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The Boss Doesn’t Want Your Resume

wsj.com

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Re: The Boss Doesn’t Want Your Resume

#21

Post by e12e »

grayfox wrote: post #5

A dude from Compose here, I'm currently helping out with hiring. If you'd like to know more about the process described in the article, we've recently blogged about it: https://www.compose.io/articles/compose-hiring-scaling-to-10... We have a bunch of postings up right now for those of you who are looking to give something like this a try (you may have seen us looking in the latest Who's Hiring): https://compose.io/j…

OT: Why the USA, Canada and UK only - and not EU/EEC as well (or at least other Commonwealth contries, but maybe that's not a (tax/business)thing any more..?) [Ed: Or does UK really mean anyone with the right to work in/through the UK, and not anyone actually in the UK?]

Re: The Boss Doesn’t Want Your Resume

#22

Post by seanmcdirmid »

kylec wrote: post #10
salmonet wrote: post #4

Resumes, interviews, and referrals disproportionately favor the BSers, conversationalists, and the well-connected. No surprise that employers have buyers remorse. For how much emphasis companies put on hiring, I'm surprised there aren't better ways to identify diamonds in the rough.

Diamonds-in-the-rough are also a tremendous value. It's very cheap to hire someone that can't (or doesn't think that they can) get a job elsewhere. It really is surprising that more effort isn't spent trying to identify and hire them.

Mining diamonds is hard work.

People are poor judges of value in other people, and don't want to spend that much time on it. So how would you "know" someone is a diamond-in-the-rough, and not just rough? That would require a lot more knowledge, perhaps a referral in the team of someone who has already identified them as good talent. Or you could just hire all the roughs and fire the ones that don't turn out to be diamonds.

It is like hiring someone with a criminal record. Ya, great value! But wait, what if they go back to their old ways? Biases are optimizations based on experience (or perhaps cultural influences); they are not perfect, but they often have groundings in reality. The best companies are able to work through all the pros and cons rationally, and known when the risks are worth it.

Re: The Boss Doesn’t Want Your Resume

#23

Post by autotune »

cubano wrote: post #19
kylec wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diamonds-in-the-rough are also a tremendous value. It's very cheap to hire someone that can't (or doesn't think that they can) get a job elsewhere. It really is surprising that more effort isn't spent trying to identify and hire them.

So isn't that just really a form of exploitation of someone's low self esteem, background, or career ignorance?

Everyone looking to get their start needs to start somewhere.

Re: The Boss Doesn’t Want Your Resume

#24

Post by grayfox »

e12e wrote: post #21
grayfox wrote: post #5

A dude from Compose here, I'm currently helping out with hiring. If you'd like to know more about the process described in the article, we've recently blogged about it: https://www.compose.io/articles/compose-hiring-scaling-to-10... We have a bunch of postings up right now for those of you who are looking to give something like this a try (you may have seen us looking in the latest Who's Hiring): https://compose.io/j…

OT: Why the USA, Canada and UK only - and not EU/EEC as well (or at least other Commonwealth contries, but maybe that's not a (tax/business)thing any more..?) [Ed: Or does UK really mean anyone with the right to work in/through the UK, and not anyone actually in the UK?]

We were acquired by IBM last year. As we adjust to their HR systems, we have to limit our hiring range.

Each region needs to have a "proxy" manager to take care of the employees within that region. As we had Canadians and folks from London with us at the time of the acquisition, we were set-up respectively.

We hired an excellent engineer out of Germany before we were clear on the processes, and it's added a significant amount of time to getting him into the the swing of things.

To avoid this discomfort, we're narrowing the region.

Hopefully, this is something that will ease in the future - it stings every time we have to turn away someone potentially brilliant from places like Brazil or Israel.

For your edit: The former is correct. Anyone with the right to work in/through the UK. You can work _from_ anywhere you'd like! I prefer at home in my jammies.

Re: The Boss Doesn’t Want Your Resume

#26

Post by bitL »

grayfox wrote: post #5

A dude from Compose here, I'm currently helping out with hiring. If you'd like to know more about the process described in the article, we've recently blogged about it: https://www.compose.io/articles/compose-hiring-scaling-to-10... We have a bunch of postings up right now for those of you who are looking to give something like this a try (you may have seen us looking in the latest Who's Hiring): https://compose.io/j…

So you are telling us that if we had a PhD, multiple awards from previous companies for actual work and not politicking/backstabbing/brownnosing, Coursera/edX certificates relevant to your area of business with almost 100% success rate on their most difficult courses, can program in 50+ languages, you would still ignore our past success and we have to go through your normal hiring process? I am sure this would bring you plenty proven world-class talent... /s

Re: The Boss Doesn’t Want Your Resume

#27

Post by grayfox »

bitL wrote: post #26
grayfox wrote: post #5

A dude from Compose here, I'm currently helping out with hiring. If you'd like to know more about the process described in the article, we've recently blogged about it: https://www.compose.io/articles/compose-hiring-scaling-to-10... We have a bunch of postings up right now for those of you who are looking to give something like this a try (you may have seen us looking in the latest Who's Hiring): https://compose.io/j…

So you are telling us that if we had a PhD, multiple awards from previous companies for actual work and not politicking/backstabbing/brownnosing, Coursera/edX certificates relevant to your area of business with almost 100% success rate on their most difficult courses, can program in 50+ languages, you would still ignore our past success and we have to go through your normal hiring process? I am sure this would bring…

I'm glad you brought up the other side of things.

If you were an applicant of such impressive, world renowned stature the answer would be: yes, (sir), you still need to go through the regular hiring process.

It isn't an arbitrary request, like building a JavaScript calculator. The samples we ask that you complete closely resemble the type of work you'd do in the role.

When hiring engineers for example, we take a piece of our application, take a chunk out, then ask you to complete it.

If you're a major talent, it's maybe 2-3 hours of work.

If you were to circumvent this, or feel you "shouldn't have to do this", what message does that send to the rest of the team?

We're a remote, self-managing, and loosely structured group - would it be wise to suggest that you are to be treated differently than the rest of us?

It sends a poor message and reflects on the (entitled) attitude of the candidate.

Team work makes the dream work.

Re: The Boss Doesn’t Want Your Resume

#28

Post by toomuchtodo »

grayfox wrote: post #27
bitL wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are telling us that if we had a PhD, multiple awards from previous companies for actual work and not politicking/backstabbing/brownnosing, Coursera/edX certificates relevant to your area of business with almost 100% success rate on their most difficult courses, can program in 50+ languages, you would still ignore our past success and we have to go through your normal hiring process? I am sure this would bring…

I'm glad you brought up the other side of things. If you were an applicant of such impressive, world renowned stature the answer would be: yes, (sir), you still need to go through the regular hiring process. It isn't an arbitrary request, like building a JavaScript calculator. The samples we ask that you complete closely resemble the type of work you'd do in the role. When hiring engineers for example, we take a piec…

I think you guys will do great for junior folks (where a resume with little experience would be a hinderance traditionally) or perhaps people who are willing to jump through hoops to work from home, but I don't see it catching on (unfortunately?).

> If you were to circumvent this, or feel you "shouldn't have to do this", what message does that send to the rest of the team?

Does everyone on your team get paid the same? If not, does that not send the same message? Is your HR process willing to let top talent go to a competitor who doesn't require such a test? (All real questions, not rhetorical)

Re: The Boss Doesn’t Want Your Resume

#29

Post by bitL »

grayfox wrote: post #27
bitL wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are telling us that if we had a PhD, multiple awards from previous companies for actual work and not politicking/backstabbing/brownnosing, Coursera/edX certificates relevant to your area of business with almost 100% success rate on their most difficult courses, can program in 50+ languages, you would still ignore our past success and we have to go through your normal hiring process? I am sure this would bring…

I'm glad you brought up the other side of things. If you were an applicant of such impressive, world renowned stature the answer would be: yes, (sir), you still need to go through the regular hiring process. It isn't an arbitrary request, like building a JavaScript calculator. The samples we ask that you complete closely resemble the type of work you'd do in the role. When hiring engineers for example, we take a piec…

Your problem would be that such talents don't have time nor need to complete whatever assignment you give to them. What if they programmed a core of enterprise cloud system handling 100,000s threads and millions of messages/second you might be unknowingly using daily, wrote papers about it you might have read already but it didn't occur to you and you are asking them to write a concurrent ring buffer? They would just say you good bye and won't consider ever joining you unless they are in deep troubles, which is exactly state you would like to avoid.

Major talents are usually involved with dozens of side tech & social activities, charity etc. Why should they spend time in proving their worth to you? You are operating on the premise people are equal in capabilities, but they aren't, some may be way ahead of your group specifically in the area you really need, to make yourself competitive. No exceptions rule is IMO a really bad idea - it's like reverse of affirmative action, i.e. penalizing/ignoring visible greatness.

Frankly, 10 years ago I thought what you are doing was a good idea; now I am no longer sure for the aforementioned reasons. Team work is not groupthink/socialism if you want to be successful.

Re: The Boss Doesn’t Want Your Resume

#30

Post by exstudent2 »

grayfox wrote: post #27
bitL wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are telling us that if we had a PhD, multiple awards from previous companies for actual work and not politicking/backstabbing/brownnosing, Coursera/edX certificates relevant to your area of business with almost 100% success rate on their most difficult courses, can program in 50+ languages, you would still ignore our past success and we have to go through your normal hiring process? I am sure this would bring…

I'm glad you brought up the other side of things. If you were an applicant of such impressive, world renowned stature the answer would be: yes, (sir), you still need to go through the regular hiring process. It isn't an arbitrary request, like building a JavaScript calculator. The samples we ask that you complete closely resemble the type of work you'd do in the role. When hiring engineers for example, we take a piec…

It sounds like you're optimizing for the happiness of your junior talent. It definitely seems like the more junior members of the team should be mature enough to handle senior people being treated with the respect they deserve. After all, someday that will be them.

By ignoring past success you will filter out most senior candidates. Why would they even apply when other companies will recognize their market value more fairly?

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