Job Applications and the Entitlement Complex
hicks-wright.net
hicks-wright.net
That line struck me as a bit off base. My father works at a corporation where they were looking at hiring a security engineer. His boss wanted to hire a guy who had leadership qualities, and one candidate was on a basketball team that went to nationals. His boss was excited, and really wanted to hire this guy. The other candidate was fresh out of college, had a security background, skills and passion. The candidate wasn't nearly as well received, but he did end up getting the job.
Would you have hired the basketball player? I'm curious, not flaming. I legitimately want to know why accomplishments in the field are less important then those outside. I mainly want to know because my resume is chock full of things I've done in the field. If I need to change that, I definitely want to know ahead of time.
I for one could potentially list my BSA rank and efforts, but I'm not sure what business value that has.
When someone in my research group went to interview at a national lab, a young professor in my department made a similar point to him. He said they're already impressed with your research - that's why they're flying you out to do go through the interview process in the first place. What they're evaluating now is you - do they want to work with you every day for the next ten years?
Actually, it would be good if every company just listed this sort of "how we hire" on their web site, so that you can steer clear of the ones you find absurd.
Hiring athletes is a lot like hiring programmers. There are certain positive qualities that athletics can promote, as well as certain beneficial skills and worldviews one can acquire. But this doesn't guarantee that the person in question has any of those. Most don't.
Placing people with these qualities, skills, and worldviews in the right positions can be a huge boon for any organization. But first you need to know which positions are well suited for athletes, and you need to know what things to look for.
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> The other group, from the Programming Reddit, was far more hostile.
This is a good encapsulation of the difference between the two sites. If you want a polite place where something is respectable because it is well written, and where agreement is the preferred outcome, this is the site for you.
If you want a place where ideas themselves are challenged rather directly, and where respect is not automatically given because of flowery writing or authority, then for all its faults, Reddit is actually far better.
You can tell which site I prefer to read:) I get sick of the way people here get modded up and lauded for ideas that contain at their core severe and inexcusable logical, scientific, or mathematical problems. What I think should happen is that we should be looking through the skin and presentation, seeing if those ideas are worth anything, and if they're not, helping each other out by saying so clearly.
Also, I think people tend to link their HN profiles more with their real lives. They shed a little more anonymity to gain a little more credibility. On Reddit people are a lot more anonymous, which makes it easier to brutally attack someone because there aren't many repercussions.
In general I am happy that there is almost always a dissenting opinion in the comments on HN, pointing out flaws in the argument that I might have been too complacent to catch.
(Anyway, can anyone point to a company that truly figured out hiring? From what I've seen, it's mostly down to decision makers having good people instincts. Resumes, references, cover letters etc only get you so far. They aren't even that useful as filters, since they often leave out good candidates as well as poor ones.)
Conjecture for discussion: This is true of almost all aspects of running a successful software development group: Hiring, Project management, Architecture, UI Design...
Nobody seems to have "figured it out" to the point where you can write out an objective, repeatable process. It almost always comes down to having people with good "instincts" (i.e. They make good decisions) in positions where (a) they can make decisions, and (b) the team acts on those decisions without obstructing them or screwing them up.
I would argue that that is a sign that it's been figured out. Putting candidates before interviewers with good people skills is an excellent filter. Interviewer training definitely helps (at least it helped me get better at conducting interviews and seeing past the happy face candidates put on), but good instincts are a powerful tool.