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The greatest resume I've ever seen

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Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#101

Post by sdoering »

jasonpeacock wrote: post #71
sdoering wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just came of a call with a a potential hire. I recommended her to a second round because of three things: * She would culturally fit while still bringing something new to the tam * She doesn't know Web Analytics, but has done market research, built html prototypes and has basic knowledge in JS, python, html, SPSS and some other things * She is self motivated and shows this because she actually learned all these ski…

> She would culturally fit What does this mean? This is a very loaded term, and without qualitative data it results in biased hiring. Usually, it means "she's young, white, and college educated, just like the rest of us". People don't need to culturally fit to excel at a role.

Interesting what you interpret into my words.

With cultural fit I meant that she needs to fit into our diverse team. She should probably not have biases against people coming from different and diverse backgrounds.

She needs to be able to work in a collaborative team setup within our core team as well as be able to integrate into project teams with even more diverse people.

Someone who shows that they would not play well in this team sport while also being self sufficient when necessary would not be a cultural fit in our org.

I dann don't care about the color, gender, age or educational background. On the contrary I enjoy the multibackground people around me. It is inspiring.

Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#102

Post by Jiro »

moron4hire wrote: post #91
otterley wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do these questions give you any indication that the candidate can do the essential job functions of shipping working code that is actually useful to your business and being a good teammate?

That question is impossible to answer. However, the negation is answerable. "Is the candidate incapable of the essential job function?" Questions like fizz-buzz, et. al. answer that readily. Put up a job posting on a job board and you'll get hundreds of applications. 90% of those you're going to throw out because the resume doesn't match the job description at all. What does that tell you about the candidate pool? It…

What it tells you about the candidate pool may be less than what it tells you about the qualifications for the position. Job requirements in the computer industry routinely include nonsensical requirements (5 years experience in something that's been around 3 years, 2 years experience in each of 8 items for an entry level position, etc.)

This is endemic to the point where applying only for jobs where you fit the job description is a losing strategy.

And even if your own job posting isn't one of those, how is the applicant supposed to know you're one of the few employers who actually means what's in the job description?

Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#103

Post by stuff4ben »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #98
stuff4ben wrote: post #14

So... smart and gets things done. Honestly that's all I look for on a resume. You also have to talk about it in an interview. I couldn't care less if you can invert a binary tree. One of the greatest developers I've ever worked with, I hired straight out of college. He graduated with an electrical engineering degree but his senior year he took a course in Java and liked it and decided to be a programmer. Couldn't tel…

>So... smart and gets things done. So... young and has no family or other important time-consuming commitments. That's what we're looking for!

So by your reckoning, old people with families and a life outside of work are... stupid and don't do anything? Are you serious? Being smart and showing you have great motivation to get things done in NO WAY relates to how old you are, if you have a family, or a life outside of work.

Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#104

Post by giantg2 »

Kranar wrote: post #72
strgcmc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is, this "je ne sais quoi" that you speak of, that you "could tell he had the chops to figure things out", is unquantifiable and almost totally subjective. To be a bit blunt and cynical, this way of evaluating candidates basically boils down to, "do I like this candidate?" Your criteria for liking someone happens to be that you look for these nebulous "chops for figuring things out". What about the other…

Exactly, it's so sad hearing someone not realize that their hiring process is basically discriminatory in nature. Can you tell someone had the chops to figure things out if they came from a different cultural background than one you're familiar with? If they had a different social upbringing from yours? If they presented themselves in a way that you personally misunderstood but someone else would have been completely…

"Exactly, it's so sad hearing someone not realize that their hiring process is basically discriminatory in nature."

Yep. I've seen this so much in my company for performance review. It's completely subjective and managers dont even realize when they are discriminating or violating company policies (or laws!).

Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#105

Post by staysafeanon »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #98
stuff4ben wrote: post #14

So... smart and gets things done. Honestly that's all I look for on a resume. You also have to talk about it in an interview. I couldn't care less if you can invert a binary tree. One of the greatest developers I've ever worked with, I hired straight out of college. He graduated with an electrical engineering degree but his senior year he took a course in Java and liked it and decided to be a programmer. Couldn't tel…

>So... smart and gets things done. So... young and has no family or other important time-consuming commitments. That's what we're looking for!

I'm old, have two kids, have other time consuming commitments and I get things done.

Part of being smart and getting things done is properly managing work/life balance.

Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#106

Post by dragonwriter »

moron4hire wrote: post #97
dragonwriter wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How would you know that they don't apply? Because implementing low level algorithms like that is almost never an issue for application programming in modern languages, for which robust libraries for such operations exist and are data agnostic. Unless you are using Go, pretty much the only modern popular language that both features static typing and lacks generics, so that kind of algorithm re-implementation task mi…

You usually have a structure that is already tree-like and need to write custom code to walk over it. If you're taking a tree-like thing and first extracting it to another tree structure just to do basic tree operations, then you're already performing tree-traversal and just wasting a lot of time, disk, CPU, and memory just to bundle every person-under-the-sun's tree structure needs into one place.

> you're taking a tree-like thing and first extracting it to another tree structure just to do basic tree operations,

Why would you do that? The whole point of libraries of generic operations is that you can apply them to thing you have without copying.

Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#107

Post by foobarian »

dragonwriter wrote: post #92
moron4hire wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this attitude all the time. It's usually from people who don't know anything about basic data structures like trees. How would you know that they don't apply? It does apply. GUIs are fundamentally tree structures. Relational databases are fundamentally tree structures. JSON documents are fundamentally tree structures. Almost everything you're touching in a CRUD app is some kind of tree and you think knowing how…

> How would you know that they don't apply? Because implementing low level algorithms like that is almost never an issue for application programming in modern languages, for which robust libraries for such operations exist and are data agnostic. Unless you are using Go, pretty much the only modern popular language that both features static typing and lacks generics, so that kind of algorithm re-implementation task mi…

> Because implementing low level algorithms like that is almost never an issue for application programming in modern languages

Except it is. You spend a lot of time traversing nested tree-structured data, validating it, sorting it, filtering it. If you can't do the simple inversion operation you have no hope with the more complicated stuff.

Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#108

Post by pessimizer »

wbsss4412 wrote: post #55
strgcmc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is, this "je ne sais quoi" that you speak of, that you "could tell he had the chops to figure things out", is unquantifiable and almost totally subjective. To be a bit blunt and cynical, this way of evaluating candidates basically boils down to, "do I like this candidate?" Your criteria for liking someone happens to be that you look for these nebulous "chops for figuring things out". What about the other…

There is something to be said about the value of human intuition, though. While it may be fallible, part of what makes hiring a hard problem is that many of the things that distinguish good candidates just aren’t objectively measurable.

> There is something to be said about the value of human intuition,

IMO, the something to be said about it is that people have a good intuition about people who remind them of their family, friends, and celebrities they admire; and a bad intuition about people who don't, and remind them of people seen as criminals or bad guys.

Obliquely related: http://www.skinema.com/evil/

Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#110

Post by giantg2 »

stuff4ben wrote: post #103
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So... smart and gets things done. So... young and has no family or other important time-consuming commitments. That's what we're looking for!

So by your reckoning, old people with families and a life outside of work are... stupid and don't do anything? Are you serious? Being smart and showing you have great motivation to get things done in NO WAY relates to how old you are, if you have a family, or a life outside of work.

Most places I've seen want people to work extra hours consistently. Or at a bare minimum reward people working extra to the detriment of those working the normal hours.

For example, Bob works 8 hours per day and completes 80 units of work but Steve works 10 hours per day and completes 90 units of work. If you get enough 'Steves' in the organization then the remaining 'Bobs' look like slackers. If you can't work 10 hours per day because you have a family, then it puts you at a disadvantage. I've seen it happen. I was told that if I wanted a 7% raise/promotion that I needed to increase my working hours by 13%. Why would I take a rate cut for a position with more expectations and longer hours? My conclusion is that many managers do not think, or that they like to play dumb.

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