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Loren wants to work at Airbnb

lorenburton.com

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Re: Loren wants to work at Airbnb

#41

Post by Mz »

hugh3 wrote: post #40
ezyang wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shiny, whizzy, attention-getting things aren't scalable. If everyone did this, it wouldn't work. It would just raise the noise level. Unclear. In many ways, this is simply a logical extension of the well written cover letter, and if those work, why can't these?

Escalation. Once everybody is doing a shiny, whizzy attention-getting thing, then folks will start competing by being more shiny, more whizzy and more attention-getting than everyone else. Instead of a nicely-designed colourful scrolling webpage people are submitting half-hour semi-interactive animated feature films in which the ghost of Ghandi rises from the grave to tell you all about the advantages of hiring so-an…

At which point, understated elegance will become the new rage.

Re: Loren wants to work at Airbnb

#42

Post by guynamedloren »

pclark wrote: post #31

I'll bite. Is this actually that good? Spending a lot of time on it, sure, but other than it being quirky (which is hugely valuable) is it doing it's job? No specific accomplishments, core skills, and no software in the wild for us to see. You could have linked to your Airbnb profile ("hey i use it!") linked to your google map ("hey i travel!") and then listed all your software projects and links and things about eac…

Thanks for the feedback. Without proper context, I see where you're coming from - but the reality is that this was created in an addition to a submitted resume + cover letter, both of which listed specific accomplishments, core skills, personal projects, and experience. This was certainly not meant to be a standalone "Hey look, hire me!" page, and would be rather incomplete as such.

Edit: Also, one of the primary goals of this project was to display the things that are commonly difficult to convey in a resume - passion and personality.

Re: Loren wants to work at Airbnb

#43

Post by sixtypoundhound »

Awesome!!!

Not going to critique the technical quality of the work (particularly since I'm not a front-end web guy), but as a hiring manager, I'd be frigging floored if someone spent an evening (maybe more? Although I suspect you're pretty quick by now, based on your comments) putting together a tight on-point microsite for my consumption.

The big job boards are a joke since they have reduced the entire process to buzzword bingo - and a fairly poor form of one at that. There's basically zero insight into how good someone actually is. Looking at someone's blog or contributions to open source projects is potentially an indicator, but there are a number of solid folks for whom that isn't a serious options (significant risk of their old economy management freaking out - a problem when you have a couple of dependents you need to keep fed, housed, and healthy).

So you get interviews like the one I conducted two weeks ago - "you have written free form SQL before?"...."yes, many times"... " Excellent, I have a little problem for us to solve..."

[walks to board, draws three data tables - one transaction file and two dimensions - and outlines a requirement for a basic report that involves joining, summing, and filtering data - I validated it with a recent hire, took him 3 min]

"uh"... twenty minutes later we bring the painful exercise to a close.... "I didn't think you would have me write code"

Huh? Huh? The job description explictly mentions that you need to know free form SQL COLD and asks that you have higher level programming experience (real languages). Do you seriously expect to get a role like that w/o coding?

Shoot - beats the cracker jack wanna-be pricing analyst we had apply off monster who explicitly mentioned his pricing experience...at Walmart... as a positive...

The one decent player in the online recruiting space that I've seen is linkedin - most of the contacts I've had off of that which show serious intent (eg. tailored message) are pretty promising. Especially if they are a connection of someone you trust.

Linkedin's biggest problem is that all participants get the same view of a candidate, including your corporate HR people (don't laugh - I was hauled in and yelled at about this a couple of years ago) - if there was a way to make more of this platform private, the value of the network would increase.

Re: Loren wants to work at Airbnb

#44

Post by mechanical_fish »

izaidi wrote: post #30
guynamedloren wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, there's always room for improvement :) Any specifics come to mind?

I enjoy the design but I find it very decorative. By which I mean there are a lot of visual elements (clouds, arrows) that serve no real function and distract from the message. It's fine for a resume page but doesn't say much about your ability to design the front-end user experience of a consumer web app, except that it's possible you might spend a lot of time on glitter. Just my opinion as a fervent minimalist.

I'm imagining your Christmas cards now.

   THERE IS A HOLIDAY SOON.
   I AM ALIVE AND HAPPY.
   I HOPE YOU ARE ALSO.
     ME.
Actually, that would be kind of funny. It would capture one's attention in a way that the typical cute and whimsical holiday card would not. Just as this cover letter gets one's attention in a way that a direct, factual, minimal, utterly banal and archetypal cover letter would not.

Re: Loren wants to work at Airbnb

#45

Post by hugh3 »

Mz wrote: post #41
hugh3 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Escalation. Once everybody is doing a shiny, whizzy attention-getting thing, then folks will start competing by being more shiny, more whizzy and more attention-getting than everyone else. Instead of a nicely-designed colourful scrolling webpage people are submitting half-hour semi-interactive animated feature films in which the ghost of Ghandi rises from the grave to tell you all about the advantages of hiring so-an…

At which point, understated elegance will become the new rage.

Exactly. I'm ahead of the curve. Here's my cover letter. It's in twelve-point Times, motherfuckers!

Re: Loren wants to work at Airbnb

#46

Post by aquark »

timr wrote: post #23
nsfmc wrote: post #17

So, while this is novel and all, it seems to me that these "resume 2.0" applications indicate a real failure of systems like "jobvite" or whatever backend air bnb is using to simplify their hiring decisions. On HN we've been seeing a bunch of these hyper-targeted reverse resumes in the past year because I suspect people have gotten tired of submitting waves of resumes and hearing nothing back within a reasonable time…

"What i'm seeing here, is that traditional recruiting practices are failing in some way because priority is achieved by a) making it to the hn frontpage which b) gets pg to vouch for you. Which is basically no better (or efficient) than the traditional method of hiring folks that you've networked with via friends/school/etc or what have you." Well, yeah. The purpose of jobvite isn't to get the candidate attention, an…

> If everyone did this, it wouldn't work. It would just raise the noise level.

Actually I think it would continue to work rather well -- it is a lot easier to judge based on this style of resume than a plain piece of paper with bullet points.

And a lot of the current noise level is just incapable of producing this type of resume. From the resumes I've seen just producing a properly targeted cover letter (not one where you've just search & replaced the company name) would put you in the top 10% of applicants.

Re: Loren wants to work at Airbnb

#47

Post by tptacek »

nsfmc wrote: post #17

So, while this is novel and all, it seems to me that these "resume 2.0" applications indicate a real failure of systems like "jobvite" or whatever backend air bnb is using to simplify their hiring decisions. On HN we've been seeing a bunch of these hyper-targeted reverse resumes in the past year because I suspect people have gotten tired of submitting waves of resumes and hearing nothing back within a reasonable time…

Systems like "jobvite or whatever" are at odds with this approach, which, for lack of a better term, I'll call the "What Color Is My Parachute"† (WCIMP) Technique.

In the WCIMP mindset, you make a shortlist of specific companies you'd like to work for. You brainstorm a pitch about how you believe you'd like to add value to their company. Then, treating every step of the hiring process up to "interview with decision maker" as an obstacle, you run the ropes course for each company.

Jobvites and Resumorps and Interfleebs are all obstacles. Is there a system you know about that truly accepts the fact that HR is an obstacle between engaged hiring managers and engaged candidates? I don't know about it. For the most part, these tools all seem geared towards reducing the cost for companies of maintaining their existing obstacle courses.

And that's fine, because most people don't take the WCIMP approach to job hunting. Instead, they have a role in mind, and their overall goal is to hunt for a satisfactory place to practice that role. Those people are never going to think about your company and put you on a shortlist and devise a sales pitch, but are only marginally less likely to be awesome as the WCIMP candidates. Your job is only partly one of attracting candidates; it's also to filter them.

Personally, I don't see WCIMP tactics as evidence of the failure of obstacle course hiring; rather, they're just particularly graceful ways of navigating the course.

† Not endorsing the book, it's just the first one of its kind that I read, 15 years ago.

Re: Loren wants to work at Airbnb

#49

Post by [deleted] »

guynamedloren wrote: post #18
rimantas wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your points are all true and he may make a great web designer. As for front-end engineer position there is a room for improvement. Luckily it's not me hiring so all the best to Loren.

Agreed, there's always room for improvement :) Any specifics come to mind?

[deleted]
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