It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate
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Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate
#2I don't understand why "public creativity" would be something you'd screen for in an engineering role.
Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate
#3Really? I have a blog (not very active) and two android apps (not popular). I do think the apps help, but I don't think that really makes me stand out. Most places value creativity second to output.
Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate
#4I don't understand why "public creativity" would be something you'd screen for in an engineering role.
I'm not sure. There does seem to be a pretty significant increase in selection criteria for a lot of things, from hiring to investing, that biases heavily toward rewarding "influencer" and/or "celebrity" traits.
Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate
#5I don't understand why "public creativity" would be something you'd screen for in an engineering role.
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.
Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate
#6Interviewee: Check me out! I have 239 twitter followers!
Interviewer: Cool. Can you setup mysql replication? What does a read replica mean?
Interviewee: Neat! Check out my github on a emoji generator!
Interviewer: ....
Interviewer: [proceeds to slack least favorite teammate to follow up interview]
Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate
#7I don't understand why "public creativity" would be something you'd screen for in an engineering role.
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?
Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate
#8I don't understand why "public creativity" would be something you'd screen for in an engineering role.
It's not something you screen for - as I said in the article, "you don’t want to miss out on a great engineer just because they spent all of their energy making great products for prior employers rather than blogging, speaking and coding in public"
But if someone has it, you're likely to take it into account. So as a candidate it's useful.
Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate
#9Earlier 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?
Because it gives you a more rounded sense of the individual. Other passions. Other ideas. Areas they’ve worked in unrelated to your problem.
Job/coding interviews are very difficult to do well, and many people such as myself tend to perform poorly due to the stress of the interview (so much that I’d rather stay in a mediocre position than go through the agony of interviewing — I hate it with every fiber of by being, and it correlates 0% to my in-job performance).
It’s just more data, which is especially useful if you’re on the fence with someone. You can also see creativity which isn’t something you can test well for in an interview — especially technical interviews.
Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate
#10Really? I have a blog (not very active) and two android apps (not popular). I do think the apps help, but I don't think that really makes me stand out. Most places value creativity second to output.
Any time I've been screening candidates I have taken this kind of thing into account.
If I was hiring an Android developer the fact that you have two Android apps would absolutely play into my decision process - it would increase the chance that you'd get to an interview, and I'd very likely ask about them during that interview.