what was the position? what are your credentials to fulfill that position? I feel like cover letters, and recommendations are just icing on the cake of core skills and experiences, not the entire cake.
Flunking my Anthropic interview again
81–90 of 374 posts
Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again
#82One great piece of advice an informal mentor gave me long ago is that there is no information in a rejection . That is to say that you cannot draw any conclusions about yourself or your interviewing technique or your skills or anything from the single accept==0 bit that you typically get back. There are so many reasons that a candidate might get rejected that have nothing to do with one's individual performance in th…
This is such an insightful take. As someone who has interviewed many candidates, I wholeheartedly agree. While it's important to reflect on how you can improve, it's also critical to maintain morale and become comfortable with rejection during the job hunt. One of the biggest obstacles I've seen; whether with friends, family, or candidates; is the tendency to internalize rejection as a sense of being inherently 'bad.' Of course, once you internalize this belief, any motivation to study is gone. It can be challenging to help people see that this negative self-talk has become the primary barrier to their success.
Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again
#83If you are this emotionally invested in a job without having done it for some time, this is an accidental or insightful act of compassion from an amorphous over-funded company.
Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the age of social media. This person has hit the front page of HN twice now. That's a commercially valuable skill. At this point, having proved that can do something commercially valuable a couple times now, I think they should run with it. Start a YouTube channel. Keep racking up views. Then, eventually, do partnerships and sponsorships, in addition to collecting AdSense money. If you like to write or perfor…
Influence may be intentionally avoided by managers. Applicant should try the marketing team.
The job they were applying for was DevRel, literally one of the goals of many DevRel roles is getting traction on places like HN
Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again
#85Hey, I feel you on rejection - it stings. Just remember that, like any company, that place is just a collection of humans making imperfect decisions with limited information. Trust me. Your worth isn't defined by one hiring decision.
Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again
#86One great piece of advice an informal mentor gave me long ago is that there is no information in a rejection . That is to say that you cannot draw any conclusions about yourself or your interviewing technique or your skills or anything from the single accept==0 bit that you typically get back. There are so many reasons that a candidate might get rejected that have nothing to do with one's individual performance in th…
Agreed. I've been rejected from roles I've been genuinely excited about and felt totally defeated. This last application run I made a concerted effort to protect myself from feeling bad and it definitely helped. Some people can be excellent candidates but ultimately the wrong fit for the role or an equally better or exceptional candidate is also in the pipeline.
Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again
#87> I can't turn my weird off
Why not?
If you have conscious insight into what behaviour is or isn't "weird" in a specific situation or environment, you absolutely can choose to turn it off, or at least damp it down. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't, and there's no judgement. But if you can identify it, you can choose.
Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m a little confused, because first you challenge me, but then come to the exact conclusion that resumes are largely unreadable. I’ll look for something they claim to have done to dig deep on, see if it’s BS or not, but I’m not reading every X by Y% with my jaw on the floor. FWIW I’m generally on the back side of the process, where someone at the front (is supposed to have) vetted the person already.
> where someone at the front (is supposed to have) vetted the person already. I think that's a mistake, personally. Each interviewer needs to make an independent decision and relying on the judgement of a screener early in the process is giving that person disproportionate weight towards hiring for your team. Usually that resume screener is someone in HR. Would you trust them to decide who your team hires? Your posts…
If it’s truly only HR and then direct to full interview panel then I agree with you, but I’ve never worked somewhere where a technical person wasn’t involved in screening. Yes recruiters will winnow the inbound, but usually there a technical phone screen, hiring manager screen, or both.
Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again
#89Having been from the other side of the table. You did not flunk anything again.
A job process is not an exam where if you do well you succeed.
Your "performance" plays a small role in whether you are accepted (maybe less than 30%). The rest is:
- The pipeline: that is who are your competitors, is there someone late in the process, is there someone a manager worked with / knows
- Your CV: obviously at the point of the interview, you can't change your history
- The position fit: basically who they're looking for. They might have a profile in mind (let's say someone extrovert to do lots of talks, or someone to devrel to enterprise) where you simply don't fit.
- The biases: And there is looot of these. For instance, some would open your blog and say it's unprofessional because of the UI. Not saying that is the case, it's simply their biases.
So, my advice, you reached hn front page twice in a couple of months. Most people, me included, never did. You clearly have something. Find work with people that see that.
Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again
#90I also got rejected by Anthropic, and now I’m working at an amazing startup instead. Anthropic’s hiring process is dumb, you shouldn’t take it personally.