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Comment by warrenm | Hacker News Reader

I don't care if you even have "side projects"

I care that you care about your work - doing your best, taking constructive criticism (and knowing how to ignore non-constructive criticism), improving, etc

If you can show that to me with your "side projects" - cool

If you don't have any "side projects" - also: cool

You don't have to spend your entire professional and personal life in front of a screen to "stand out from the rest"

You have to be able to coherently communicate and tell me how you currently add value to your present position, or how you expect to add value to a position with my company

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If I meet a candidate and they haven't used back channels to find out what challenges my team is facing, it's an auto-reject for me. You should at least care enough to do some sleuthing behind the scenes.

I'm interested why you expect that. I suppose you expect that of anyone and not just juniors? I suspect that you don't work at $BIG_CO and rather something more startup-y?

If a company expects me to spend my free time doing investigative social engineering work to cut through layers of indirection from a job advert to the interviewer, it's an auto-reject for me. The company should at least care enough about hiring someone to understand that they're selling their team and company "culture" (for lack of a better word) to me as much as I am selling my labour to them.

I guess I would totally not have been hired by you :)

So a candidate has to know someone who's already in the company? Which means they probably went to the same school/uni. Rough for anyone outside your bubble.

Or they cold-call people at the company, hoping to get the goss. Staff knowing about the candidacy should not respond. Others would hopefully be suspicious - how can you trust staff who tell company problems to any old "candidate"?

how many people have you interviewed that met this requirement?

And for folks who don't have the connections to "back channel" the issues you have?

Guess you just outright reject 98% of all possible applicants?

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