interviewing, the only safe thing to do is ask.

Re: Ask HN: As an employer, what do you wish applicants did more often?

#50

Post by potatolicious »

gvb wrote: post #25
Jim_Neath wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for that. I'm not in the habit of shouting out what's going through my mind as I'm working.

But this isn't work, and the answer isn't a program. This is an interview, your "customer" is the interviewee, and the answer you are trying to impress on your "customer" is that you are smart, articulate, personable, etc. Even more important, can the candidate look at an obvious question (the quiz) and see the underlying real question (is this candidate outstanding?). All the things that don't come through on a pape…

More importantly I think, in "real work" you will often have to explain/justify your implementation and design decisions - which is also basically what you're doing in front of your interviewer.
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