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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

#41

Post by ahartmetz »

robbywashere_ wrote: post #7
gavinhoward wrote: post #6

Unlike another top poster, this doesn't ring true for me. I have a blog with 170-ish posts. About half are technical. Three or four have gone viral on HN. The other half are personal, but I live in a place where people generally share the same values, so those other posts shouldn't be a problem. I've got a personal project. It's used in production and ships as part of the base install with FreeBSD and Mac OSX. It dem…

At what point in the job finding/interviewing process are you having trouble with? If you don’t mind me asking?

It could be when they see that https://git.gavinhoward.com/gavin/petty-tyrant-businesses

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

#42

Post by ZaoLahma »

nitwit005 wrote: post #3

The act of taking a serious look at people's github repos, blogs, or whatever else, appears fairly unusual. I've asked.

Anecdotal, but I've changed jobs 3 times in the last 6 years (oof) and in two of the interview processes they dug deep enough into my github (linked from the CV) to be able to ask tricky questions and have discussions.

Heck, as part of the most recent interview process I was asked to provide a code walkthrough of a part of a personal project of mine for two developers from the company I was interviewing for. It was fun actually.

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

#43

Post by LanceH »

exitb wrote: post #22

As a person involved in hiring in my company, one of my goals is to remove biases for things that are not really related to the thing I'm evaluating, which is the ability to do a given job. There are valid reasons not to have an interest in publishing your coding or writing work, there are lots of great developers that don't do that, so I don't feel like this should make a difference.

There are valid reasons not to post code or blog. True for some. Posted code or a blog may demonstrate knowledge and capability in the subject area for the potential hire. Also true for some.

Demonstrating professional skills shouldn't be discounted just because someone else doesn't.

It absolutely should make a difference if it's relevant even other people have reasons for not doing the same.

Hiring is selecting the right person and not selecting the wrong person. It is not about sorting all people 100% correctly into hire/no-hire groups.

A blog with code can tell a lot about a person. Do they understand the material? Can they write coherently about it? Can they target an appropriate level of audience with that? Maybe these can't be answered just by reading the blog, but it gives a lot to discuss in the interview process.

Some people want to have the exact same interview process between all people. People are different, though. Locking the interview down to a single process doesn't allow for the variety of skills out there to shine individually. If that avenue is through a portfolio or blog, it's fair game.

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

#44

Post by onetimeuse92304 »

People don't realise how easy it is to get to top 1% in most fields, if you are sufficiently intelligent (say 110-120). Most intelligent people don't get there because they are either not willing to do the work or don't know how honest work looks like or they put artificial barriers before themselves.

And even if you are less intelligent you still can get there, you will just have to put in more work.

I think of those, the ability to put in honest work is the biggest limitation of most people. I like to compare honest work to Allies fighting World War II -- doing whatever is necessary to win, wherever it leads you. No plan is stupid if it works, there is nothing shameful about trying and failing. There will be setbacks because life is not fair and on short time scales the rewards are never assured. But what makes winners different from losers is what they do in response. If they can persevere, through their setbacks, experience, hard work, the focus they put in they will gain the knowledge that lets them win on the long time scale. You lose only if you lose faith in yourself and quit.

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

#45

Post by skybrian »

gavinhoward wrote: post #10
robbywashere_ wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what point in the job finding/interviewing process are you having trouble with? If you don’t mind me asking?

It can be any part. Usually, the problem is that companies find out that I'm not good as a cog in a machine. That can happen at any time, but once they do, they're not interested.

Looking at your blog, I think you're such a specialist that it's going to be hard to find a good fit. (For example, only being willing to write code in C.) Most people are more flexible.

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

#46

Post by intellectronica »

testtestabcdef wrote: post #37
nitwit005 wrote: post #3

The act of taking a serious look at people's github repos, blogs, or whatever else, appears fairly unusual. I've asked.

I always linked my gitlab profile in all my applications. If I had any code on it which might be relevant to the position I also mentioned it in my cover letter. Barely anyone ever mentioned my gitlab projects or ask things about it. Just this one guy, he was confused that my master thesis was stating I handed it in in 2021 and asked why i didn't have a job yet. Thanks to this man I found out there is a typo on the c…

You need to distinguish between filtering and interviewing.

Most interviewers will not discuss your public work because they want to be unbiased and have the same discussion with multiple candidates without any other factors other than your performance in the interview itself influencing their assessment. They are doing the right thing.

Where a portfolio can help you is in getting you from application to being invited to interview, which can be a challenge when there are many applications for a role.

In some cases it might also influence a hiring manager's or hiring committee's decision as a tie-breaker between you and another candidate who did just as well as you did in interview, but I believe that's less common.

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

#47

Post by intellectronica »

onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #44

People don't realise how easy it is to get to top 1% in most fields, if you are sufficiently intelligent (say 110-120). Most intelligent people don't get there because they are either not willing to do the work or don't know how honest work looks like or they put artificial barriers before themselves. And even if you are less intelligent you still can get there, you will just have to put in more work. I think of thos…

True, and you don't even need to get to the top 1%. For many jobs, being in the top 20% for the relevant reference group (global, local, specialised, general) will make you the best candidate with a wide margin.

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

#48

Post by jaimex2 »

000ooo000 wrote: post #5

IME in Aus, it's mostly recruiters, the kind who ask if I have experience with 'Jasons', who do the initial screening. I'm not sure I'd have much more luck getting past them with a substantial online presence behind me. On the other hand, I was recently referred by a friend for a role with the state gov. The HR person said my lack of experience with X hurt my chances. I passed this on to my friend and said thanks any…

Job screenings go both ways. If you're getting hired drones doing the hiring they're looking for more drones to join their stale hive.

It works out well.

If they actually gave enough of a crap to look deeper and question you on it you're onto a winner.

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

#49

Post by CapricornNoble »

BossingAround wrote: post #12
WinLychee wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IME, most companies generally don't care about Github or your blog, but _some_ companies that are heavily involved in on FOSS or OSS, do care and hire contributors.

Even for companies like Red Hat, Canonical, SUSE, Mongo, ..., my experience is that a good blog or a good Github doesn't account to anything more than a few pleasant sentences at the beginning of the interview. Of course, it might happen that they'd hire contributors, as you say. I'd say this is incredibly rare (but does happen). Usually, from my experience, this happens when the company wants to essentially "acquire…

>a good blog or a good Github doesn't account to anything more than a few pleasant sentences at the beginning of the interview

But it may contribute to you getting an interview in the first place, no?

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

#50

Post by vidarh »

WinLychee wrote: post #9
gavinhoward wrote: post #6

Unlike another top poster, this doesn't ring true for me. I have a blog with 170-ish posts. About half are technical. Three or four have gone viral on HN. The other half are personal, but I live in a place where people generally share the same values, so those other posts shouldn't be a problem. I've got a personal project. It's used in production and ships as part of the base install with FreeBSD and Mac OSX. It dem…

IME, most companies generally don't care about Github or your blog, but _some_ companies that are heavily involved in on FOSS or OSS, do care and hire contributors.

They may not care about it much, but for me it's at least been helpful in having prospective employers waive coding tests on several occasions. How they interact with it (e.g. whether they ask me any questions that suggests they've at least taken a look) also acts as a strong signal to me about whether or not it's somewhere I'm likely to be happy. So it may be worth putting it on your CV anyway.
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