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The reverse job applicant

reversejobapplication.com

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Re: The reverse job applicant

#231

Post by lukevdp »

How about start freelancing? Or start a business?

Nobody is "entitled" to a job. Yes, the job market is tough right now, but the reality is, if you're totally awesome at creating value, you're going to get a job. If you think you're totally awesome at creating value and you can't get a job, you're not really totally awesome at creating value (it means other people are more awesome than you)

Freelancing is entering the marketplace where you ONLY get paid on your value. If you can't freelance (in the web industry), what makes you think you can make your employer money?

Having said that, I think this is a great way for Andrew to stand out and get a job, he obviously knows how to draw attention and be different, he's proven that with the reverse job posting, and best of luck to him.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#232

Post by codyrobbins »

maxawaytoolong wrote: post #207
potatolicious wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society didn't lie to you, society never struck a bargain with you. Your parents may have lied to you, maybe your teachers too. Whoever it was that lied, it wasn't us . It probably wasn't malicious, some people are/were genuinely extremely misguided about how the world operates (protip: not as differently as before). Here's what happened: you abdicated your responsibility in one of the most important aspects of your…

This is a good post, but society did kinda lie. From your mom to Mr. T to the President of the United States, the school-is-cool, just stay in school and you'll get a job meme has been pretty prevalent since I was a child, and I'm old.

I think you, and a lot of other people in our generation, have misinterpreted the generalization ‘You need to go to college to get a good job’ as ‘You will get a good job if you go to college.’ These two are not the same thing.

College may generally be a requirement for a good job, but college alone does not entail a good job.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#233

Post by dools »

I love it. Let the haters hate.

Resumes are totally boring and anyone who can program and draw witty cartoons is going to be an asset.

Look how many people know the name Andrew Horner now?

This is not the end of a job application process, it's the beginning, and it's a sure fire way to by-pass the HR gatekeepers and go straight to the decision makers.

Obviously, as an employer, you would go through the same sorts of evaluation process to try and figure out if he can actually do anything - just the same as you would with any other employee (as if you can trust what someone has on their resume anyway!)

I only wish I made enough money to hire this guy and enough work to keep him busy.

And enough money to afford office space in which I could install a whiteboard on which he could draw a different cartoon every day.

Maybe I should do a REVERSE REVERSE job application so that he begs ME to come and work for my company!!!

Check MATE Horner!

Re: The reverse job applicant

#234

Post by anthonyb »

randomtask wrote: post #159
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…

You know nothing of his situation and yet are willing to cast aspersions on his character. Before you go tarring a whole generation with the "entitled" label perhaps a little context from the generation that lacks humility might be in order. Friends of mine are in the same position as this guy. They recently graduated with good degrees from a decent university with no allusions that finding a job was going to be anyt…

Well, based on what I can see on the internet, it'd be a no-hire from me. His resume is pretty crappy: http://www.andrewhorner.com/documents/ahorner.resume.pdf has nothing really concrete in terms of projects that he's worked on or code that he's written, libraries which he's used, just a bunch of HR waffle.

He has one semi-completed project, http://www.andrewhorner.com/sds/ which might be enough to find him work as a flash programmer, but he's stopped work on that in favour of a new project... with no progress in 12 months - no blog posts, nothing.

And it gets worse - if I were looking for a Python developer, just his code on PyGAF would be enough to put me off.

a) He doesn't seem to understand Object Oriented style at all (look at the __update_pos method in http://code.google.com/p/pygaf/source/browse/trunk/graphics_... for a good example). In fact, looking at that code a second time, I'm not sure he understands how to use functions properly.

b) His code style is really nasty in lots of other ways - hard coded variables and lines smushed together so that you can't follow what's going on. Also, no docs - not even a blog post somewhere.

Now I've written some bad code myself, particularly early on when I was learning, but at least I didn't stop - I've been writing more code and getting better and better over time.

So this is I think the grandparent's point - if he was an awesome developer out of college and couldn't find a job, or was working on a side project, and still couldn't find a job then his griping might be justifiable. But if this is all he has to show for his "years of unemployment", and all he's doing is banging out resumes to anyone with a post box, then yeah, he's not likely to find much success.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#235

Post by run4yourlives »

Kadrith wrote: post #228
run4yourlives wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you think society is unkind because it's tough with a degree, I'm not sure what you'd think about what it's like without one. :-)

I don't have a degree, I only went to one college class on psychology before dropping out. Currently I'm the IT Security Officer for a half billion dollar health network. I'm not the normal person without a degree, but the time I didn't spend in college/university was spent learning about computer security. I didn't blame anyone for things not turning out how I wanted, I did something about it. Someone once told me t…

I don't have a degree either, but if you have one and are complaining about lack of opportunity, I'm the wrong person to talk to. :)

Re: The reverse job applicant

#236

Post by Kadrith »

moron4hire wrote: post #196
codyrobbins wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh. I can’t wrap my head around the concept of expecting some mechanical path to success and subsequently being flabbergasted at the realization that, even if it ever did exist at one point, it doesn’t anymore. Who cares if anyone told you things are that easy? Everyone telling you that was wrong—get over it. For your own good, get off your ass and do something worthwhile to distinguish yourself. Instead of doing th…

Exactly. Everyone told me that I should study art in college because I had an affinity for it. Luckily, I also had excellent math scores, saw the writing on the wall in terms of employability, and changed majors to Computer Science (yeah, bet you never saw that major switch before). I had an affinity for that, too, and I engaged in every extra curricular in the department that I could. Surprise, surprise, I've never…

My wife was one semester away from an art degree and we moved due to me being in the military. When she went back to school after the move they were going to make her take quite a few credits over since it was a different university program. Instead she switched to an accounting and business dual major with an art minor.

I'm glad she switched because a CPA gets paid a lot more than most artists. Her long term goal is to do the books for a museum or art institute. It would let her be near the "art world" but using the analytical side of her brain.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#237

Post by elai »

sebastianavina wrote: post #195
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…

> A job that offers many travel opportunities stands a stronger chance of winning me over. Anyone that loves job traveling, is either an idiot, or have never done job traveling... I smell a lot of non sense from this application...

He has no family or other ties that make it more inconvient, he's a person who is volunteering to do something that people many people find unenjoyable, it can be a plus to an employer.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#238

Post by Kadrith »

Retric wrote: post #131
flipper wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if I was an employer (and I have been from time to time) I'd probably read this, smile wryly, and move on. But someone else might not. I don't have a problem with the guy asserting that he can pick up new technologies quickly, as long as he expects he will only be offered entry-level positions. You do not write Python the way Shakespeare wrote prose after six months. I do however have problem with him not provi…

I have helped plenty of people solve problems in languages I don't know. I would not suggest that this makes me an expert or even all that unusual. However, I suspect that a great C++ programmer would be more useful to a Python project than an average Python programmer in about 3 weeks.

Is the person who hires you willing to risk their reputation or job that a C++ programmer can do the job when there may be other Python programmers out there?

Re: The reverse job applicant

#239

Post by elai »

ramchip wrote: post #145
jemfinch wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Programming languages can't all be picked up that quickly, since semantics may differ a lot. The second day with my new employer I was tasked with writing an analysis project in a language I'd never even heard of before joining. Within two weeks, I was writing code in that language every bit as good as my coworkers'. Your statement may hold true for people who know one or two languages (like most CS graduates these…

Yes, my point was focused on this specific case (explaining why it sounds entitled for a fresh graduate to say he can just pick up anything), not on someone with a very wide experience. You seem to have neglected the part where I was talking about domain knowledge: I still think it wouldn't be easy for even a good programmer to start coding the control software for a microscope if he has no experience in that domain…

Verilog, financial analysis, openGL programming, DSP programming and other specialized fields of programming are different than the typical web app, C#, java, php, ruby on rails, enterprise, GUI app programming that are a large part of entry level jobs.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#240

Post by loup-vaillant »

palewery wrote: post #170
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 the intent of his statement: Employees need someone who can adapt and learn new technologies. But if your "languages" are HTML and Visual Basic, you are not a good match for my open position. Since nothing is listed I have no idea if I want to spend the time filling out this form.

you already spent the time stating you might not want to spend time…
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