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Have a personal web site

writing.markchristian.org

31–40 of 436 posts

Re: Have a personal web site

#32

I don't think it's fair to judge a candidate based on their online presence. Some people are very private, or for whatever reasons prefer not to have an online presence. Furthermore, if you judge every candidate by the number of linkedin posts and stackoverflow answers or whatever superficial metric than you will miss out on a lot of talented people. I'm not the type who has an urge to express my opinion or feelings…

Oh, I wasn't looking them up--the candidate told me that they looked me up.

My lawyer looked up my profile online. He loved a lot of games I made.

Re: Have a personal web site

#33
post #13

Some of the most interesting things online are people writing about things they are passionate about, for the sake of writing about them. At least in my opinion, so it’s fair to say that I agree with the author. I think it’s an equally delightful experience to journal about things though. I do it from time to time, when some subject just needs to get written down, almost as though the journaling is me thinking out lo…

Agreed. I'm a bit jealous of his (Mostly) food truck name ideas, https://writing.markchristian.org/name-ideas/.

Once, in the functional programming rabbit-hole, a coworker advocated for a hypothetical Indian food truck named Haskell's Curry.

And when I was studying propositional logic I certainly wouldn't have said no to a side of De Morgan's ColesLaw.

Re: Have a personal web site

#34

In Finland it is illegal to google for applicant's online presence, because of the possibility of judging the candidate because of misidentification. You have to have applicant's permission to that. And I am glad, because one of my name doubles isn't very representative person according to their online presence.

I have the opposite problem, I share the name with someone else working in the tech field who is academically and professionally my senior.

I frequently get emails and phone calls from recruiters offering positions with a salary up to 200k more than I'm expecting at my level because they think I teach at Stanford

Re: Have a personal web site

#35
post #12

> You should... Except for all the reasons you shouldn't. The biggest reasons is that if putting up a website doesn't feel like a good use of time, it's probably better to just not have one. An alternative way to think about it is this... is it a good business decision to de-prioritize talking to people who don't have a website? I'd be real surprised if the answer was yes.

One of the benefits not mentioned in the article: it serves as a good personal record of accomplishments or thoughts (similar to a diary). How often does the new year come around and you think to yourself, "where did the year go?"

[deleted]

Re: Have a personal web site

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that, but the context from the article is that of an interviewee looking up the interviewer and commenting that the interviewer was a "ghost" online. To me, that's somewhat bizarre. What bearing does your interviewer's hobbies have on your perception of whether the company and the role would be a good fit for you?

Where I live, it's expected from candidates to show they looked up the company and have prepared a question regarding a project the company is working on or something else about the company itself. So, you actually end up googling the thing.

That doesn't address the question at all.

Re: Have a personal web site

#37
post #12

> You should... Except for all the reasons you shouldn't. The biggest reasons is that if putting up a website doesn't feel like a good use of time, it's probably better to just not have one. An alternative way to think about it is this... is it a good business decision to de-prioritize talking to people who don't have a website? I'd be real surprised if the answer was yes.

One of the benefits not mentioned in the article: it serves as a good personal record of accomplishments or thoughts (similar to a diary). How often does the new year come around and you think to yourself, "where did the year go?"

Why should this be public information, though?

Re: Have a personal web site

#38
post #29

In Finland it is illegal to google for applicant's online presence, because of the possibility of judging the candidate because of misidentification. You have to have applicant's permission to that. And I am glad, because one of my name doubles isn't very representative person according to their online presence.

How is this law enforced? It seems like you could google them and discard their application for other reasons.

Even bigger question: how is it tracked what application was discarded and why?

Sounds like a well-intentioned eurocratic nightmare.

Re: Have a personal web site

#39

“I like to look people up before an interview to try to get to know them a bit. You were a complete ghost online.” Why is this a bad thing?

It makes one an easy target for negative campaigning. If you have no "real" web pages showing your real self, the first hit will be someone else talking trash about you. Or worse, pretending to be you.

A vast and positive online presence is an insurance.

Re: Have a personal web site

#40

In Finland it is illegal to google for applicant's online presence, because of the possibility of judging the candidate because of misidentification. You have to have applicant's permission to that. And I am glad, because one of my name doubles isn't very representative person according to their online presence.

I'd be curious to know how well that's enforced. There's an ocean full of HR tech startups that are doing just that programmatically, to produce scores on all sorts of things to rate candidates.
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