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The reverse job applicant

reversejobapplication.com

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Re: The reverse job applicant

#81

Post by feral »

chegra wrote: post #21

His resume: http://www.andrewhorner.com/documents/AndrewHorner.Resume.pd... * For your level of experience, Everything should fit on a page. * Take out the operating system part. They can infer them by the languages you use. * Take out high school * Create a section for awards and list them there * Take out familiar with MatLab and Latex * For each project give a link to a screen-shot or working project and ensure th…

Not trying to be mean, but looking at the resume, I went straight to the 'projects' section.

Everything else can be so much hot air - but projects speak for themselves.

The first project promises an online development blog - but the link to the blog is dead, and google doesn't find it.

The second project claims he architected and implemented a full game engine. Having a quick play of the game (http://www.andrewhorner.com/sds/ ) reveals it doesn't really work.

It looks pretty, but it doesn't really do anything, its not playable, its not finished, even though the resume implies it is.

That doesn't look good.

The reverse job application was a great pitch to get people to look at your resume, but then you have to make sure they've got something to see. Its great to be able to get attention, but you need to capitalise on it when you do.

And if you are going to be unemployed for 2 years, at least get a finished project to put on your resume, that'd go down a lot better.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#82

Post by steveaz98 »

Robin_Message wrote: post #10

This is a nice idea, with one big BUT. Not to rain on the parade here, but you've been unemployed for two years and all you have to show for it is a funny reverse job application. Sadly, it doesn't show what your actual skills are, nor whether you have ever produced something of value for anyone. These are more or less prerequisites to getting a good job. Go look at http://jacquesmattheij.com/My+list+of+ideas+for+whe…

I'd add another BUT... The real reverse application should show how you will bring value to the company. Why should they hire you, how will you make the company better, what do you bring to the table?

You have to understand that it has to pay to hire you, you are just not entitled to a job because you have a degree.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#83

Post by bostonvaulter2 »

hop wrote: post #77

Your resume could be part of the problem - http://www.andrewhorner.com/documents/AndrewHorner.Resume.pd... Some constructive criticism: Thats a lot of ink to print that out, drop the black and grey banners. Try using a resume theme from Pages or Word for a start and just use black fonts on a white background. Use Myriad Pro or something more modern than Arial. Make it one page. Your first entry shouldn't be that you…

I'd also add that you should try to list things in order of most importance. I would list something like the UCF Vision Lab work before "Operating Systems". I also concur with making it one page and losing all that extra ink.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#85

Post by encoderer »

astrofinch wrote: post #73
run4yourlives wrote: post #72

If you really care which programming languages I already know or which applications I have used before, I can only assume that you're overlooking my ability to quickly pick up new technologies and adjust to new ways of thinking. I would encourage you to correct this, as it is a mistake. I know it's tongue in cheek, but my god does the current generation not have any humility at all? This is going to ruin your world v…

Hm. 'Fraid I don't see what a sense of entitlement has to do with the difficulty of picking up new programming languages.

Within a given discipline (eg web development), picking up the syntax new language isn't too difficult. Then you have to navigate the new libraries which also isn't too hard. Basically.. What's the [new language] equivalent of [some method call] in [old language].

The trouble is picking-up the idiom: If you're a Java guy learning Python in this manner you're going to end up with a lot of java-looking python code.

Nothing wrong with hiring a developer for a language he doesn't have a lot of personal experience with. But there's also nothing wrong with a company wanting to know which languages a developer knows. They shouldn't get a lecture for asking IMO.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#86

Post by middlegeek »

hop wrote: post #77

Your resume could be part of the problem - http://www.andrewhorner.com/documents/AndrewHorner.Resume.pd... Some constructive criticism: Thats a lot of ink to print that out, drop the black and grey banners. Try using a resume theme from Pages or Word for a start and just use black fonts on a white background. Use Myriad Pro or something more modern than Arial. Make it one page. Your first entry shouldn't be that you…

Thanks, I hope Andrew is reading this but I am not him. I submitted it because I appreciated the ingenuity and thought HN would as well.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#87

Post by treeface »

gammarator wrote: post #79
hop wrote: post #77

Your resume could be part of the problem - http://www.andrewhorner.com/documents/AndrewHorner.Resume.pd... Some constructive criticism: Thats a lot of ink to print that out, drop the black and grey banners. Try using a resume theme from Pages or Word for a start and just use black fonts on a white background. Use Myriad Pro or something more modern than Arial. Make it one page. Your first entry shouldn't be that you…

Weighted GPAs can be higher than 4.0: A+ grades in advanced courses are often given 5.0 points, and so on.

I had a system like this in my high school too, but technically it's not "out of 4.0". The maximum possible grade is usually dependent on what courses the student takes. For example, if you took an "honors" course, an A would get you 4.5, B would be 3.5, etc. If you took a "high honors" or "AP" course, A would be 5, B would be 4, etc. If you know what classes you took, you can calculate your maximum score possible.

If he had said he got a 4.4 (or whatever) out of 4.6, it would convey more information than what he said on his resume for two reasons:

1) It would tell the employer at roughly what rate he took harder courses than he had to (this would be especially true if he somehow found the school's average maximum GPA).

2) It would tell the employer the actual ratio of his grades to the maximum possible score.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#88

Post by achompas »

cemregr wrote: post #56
chegra wrote: post #21

His resume: http://www.andrewhorner.com/documents/AndrewHorner.Resume.pd... * For your level of experience, Everything should fit on a page. * Take out the operating system part. They can infer them by the languages you use. * Take out high school * Create a section for awards and list them there * Take out familiar with MatLab and Latex * For each project give a link to a screen-shot or working project and ensure th…

I agree about changing the layout to make it fit on one page. But I wouldn't remove high school. He's done IB, which is way more challenging than regular high school. It's a straight admissions ticket to many top universities, some even let you skip the freshman year entirely based on what you took with IB. It's unfortunately not as widely recognized in the US than elsewhere in the world.

But he's looking for jobs after college. High school, for this guy, was 5-6 years ago! Even if he took IB or AP courses...so what? Tons of people have taken IB/AP courses.

A company won't decide to hire you based on your high school marks.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#89

Post by AlexC04 »

thewordpainter wrote: post #12
AlexC04 wrote: post #5

I liked it. Hope you hear you've found something. I do think that you will need links to some technologies you've built. If you don't have anything built yet, why not get started? Since you're out of work why not start with something simple (a "facemash" clone for pokemon?? wait, don't do that, I want that one now. oh who am I kidding? the market can bear a dozen facemash for pokemon clones) I went to see the social…

"We encourage students to create their jobs rather than find them" - i agree it was one of the better lines in the movie, but i am not sure i believe harvard actually possesses that mentality. stanford? probably. hardvard? probably not. i've heard a number of times (and believe) that the most successful entrepreneurs are often the B-student rebels that manage to hire the A+ students for their startups.

yeah - I wanted to get the quote right so I googled first.

"we will offer our students the ability to land the job of their dreams or create it." http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2010/02/09_hls.venture.fund....

At the end of the day, I think it's mostly irrelevant where they say it (Havard, Stanford, Berkley, Carleton, all, none, who cares?) - it's the sentiment that really matters.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#90

Post by treeface »

run4yourlives wrote: post #72

If you really care which programming languages I already know or which applications I have used before, I can only assume that you're overlooking my ability to quickly pick up new technologies and adjust to new ways of thinking. I would encourage you to correct this, as it is a mistake. I know it's tongue in cheek, but my god does the current generation not have any humility at all? This is going to ruin your world v…

I agree with you almost entirely. One tiny exception:

>I know it's tongue in cheek, but my god does the current generation not have any humility at all?

Come on...how many times do we have to go through this "young whippersnappers don't have any humility anymore" nonsense before we recognize that young humans, in general, have less humility than they should? Just because you (perhaps) had more humility than this kid doesn't mean your entire generation did.

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