Comment by sadlion | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sadlion | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I recently had an on-site interview at a big SV tech company. I had 4 interviews and 3 of them flat out told me they haven't read my resume. I didn't do as well on the whiteboard hazing but I'm confident that I could have solved them if I had more than 30 minutes to come up with an efficient solution.

What disappointed me was, 3 of the interviewers had no idea about my background and weren't able to extract my strengths. Even though I am a new grad, I have interned for 2 years as an app dev and learned a great deal about design, code quality, testing and etc...

I have read Effective Java, Clean Code, and Head First Design Patterns. I'm reading Java 8 in Action now. I have not memorized them page-to-page and still need more experience to master them, but at least I know some of resources I can go to for more answers. I have participated in code reviews and enjoy them. I can implement LLRBT and many of the algorithms you can expect a new grad to know but I have not invested my time on hacker rank and uva.

I don't know what SV or big tech companies are looking for. I constantly hear interviewers say they want good engineers but fail to capture the essence of a potential good engineer well. What benefit is there in hazing anyone with problems many engineers don't deal with without the tools they use every day, and with an absurd time constraint. Kosaraju didn't come up with SCC in 30 minutes and he had a PHD. Sure I can spend hours studying for whiteboard questions but to what benefit. I am sure anyone of you can come up with a whiteboard problem you can't solve in 30 minutes, but what does that say about you.

If you want to get a job as an app developer, the easiest way is to build the kind of app you'd like to work on and show it to people. If an interviewer sees that you can deliver exactly what they need, you're an instant hire.

Don't complain that interviewers haven't read your resume; it is your job to tell the interviewer about the relevant parts of your resume and why they matter for the job you are applying to.

Don't complain that interviewers haven't read your resume

I disagree. If you're going to interview me for an hour, the least you can do for both of us is to take 10 or 15 minutes ahead of time to familiarize yourself with my background.

it is your job to tell the interviewer about the relevant parts of your resume

Again, I disagree. A resume is only a very cursory overview. You can use it as a starting point to probe me about it, to at least determine if I've actually done what it says or if I'm just a buzzword bullshit artist.

IMO it's very shortsighted for someone to ignore a resume before conducting an interview.

I agree that it is inpolite to not read a resume or a cover letter. But as a candidate, you can't change the fact that your interviewer is not well prepared. The job will go to the candidate that makes the best of the situation.

The bigger point I'm trying to get at is the following: do not expect the interviewer to discover how brilliant you are on their own. Being smart, hard working, is not enough -- you also need to tell people about it.

The first interviewer told me they haven't read my resume at the beginning of my interview. I tried to highlight my strengths. The other 2 tho told me during the conclusion of the interview, when I asked them what skills they'd want to me focus on if I was to start on their team or any advice for a budding engineer. They both started with something along the lines, I don't know your background; didn't get the chance to read your resume. It was too late to go over my resume as I was being escorted to my next event.

I will be more proactive on my next interviews. I did have my github on my resume; I will add more projects to it and get involved in OSS.

Stop thinking of your career like a textbook. You don't need to memorize all that bullshit. Just provide value to the world and the rest will come naturally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com