Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

He who submits a resume has already lost

residentcontrarian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 225 posts

Re: He who submits a resume has already lost

#161

Post by Terretta »

sph wrote: post #136

Resume-based hiring is dehumanising and terrible under any aspect. There is nothing redeeming about it. There is an incredible number of factors that determine how good a prospective employee is to a company, and none of them can be easily represented with a list of job titles and qualifications. You can find people with impressive resumes and they are terrible employees: lazy, stupid, unmotivated. There is a vast am…

> Candidates are to their resumes what a chef's meal is to the list of ingredients.

It sounds as though you're saying it's not the list of ingredients, it's what you make of them.

On the contrary, the interesting chefs, you can tell from the list, as there are delightfully unexpected choices and twists on the list.

This absolutely POPS on a resume, and is one of the indicators I look for.

Re: He who submits a resume has already lost

#162

Post by surgical_fire »

saxelsen wrote: post #104

Life-hack for applicants: stand out with a cover letter. Life-hack #2: Use ChatGPT to write it in 2 minutes Alternatively (shameless promotion): Use a special-purpose tool I wrote for it, which uses the GPT API https://aicoverletter.me

Not the hero we deserve, but the hero we need

Re: He who submits a resume has already lost

#163

Post by bm3719 »

jensneuse wrote: post #86
jensneuse wrote: post #7

I keep giving this advice on how to significantly increase your chances of getting to the interview stage. Most candidates really only submit a resume. The chances of getting to the interview stage with this approach are almost zero. Because everyone does this, you can easily stand out. Simply answer the following 2 questions briefly in plain English. 1. Why do you want to take this role? 2. Why are you a good fit fo…

Some people mis-read this post as "showing" love to a company in the application. This is not what I meant, so I'd like to clarify this with a story. Prior to starting WunderGraph, I've worked for a Full Lifecycle API Management company. It's was my best paying and most satisfying job before cutting my salary almost half to make my startup burn as little as possible. I found this company because they had an open sour…

> I've read through your website and documentation and are truly inspired by your vision

It's probably more practices like this, where the prospective employee has to enthusiastically profess subservient, slavish devotion to a company in order to be considered a viable candidate. You're writing GraphQL API glue. Everyone knows you're doing it to pay the mortgage. It's not a transcendental experience.

By contrary, the direction we were headed until recently made more sense. A company wanted some service provided. They'd look around and reach out to someone that likely was the best fit and contact them.

For example, if I was hiring a plumber, and some guy told me he was "inspired by my vision" and sought me out by reading everything on my website about my family, I would assume he had mental health issues and certainly not hire him.

Re: He who submits a resume has already lost

#164

Post by gymbeaux »

precompute wrote: post #154
gymbeaux wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I am no stranger to interacting with developers who seem to only be in the industry because of how well it pays, I find your advice frustrating. My experience with startups is that they demand a lot of A) interest from the candidate immediately , before the candidate has even talked to a human, and B) attention from the candidate- but that same interest and attention is not returned to the candidate. Thinking a…

Were these interviews via triplebyte in the last year or two or before that? I've heard that the platform isn't what it used to be.

I hear it isn’t what it used to be as well. They used to do in-person interviews, then they moved to un-proctored quizzes to prove skill, which I find to be a unique and mostly-accurate gauge of skill in a particular area. That said, I don’t know how common cheating would be. If it’s high, that certainly explains why companies don’t seem to put much merit on them.

Also, there’s the irony that TripleByte went from a language-agnostic in-person (virtual) interview to very specific quizzes. So instead of saying “this dev knows how to dev”, they now say “this dev knows C#, Python, SQL, and JavaScript”

Re: He who submits a resume has already lost

#165

Post by surgical_fire »

version_five wrote: post #111
anothernewdude wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resumes are the thing I look through. Cover letters are discarded before reading.

Just happened to see this. If your buying say, steel, presumably you care very little about the supplier, their story, etc. You want specs (carbon content, hardness, annealing temperature, whatever) and price. Likewise, hiring people as commodities, you don't care about the cover letter, you want to know where they went to school and want experience they have. If you're trying to hire a person as opposed to a commodi…

As an employee, I want my employer to see me as an employee. Because I damn sure view them as an employer.

This is a good baseline for a working relationship. They can be a good employer, with good salary and decent benefits. They can treat their employees fairly, offer some okay work-life balance, etc

And as an employee, I can be a good one. Always being professional and polite, striving to keep a healthy environment among the workforce, and using my skills effectively to help the business while doing my job.

Seeing each other as a commodity is fine. My worst job experience was in a startup that really didn't see things this way.

Re: He who submits a resume has already lost

#166

Post by jowdones »

Yoric wrote: post #119
andrewstuart wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude is well suited to an employers market in which you need to profess your love for the job and company as part of your job application. A pity the market has turned back this direction. It’s usually accompanied by an employer “looking for someone who loves the opportunity enough to go through our 12 week, 9 interview, 1 whiteboard, 2 coding test process which usually ends in veto and ghosting”. Like telli…

Fun fact: I'm currently through an interview process that has lasted 11 weeks so far, including 12 discussions, 1 system design, 2 coding, 3 behavioral. The employer has informed me several times that they intend to make an offer and that my salary expectations are within their range... but they've been postponing the offer for 3 weeks now and clarified yesterday that they want me to profess that I'm more interested…

[flagged]

Re: He who submits a resume has already lost

#167

Post by walls »

jensneuse wrote: post #21
andrewstuart wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude is well suited to an employers market in which you need to profess your love for the job and company as part of your job application. A pity the market has turned back this direction. It’s usually accompanied by an employer “looking for someone who loves the opportunity enough to go through our 12 week, 9 interview, 1 whiteboard, 2 coding test process which usually ends in veto and ghosting”. Like telli…

I understand where you're coming from, but see it differently. This really is a filter. We don't want job applications from people who are looking for a job. We're looking for people who actually want to do work at WunderGraph. We're the first to build a Backend for Frontend Framework, unifying the ideas of API Gateway, BFF and package manager. Our long term goal is to build the GitHub for APIs, a collaborative platf…

Wow you really drank the kool-aid.

Re: He who submits a resume has already lost

#168

Post by the_only_law »

jensneuse wrote: post #7

I keep giving this advice on how to significantly increase your chances of getting to the interview stage. Most candidates really only submit a resume. The chances of getting to the interview stage with this approach are almost zero. Because everyone does this, you can easily stand out. Simply answer the following 2 questions briefly in plain English. 1. Why do you want to take this role? 2. Why are you a good fit fo…

I guess I need to get better at lying.

Re: He who submits a resume has already lost

#169

Post by stevekemp »

Yoric wrote: post #119
andrewstuart wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude is well suited to an employers market in which you need to profess your love for the job and company as part of your job application. A pity the market has turned back this direction. It’s usually accompanied by an employer “looking for someone who loves the opportunity enough to go through our 12 week, 9 interview, 1 whiteboard, 2 coding test process which usually ends in veto and ghosting”. Like telli…

Fun fact: I'm currently through an interview process that has lasted 11 weeks so far, including 12 discussions, 1 system design, 2 coding, 3 behavioral. The employer has informed me several times that they intend to make an offer and that my salary expectations are within their range... but they've been postponing the offer for 3 weeks now and clarified yesterday that they want me to profess that I'm more interested…

Friends tell me I'm losing out, but I never even apply to positions that do not include a salary (range).

The idea of putting in hours, or days, of effort only to learn the salary is minimal just seems like waste of time for everyone.

Weeks? That's just stringing you along, and by the point I'd wonder if they're even intending to hire anyone.

Re: He who submits a resume has already lost

#170

Post by flippinburgers »

gymbeaux wrote: post #54
chocolatkey wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a jaded interviewer (and interviewee) in tech, I will say this works great if you have, for example, a face-to-face meeting and you can demonstrate your interest/passion for the role, but in cover letters or similar email exchanges, you already have people spitting out those fake statements, and it's tedious to distinguish the genuine interest from the fake "I am interested in because you and believe I am a perfec…

There has to be a better way. I really think TripleByte was on to something. No other profession has such a convoluted interviewing system. Imagine if doctors were expected to perform surgeries in X minutes in order to prove they were qualified for the job? Imagine if a lawyer had to prove they graduated from law school by defending a random felon in a court setting. No other profession in existence expects candidate…

And now triplebyte is no more which is unfortunate.
Post reply on HN