We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#511

Post by ghaff » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 7:44 PM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #406

beat wrote: post #275

So here's the thing... hiring at larger, growing companies often means weeding through a stack of a hundred resumes, for one or two or five roles. Most of those resumes need to go away. The interview process, for competent candidates, is going to cost you at bare minimum a half hour of one person's time for initial screening. A quality interview is going to take a couple of hours each for a few important people - man…

Why is that people don't run a spellcheck? It's rare for me to see even official internal documents without several spelling mistakes even after they have been approved for publication. Just turning on the spelling checker in your favourite word processor, editor, or even web browser will go a long way toward catching most typos. The grammar checker in Word is also worth a try. Did you mean "P. G.'s maxim" when you t…

As someone who does a huge amount of writing, it's always surprising how many errors still end up slipping through even though I do at least one re-read when I write something. It's basically impossible to do a good proof-reading job on your own work, especially if it's something you've gone through and reworked multiple times like (presumably) a resume.

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#512

Post by beat » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 7:47 PM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #406

beat wrote: post #275

So here's the thing... hiring at larger, growing companies often means weeding through a stack of a hundred resumes, for one or two or five roles. Most of those resumes need to go away. The interview process, for competent candidates, is going to cost you at bare minimum a half hour of one person's time for initial screening. A quality interview is going to take a couple of hours each for a few important people - man…

Why is that people don't run a spellcheck? It's rare for me to see even official internal documents without several spelling mistakes even after they have been approved for publication. Just turning on the spelling checker in your favourite word processor, editor, or even web browser will go a long way toward catching most typos. The grammar checker in Word is also worth a try. Did you mean "P. G.'s maxim" when you t…

I noticed that even these little HN checkboxes have a grammar checker. Earlier, I carelessly wrote "the the", and it underlined the second "the" as incorrect.

And yet, the comments in response to my OP are full of easily detected errors. It's like you have to make an effort to screw it up.

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#513

Post by mikeash » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 7:48 PM UTC

jdgiese wrote: post #478

mikeash wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that rather circular? You need to ensure you don't have spelling mistakes, otherwise that indicates carelessness because it could cost you a job. Why would it cost you a non-spelling-related job? Because it indicates carelessness! If we criticize job applicants for mistakes which are unrelated to their field, why shouldn't we do the same for employers? Rejecting applicants for spelling mistakes is not in and of…

> but it indicates carelessness in the hiring process Perhaps we are using the word careless differently, but I don't see how using heuristics like this implies carelessness on behalf of the employer. If anything, it seems to indicate that the employer is making a well-reasoned choice to balance economic constraints with company values. I run a small software consulting firm and have now hired three people (not too m…

Do you have other people proofread and spellcheck all of your external communication?

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#514

Post by msla » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 7:50 PM UTC

gnopgnip wrote: post #479

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of correctness... This has always bothered me because I grew up understanding the correct phrase to be "the proof of the pudding is in the eating" and assumed that the shorter form arose because of people who simply didn't know what it really meant. So I googled it and it turns out that the short form, "the proof is in the pudding," has been around since the 1920's ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/the_proof_…

Most idioms don't make sense when taken literally. There is an understood meaning beyond the literal words. Monkey business, pull the wool over your eyes, cost an arm and a leg, chip on his shoulder, break a leg, raining cats and dogs.

And some idioms might make sense, but they're used in a way which deprives them of sense.

For example: "Well, that's the exception that proves the rule!"

There are a number of ways to make that make sense, such as the use of "prove" to mean "test", as in "proving grounds", so that's the exception which tests the rule, or, alternatively, the fact it is an exception is proof the rule exists in the first place. Both sensical interpretations.

Of course, it isn't used like that. It's used more like this:

A: "Women can't program!"

B: "Wrong. Look at Grace Hopper, to begin with."

A: "Well, that's the exception that proves the rule! Women can't program."

B: facepalm

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#515

Post by JimboOmega » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 7:52 PM UTC

jcadam wrote: post #171

jstewartmobile wrote: post #86

It would be nice if the process were a little more transparent. If people just knew that a company rejected them for reason X, that would make a huge difference. If X were stupid, they'd know they missed a bullet. If X were rooted in a misunderstanding, they'd have a chance to clear it up. There is so much side-channel information used in the corporate hiring process, and it gets mixed-up in HR far more often than an…

Meh, being told over and over again that I'm a good developer but not a cultural fit isn't particularly helpful. It sounds like a polite way to say: "You have the skills but, uh, we hated you." I'm not sure what to do with that feedback, but it has been pretty consistent.

Being told I'm a good culture fit but don't have enough experience is equally frustrating. Especially when it's a rails dev position and I've been working on rails for 9 of the 12 years it has existed.

I eventually figured out that they meant something else - like I hadn't lead a team (bigger than 2) directly before and was interviewing for a lead dev job, or I didn't have much operational experience since the previous startup I worked at was very simple and built on Heroku. In some cases it might be that I didn't have experience with the specific JS frameworks that they were using (e.g. Angular, React, whatever).

But the impact is I come and interview, it goes well, smiles all around, and then they say no, we were looking for someone with more experience and I'm thinking... what? What experience? I have to kinda guess.

Anyway, yeah, saying no culture fit sucks because you don't know what to do with it; maybe you could do practice interviews with friends and see if they see any glaring annoying tendencies?

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#516

Post by beat » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 7:53 PM UTC

oldandtired wrote: post #382

beat wrote: post #275

So here's the thing... hiring at larger, growing companies often means weeding through a stack of a hundred resumes, for one or two or five roles. Most of those resumes need to go away. The interview process, for competent candidates, is going to cost you at bare minimum a half hour of one person's time for initial screening. A quality interview is going to take a couple of hours each for a few important people - man…

I don't want to be too critical, but you have a number of grammatical errors in your comment. I believe this shows how easy it can be to get at least 2 typographical errors in even a short piece of communication. I am sure that this comment will infringe on someone's standard.

Eh. The grammar of my OP is conversational, not formal. If I were writing formally, I'd write differently.

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#517

Post by Nition » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 7:53 PM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #429

kccqzy wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s part of the metadata. Look for content creator and PDF producer fields. Or even more simply, just use your eyes. The superior line breaking algorithm is extremely obvious, with or without microtype. Then less obviously, look at ligatures, kerning etc.

Doesn't mean much since tooling like Sphinx will generate Latex as an intermediary for PDF generation. I don't care for the rigidity of Latex and don't want to hand craft my own TeX documents. I once had a resume generation system that would convert ReST to Docbook and from there used XSLT to produce plain text, docx, and PDF output using XSL-FO. Sadly the code was on a failed Seagate drive and is lost. And yes I had…

I remember those, I had one of those fail too. Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 c. 2008. Found all the stuff on the Internet about the bad firmware after it failed.

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#518

Post by beat » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 7:55 PM UTC

oldandtired wrote: post #415

wooter wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

really? you don't think its evidence that we invest varying levels of effort into things we care about? thusly, a candidate with typographical errors is closer internet-comment-level interested effort-wise in the position.

Claiming something is easy to do and then making the same errors simply diminished the strength of the argument presented. The comment comes across as "do as I say, not do as I do."

I'm focusing on spelling, not grammar (I consciously exclude grammar from my heuristic, out of respect for non-native English speakers). Are there any misspellings in the OP?

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#519

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 7:55 PM UTC

davehtaylor wrote: post #505

user5994461 wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have hundreds of people to interview, the quantity is a huge problem. You can't interview the majority of them. His question takes away the people who are not interested. It's useful.

It also seems to remove the people who may or may not actually understand the fundamentals of the language they claim to have experience in, rather only knowing how to cobble together frameworks and/or copypasta code.

[deleted]

Re: We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)

#520

Post by ckoerner » Tue, Oct 31, 2017, 7:55 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #502

einarfd wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said earlier, getting someone to prof read your text, and catch all the problems is not as easy as you would think. Nor is getting a spell checker to catch all your errors. I have to admit I thought I was done with getting graded on spelling in high school. I haven't seen anything on either side of the fence, in my carer to indicate that some spelling mistakes is enough to cost people an opportunity. But I'm sur…

One of my best friends has a MD and an MBA degree. He currently manages a $100M investment portfolio. We chat online almost daily. He is, by far, the worst speller I know. Even after 20+ years of online conversation, I can barely understand what he's saying sometimes. He also passes bits of professional writing past me for validation, usually to check his intent. His professional writing is always perfectly spelled,…

I don't mean to challenge you, but I think your assumptions about how easy it is for others to do something you consider rudimentary are based in an undeclared set of privileges and fortune. A few possible scenarios where getting help might not be as easy as asking a partner, friend, or colleague to help review things.

A first-generation college grad paying their way through school by working full time in a new town.

A single parent trying to get into a field while working and caring for their family.

A non-native English speaker who perhaps understands the general structure of the English language, but not the nuances of grammar (or what is expected in a Western CV/Resume).

I hope you could see that your earnest appreciation for proper spelling is unfair to apply in such a black/white dichotomy. I kindly ask you to reconsider your approach.