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Custom resume from someone who wanted to work at Airbnb (2015)

nina4airbnb.com

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Re: Custom resume from someone who wanted to work at Airbnb (2015)

#91

Post by samstave »

dragonwriter wrote: post #67
tanker wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like an instance of Job's "A players hire A players, B players hire C players." [1] Results will vary by who is hiring. [1] http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...

> This seems like an instance of Job's "A players hire A players, B players hire C players." Tangentially, I've always wondered, in that model, how B players ever get hired.

Some times A players can fall to B or C due to life circumstance.

Sometimes whole teams are formed with B and C players because company cannot pay A wages/benefits, and it just stays in B or C arena.

I always strive to have people better than me on my team, and support them and keep them happy.

Re: Custom resume from someone who wanted to work at Airbnb (2015)

#93

Post by samstave »

startupfounder wrote: post #25

1. This has been submitted before, 302 days ago in fact: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nina4airbnb.com 2. This is actually a case study in how to market yourself: https://web.archive.org/web/20150714043548/http://media.wix.... 3. From the case study: These are the numbers: • 445,000+ Visits to Nina4Airbnb • Hundreds of thousands of Tweets and millions of impressions • 30,000+ New visitors to my personal blog…

Ah! Thanks I knew I had seen this tactic before, but I thought this is a new attempt.

Regardless it's still a well done effort.

Re: Custom resume from someone who wanted to work at Airbnb (2015)

#94

Post by samstave »

true_religion wrote: post #59
jrjarrett wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What in hell does that even MEAN? "contextualize an experience?"

It means placing an experience in context, and being able to relate it to other contexts. For example, if you know someone who works with PHP then contextualizing their experience could follow these steps: understand that PHP is a programming language, look at their code and see it is well architected, decide to hire them even despite inexperience in Ruby because they have the core skills. Being unable to contextuali…

True, that interviewer should either not be interviewing or perhaps not even be working in this industry then...

Re: Custom resume from someone who wanted to work at Airbnb (2015)

#95

Post by dikdik »

vonklaus wrote: post #2

This is awesome and a great way to get hired. Finding a company(or several) you really want to work at and targeting them specifically with a tailor made strategy is probably better than a shotgun approach. Best of luck to Nina.

I thought this too. But I am in the middle of my job search (applied for several on the ASK HN thread) and the calls I have received back are for jobs I did not write a cover letter or at most a paragraph that I sent with my resume.

The two companies where I spent almost a week each writing a cover letter and editing it until I thought it was perfect, have not even bothered to send me a "not interested." Obviously anecdotal, but not sure if I will continue to put in that effort as it does not seem to make a difference for me.

Re: Custom resume from someone who wanted to work at Airbnb (2015)

#96

Post by CaptSpify »

poof131 wrote: post #46
alexashka wrote: post #39

The bigger story here is that given that she's clearly way above average at what she does - she couldn't find a job for a year and did this as a last resort - an act of desperation. Which also did not work out - she ended up with Elance. If we measure success by job vs no job, then yes, otherwise... eh... People 'say' they want creativity, passion, etc - but in reality, most people who work in successful companies di…

While what you say can often be true, it is a sign of weak leadership. Strong leaders promote the best people and thereby lift themselves and the whole team. Bad leaders see strong subordinates as threats to their power and suffocate the team. Not saying there aren’t a LOT of bad leaders out there, but what you describe isn’t a law everywhere. The bigger point I think is your first sentence. She’s way above average a…

I constantly hear "We can't find any good techs". After interviews, I ask how it went, and I constantly hear "He was great, but he wanted too much money!"

So I whistle and get back to work. I've tried bringing it up before, but it just seems to fall on deaf ears.

Re: Custom resume from someone who wanted to work at Airbnb (2015)

#97

Post by wyager »

lastsilverback wrote: post #88
wyager wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>most people who work in successful companies didn't get there based on merit but largely, just dumb luck Do you have evidence for this, or are you just speculating? My experience (based on my employment history and the employment history of those close to me) is that ability to get hired correlates very closely with merit (including technical skill, amicability, etc.)

Do you have any evidence, or you're just speculating on your own experience? Most people would, of course, never admit they got hired based on luck instead of merit.

My point is clearly that neither I nor the person I responded to have presented hard evidence re. ability to get jobs versus merit.

However, I'm more inclined to believe the entailments of my own experience than the informal inferences of some stranger. I encourage everyone else to do the same.

I might argue that I even have "data" in the form of a reasonably large group of professional acquaintances. "Luck" is nothing but statistical noise, and a large number of people and a large number of job applications helps damp down the noise. There is a very obvious trend in the form of more meritorious people performing better when applying for jobs.

Re: Custom resume from someone who wanted to work at Airbnb (2015)

#98

Post by pinewurst »

alexashka wrote: post #63
poof131 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While what you say can often be true, it is a sign of weak leadership. Strong leaders promote the best people and thereby lift themselves and the whole team. Bad leaders see strong subordinates as threats to their power and suffocate the team. Not saying there aren’t a LOT of bad leaders out there, but what you describe isn’t a law everywhere. The bigger point I think is your first sentence. She’s way above average a…

It's how you define 'qualified'. Here's from her blog: "Professionals i admire were calling my work impressive, but the person interviewing me was saying he couldn’t contextualize my experience because i “hadn’t worked at facebook or google or studied at stanford”." Here's another: "despite my 10 years of marketing and social media experience and despite the reach of my latest campaign, i was told i wouldn’t be that…

"Professionals i admire were calling my work impressive, but the person interviewing me was saying he couldn’t contextualize my experience because i “hadn’t worked at facebook or google or studied at stanford”."

This was explicitly from some doofus at Airbnb. One can at least hope that outside the Unicorn Ranch (and the FaceGoog) that people are more reasonable.

Re: Custom resume from someone who wanted to work at Airbnb (2015)

#99

Post by pinewurst »

dikdik wrote: post #95
vonklaus wrote: post #2

This is awesome and a great way to get hired. Finding a company(or several) you really want to work at and targeting them specifically with a tailor made strategy is probably better than a shotgun approach. Best of luck to Nina.

I thought this too. But I am in the middle of my job search (applied for several on the ASK HN thread) and the calls I have received back are for jobs I did not write a cover letter or at most a paragraph that I sent with my resume. The two companies where I spent almost a week each writing a cover letter and editing it until I thought it was perfect, have not even bothered to send me a "not interested." Obviously an…

I'm in the midst of the same process and have observed exactly the same.

Re: Custom resume from someone who wanted to work at Airbnb (2015)

#100

Post by MollyR »

CaptSpify wrote: post #96
poof131 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While what you say can often be true, it is a sign of weak leadership. Strong leaders promote the best people and thereby lift themselves and the whole team. Bad leaders see strong subordinates as threats to their power and suffocate the team. Not saying there aren’t a LOT of bad leaders out there, but what you describe isn’t a law everywhere. The bigger point I think is your first sentence. She’s way above average a…

I constantly hear "We can't find any good techs". After interviews, I ask how it went, and I constantly hear "He was great, but he wanted too much money!" So I whistle and get back to work. I've tried bringing it up before, but it just seems to fall on deaf ears.

Several of the companies I've worked at had this exact issue. So we'd hire a few people fresh out of college train to them to an acceptable standard, then watch them find another higher paying job. Leadership refused to pay good developers, their market worth. It might be important to note the CEO from the uk, where I hear developers are paid less than America.
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