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It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

simonwillison.net

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Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#351

Post by nsxwolf »

JadeNB wrote: post #315
kyleyeats wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take on the problem: You're projecting yourself onto other people who are looking at candidates. This stuff matters to you but not to most people hiring. The corporate apparatus tends to view these things as a challenge to The Way We Do Things Here, so a blog post or side project might even be a red flag. This strategy is a gigantic waste of time. It shouldn't be but it is.

> The corporate apparatus tends to view these things as a challenge to The Way We Do Things Here, so a blog post or side project might even be a red flag. I know I'm coming at this from the idealistic position of someone who's lucky enough to have a job, but isn't it kind of a good thing if you find out early that you're applying to a company where doing things is a red flag?

You'll never receive feedback on why you were rejected either way, so there's no way to prove or disprove this strategy, or any other.

We hem and haw and tweak and fret about every little thing in this process, but ultimately all roads lead to "Thank you for your interest in SomeCorp. Unfortunately, we have decided not to proceed with your candidacy at this time, but we appreciate the time and effort you dedicated to the application process. We will keep you in mind for future openings and we encourage you to keep current on new opportunities on our careers site."

Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#352

Post by jimmychoozyx »

joezydeco wrote: post #210

Are you an embedded developer? Bring a show-and-tell to your next interview. Bring an example of something you've worked on. Doesn't have to be in a finished case. In fact, a raw PCB can be more effective. Make sure 1) the product has already been released to the public and 2) the hardware isn't stolen. Rig up a small power supply and find a way to light it up. Being able to drop that in front of an interviewer and e…

For a Digital version of the binder, I recommend https://docusaurus.io/ + its MermaidJS theme for quick, codeable diagrams

Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#353

Post by flangola7 »

gavinhoward wrote: post #196
flangola7 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets worse. His website has subscribe links to Gab and Parler accounts, and a rant whining about lobste.rs banning him for being transphobic that is completely un-introspective. https://gavinhoward.com/2022/07/lobste.rs-will-become-an-ech... I don't care how good of a C whiz this person is, if I see that crap associated with an applicant their application is going straight to the incinerator. Even if I had no prob…

Un-introspective, huh? People really don't read my blog posts very well.

If people can't read your posts then you need to write them more clearly. You're the author of them. Don't shift that personal responsibility onto the readers.

You're the one that isn't getting hired. Whether you recognize your error or not, the people looking to hire do. There's content in your posts that if they were in a company slack message would be a major liability. Most companies don't believe in breaking the law.

Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#354

Post by housecarpenter »

One issue with trying to stand out is that you might stand out in a bad way, rather than a good way. I have a blog, and a Github profile, but I'm not sure if I want employers looking at them, since a lot of my writing is poor, and a lot of my code is bad. There's good stuff there as well, I think, but my model of employers is that they are more concerned about false positives than false negatives, they tend to see "red flags" as nullifying any positive traits, and so, when they're examining my public portfolio, the parts that are bad are going to stick out and become salient in their mind, moreso than the parts that are good.

I don't worry about this too much though because in my experience, no employer has ever looked at these things (even though I have usually made some mention of them on my CV). If they have they've never mentioned it at interview.

Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#355

Post by _mh56 »

simonw wrote: post #236
_mh56 wrote: post #155

I have 50+ public projects on Github. Some of them are live, have screenshots, proper documentation and such. Some of them gets stars or people reach out for support on these projects. Some of them I've advertised on Reddit etc and reached 100K+ views and a lot of upvotes in their respective Communities. I also have a substack which has reached top of HackerNews once. All this has netted me exactly ZERO opportunities…

I never said that having this stuff would get you the job offers. You still have to apply for the opportunities that are a good fit for you. At least in the companies I've worked for in the UK and the US it should help you make it past the first filter - the "I have a stack of candidates, which of these are worth setting up an initial phone interview with" phase.

Welp, I have a semi decent profile on Github. Recently I applied for around 100 small startups based in EU/UK, Got a total of 1 callback. In short, I followed all the steps mentioned but still fell flat. Really curious what are your thoughts on this.

Here's my Resume for reference: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u9F8_2m2W1mcKIoFs3hwUEn5Kgf...

Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#356

Post by simonw »

rconti wrote: post #311
simonw wrote: post #255

I'm always surprised at how much push-back this one gets. The point I was trying to make here is that you DON'T need to be someone who spends every free moment blogging, writing open source code and so on. Stick up a few posts somewhere and leave them there, as a tiny piece of extra evidence that you're someone who knows how to do things. Maybe part of the problem is that I'm grossly under-estimating the amount of wo…

I don't think there's anything wrong with your suggestions; I think they absolutely will be minimal effort for a huge payoff for a job seeker. Here are the struggles I've had with this over my career: * Public vs private persona. I'm a pretty open person and happy to share with people I know or where it feels "safe" (eg, Facebook where I more explicitly control the audience) but I'm deeply uncomfortable with publicly…

"Or, worse, you're demonstrating something "everybody knows" and you look like a naive fool."

That's one of the reasons I'm so keen on the TIL format - it gives you permission to write about tiny little things (things you just learned) without feeling like you need to be original or explain something groundbreaking and new.

I just published a tiny one about figuring out typing.Protocol in Python for example: https://til.simonwillison.net/python/protocols

I wrote more about that here: https://simonwillison.net/2022/Nov/6/what-to-blog-about/

Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#357

Post by flangola7 »

vohov wrote: post #213
flangola7 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets worse. His website has subscribe links to Gab and Parler accounts, and a rant whining about lobste.rs banning him for being transphobic that is completely un-introspective. https://gavinhoward.com/2022/07/lobste.rs-will-become-an-ech... I don't care how good of a C whiz this person is, if I see that crap associated with an applicant their application is going straight to the incinerator. Even if I had no prob…

From reading through that blog post, he's not wrong is he? The moderation of lobste.rs is nowhere near as even-handed as HN, as his example (and many others) demonstrates.

He is wrong, transphobia has no place anywhere. Trying to pass it under the thin guise of "unfair moderation" is both cowardly and thinly veiled. It certainly has no place in the workplace. Would he try to deny the identify of our trans senior developer? Would he say discriminatory things about our trans in house counsel? He has already shown from this blog he has transphobic beliefs and no problem saying discriminatory statements.

Beyond being an ethically bad and bigoted person, this guy would bring state and federal liability to the company from the first day on the job. I don't care if he disagrees, this isn't a matter up for discussion, I will not break the law for you.

Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#358

Post by nsxwolf »

camhenlin wrote: post #237
_mh56 wrote: post #155

I have 50+ public projects on Github. Some of them are live, have screenshots, proper documentation and such. Some of them gets stars or people reach out for support on these projects. Some of them I've advertised on Reddit etc and reached 100K+ views and a lot of upvotes in their respective Communities. I also have a substack which has reached top of HackerNews once. All this has netted me exactly ZERO opportunities…

I've held various roles over the years and personally believe that public contributions and innovative open source projects will often impress potential employers. Despite not coding much professionally anymore, I engage in fun personal open-source coding to maintain my skills. This strategy even played a part in securing my latest, predominantly non-coding role. After reading your post, I reviewed your GitHub profil…

So, it sounds like having a Github could be a net negative. I don't treat personal projects like I treat production code at work. I experiment, don't write a lot of unit tests, use bad practices because they're easier, and I get bored and abandon things because after all, it's not like I'm being paid for any of this.

If that's going to be seen as a red flag, then I'm not going to share any of that.

Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#359

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

I would argue that being public is one of the ways you may be unintentionally biasing your hiring set against visible minorities. Most minority folks I know tend to avoid being public figures because they will become targets of bigotry. I’ve seen some fairly innocuous stuff get the most vile shit in comments/inboxes. I would hesitate to index for public profile knowing that being a public minority is riskier.

Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#360

Post by pcthrowaway »

gavinhoward wrote: post #294
pcthrowaway wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get a job. You've made it clear that you know what you need to do to get a job (be more flexible with the language you'll work in, remove all non-technical opinions from your blog, and for the love of god stop carrying a fucking gun with you everywhere) If you don't want to do the things that would qualify you for the available jobs, that's not because your technical posts wculdn't make you stand out, positiv…

I'm already infamous for my personal opinions in the tech world. Will removing he personal posts and putting them on a separate blog really work? (I do already have a domain.) I'm not so sure it would work. By the time I thought about it, I had already gone viral on HN and the personal attacks had started.

Yes, absolutely, it will work fine. People on the Internet don't have that long of a memory and many people will not have seen your articles on HN. No one is going to look your site up on the wayback machine.

You can also ask dang to delete some of your posts on HN if it helps disassociate your name from discussions like these (though I doubt most people would think to look you up on HN based on a name)

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