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It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

simonwillison.net

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Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#31

Post by cratermoon »

runawaybottle wrote: post #18
simonw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point here was meant to be that you DON'T need to invest a huge amount of effort in peacocking. Just a small amount of effort in ensuring there are public examples of your work out there is all it takes to get a boost against other candidates who haven't done that. A small website and a projects page is exactly the knid of thing I'm suggesting here.

But the active promotion via the social channels is what sets off the ‘keeping up with the Johnsons’ effect. Some people are so shy that they would never consider advertising like that. The peer pressure builds, and suddenly you have a generation of self conscious people maintaining appearances.

Michael H. Goldhaber foresaw this in 1997, in his presentation, The attention economy and the Net[1], see the section "Further Expectations"

1 https://firstmonday.org/article/view/519/440

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#32

Post by wpietri »

jameshush wrote: post #27

In my experience, for a pure engineering role, nobody seems to care. I had credits at large companies, posted talks online (interviewers rarely looked at them), but if I forgot how to write binary search in 10 minutes in an interview it didn’t matter. This actually made me realize being just an IC wasn’t actually my goal though. Once I started interviewing for management and sales, all of those things _really_ matter…

I think it depends a lot on the place. I'm hiring now and we actively appreciate things like mentoring and doing public work.

I agree that people not feeling appreciated should try other things, but I think that includes different kinds of employers as well as different kinds of job.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#33

Post by wyager »

maxk42 wrote: post #7
tibbetts wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of information available on candidates to hiring managers is extremely limited. Evidence of outside creativity is a pretty good sign that someone is not a bozo.

Again - I fail to see how the second part is derived from the first. If I'm already engaging in a screening process, wouldn't it be better to ask the candidate to solve a problem that relates to their role than to ask them if they've done any blogging on the topic of tech?

By the time you've gotten someone in an interview you've already committed a huge amount of effort towards them. Seeing a cool project someone made is a very strong signal that interviewing them won't be a waste of time.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#34

Post by jameshush »

endisneigh wrote: post #14

This is an interesting post - though it saddens me. It seems modesty is going the way of the dodo. Though it leads to an interesting quandary - is it possible to have an online presence and still honestly call yourself a modest person? To elaborate - my issue with this post is that it promotes the further commercialization of activity. If you’re doing it because you want to, then you would’ve done it already. This po…

Of course. Even modest people text their friends and colleagues and say “You gotta see this, look at this testing library I just found!”

Just copy that text and paste it in LinkedIn or Twitter too.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#35

Post by simonw »

N00bN00b wrote: post #30

The opposite is also true. I work in system engineering (sometimes it's called sysops. Hybrid programming/administration, often production stuff) and I've learned to I hide my creativity. A lot of employers want people they can understand and they can trust. The companies I work for generally don't want someone that's creative. They want someone that's dull and reliable. Show your creative side and they'll look for s…

That's a really interesting perspective.

I've been in interview debriefs where the fact that the candidate speaks at dozens of conferences a year has been raised as a potential problem, since it suggests they may not be as dedicated to the work that needs to be done.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#36

Post by wpietri »

N00bN00b wrote: post #30

The opposite is also true. I work in system engineering (sometimes it's called sysops. Hybrid programming/administration, often production stuff) and I've learned to I hide my creativity. A lot of employers want people they can understand and they can trust. The companies I work for generally don't want someone that's creative. They want someone that's dull and reliable. Show your creative side and they'll look for s…

I'm sorry to hear it, but it's definitely true for certain kinds of employer. I once met somebody doing similar work to yours. Like you, he would bust his ass early on to automate everything and then be kind of bored. At one point he had two full-time jobs where he had done that and he still had time to play a lot of video games.

I hope he found an employer who could really challenge him, as he was happier during the initial phase of hard work. But I wouldn't be surprised if he never did.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#37

Post by N00bN00b »

jameshush wrote: post #27

In my experience, for a pure engineering role, nobody seems to care. I had credits at large companies, posted talks online (interviewers rarely looked at them), but if I forgot how to write binary search in 10 minutes in an interview it didn’t matter. This actually made me realize being just an IC wasn’t actually my goal though. Once I started interviewing for management and sales, all of those things _really_ matter…

Yep. I basically made the same remark. For a lot of positions they're just not looking for creative people, just chairs to fill. They want "good enough" and nothing more.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#38

Post by [deleted] »

jameshush wrote: post #27

In my experience, for a pure engineering role, nobody seems to care. I had credits at large companies, posted talks online (interviewers rarely looked at them), but if I forgot how to write binary search in 10 minutes in an interview it didn’t matter. This actually made me realize being just an IC wasn’t actually my goal though. Once I started interviewing for management and sales, all of those things _really_ matter…

[deleted]

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#39

Post by jameshush »

wpietri wrote: post #32
jameshush wrote: post #27

In my experience, for a pure engineering role, nobody seems to care. I had credits at large companies, posted talks online (interviewers rarely looked at them), but if I forgot how to write binary search in 10 minutes in an interview it didn’t matter. This actually made me realize being just an IC wasn’t actually my goal though. Once I started interviewing for management and sales, all of those things _really_ matter…

I think it depends a lot on the place. I'm hiring now and we actively appreciate things like mentoring and doing public work. I agree that people not feeling appreciated should try other things, but I think that includes different kinds of employers as well as different kinds of job.

I agree, I was in the California market for 7ish years so my experience is heavily skewed for that culture.

That being said, I’m NOT bashing those interviews. I’ve been a hiring manager too, if I was able to offer double money and high prestige like a FAANG company I would have had a high filter too. I focused more on sourcing people through friends of friends so the interviews were more of a soft sale on my end than a leetcode grind.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#40

Post by wyager »

I've interviewed probably >100 people and maybe 7 or 8 had anything interesting that I could look at publicly on their resume. It doesn't even have to be job-related. It's cool to see a website that's just photography or motorcycle customization or whatever. It helps me get a handle on the person I'm interviewing as an individual, maybe gives us something to talk about.
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