I don't hire unlucky people
raganwald.posterous.com
I don't hire unlucky people
1–10 of 281 posts
Re: I don't hire unlucky people
#2Nicely done. Lots of good things here. “I measure. Premature optimization is the—Oh, I get it!” where the lightbulb comes on.
And lots of fun little bits like Mark Fidrych http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fidrych.
Re: I don't hire unlucky people
#3Aside from the Sesame Street names, a fairly decent read. Many years ago, I decided to stop writing my résumé to each recipient and just let my List Of Things speak for itself. I don't want to work for someone caught up on details that are irrelevant to the jobs I'd be doing.
Re: I don't hire unlucky people
#4This is exactly what we've been thinking about for the last year while we've been building http://skillsapp.com. Exactly.
Love it when lucid, articulate writers take my mess of a brain and put the right words to it.
Re: I don't hire unlucky people
#5Aside from the Sesame Street names, a fairly decent read. Many years ago, I decided to stop writing my résumé to each recipient and just let my List Of Things speak for itself. I don't want to work for someone caught up on details that are irrelevant to the jobs I'd be doing.
"Bertie Wooster" is a character in the Jeeves books. Ernestine Anderson is a jazz & blues singer.
Re: I don't hire unlucky people
#6This is exactly what we've been thinking about for the last year while we've been building http://skillsapp.com . Exactly. Love it when lucid, articulate writers take my mess of a brain and put the right words to it.
How do you measure "passion" and "respect"? And how are the twitter tags determined?
Re: I don't hire unlucky people
#7Aside from the Sesame Street names, a fairly decent read. Many years ago, I decided to stop writing my résumé to each recipient and just let my List Of Things speak for itself. I don't want to work for someone caught up on details that are irrelevant to the jobs I'd be doing.
"Bertie Wooster" is a character in the Jeeves books. Ernestine Anderson is a jazz & blues singer.
“Bert and Ernie” are George Bailey’s best friends in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which is where Jim Henson drew his inspiration for names of the Muppet characters.
Re: I don't hire unlucky people
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Bertie Wooster" is a character in the Jeeves books. Ernestine Anderson is a jazz & blues singer.
“Bert and Ernie” are George Bailey’s best friends in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which is where Jim Henson drew his inspiration for names of the Muppet characters.
And all this must have led our author right to Oscar the Grouch for one more name in the narrative.
Re: I don't hire unlucky people
#9So the most efficient interviewing process for the employer is also the nicest to candidates? What a curious coincidence. Are you sure there was no wishful thinking involved in writing this post?
Re: I don't hire unlucky people
#10This article is superb.
We tried placing ads for ninjas, rock stars, and so on, but I discovered this was the cultural equivalent of advertising for white males who drink dry martinis. Not that white males who drink dry martinis can’t do the job, but there’s no real difference between advertising for a Ninja and throwing half your resumés away because you don’t like unlucky people. Either way, you end up with fewer resumés.”
This is so true, so important, and so many startups (and even bigger companies!) miss this. Job ads provide cues, conscious and subconscious, to the people reading them. Not everyone reading the ad is identical to the person writing it, and a badly written job ad can easily send the message "this company isn't for you" to a large number of skilled potential applicants. This applies not just to categories like gender or race, but even to personality types and personal interests. Unless you really want a company of only extroverts, for example, don't write a job ad that scares off introverts.
In the canonical example, if you constantly ask for "rock stars", you will turn off people to whom that doesn't appeal, including tons of good programmers. But it goes beyond that: don't assume that all your applicants are any particular kind of person with certain interests. A job ad should focus on what the job actually is, and things that are important to the job.
The best programmers often have a lot of choice in where they work, and as many HNers know from experience, if they see a job ad that turns them off in some fashion, they will probably not even bother reading further: they know they have better options, so yours probably isn't worth their time. If the vast majority of skilled programmers skip over your resume, it's no wonder you only receive resumes from unqualified applicants.
In short, when writing a job ad, you need to think from the perspective of people applying. Use your empathy, put yourself in their shoes, rather than just writing what you think looks cool.