Hacker News Reader

Comment by ColinWright | Hacker News Reader

It's often not the CV, it's often the covering letter. The CV provides evidence for your claims, but the covering letter is how and where you ask for the position. Without that it's hard to comment.

For those who are interested, I've added a direct link to the CV to make it easier to read:

Link: http://mbassem.com/assets/files/MohamedBassemResume.pdf

Edit: Interesting. I'm trying to help out here and make it easier for people to have a look at the link provided. It reduces friction, and costs nothing for the people who don't care. Yet someone clearly thinks this is the wrong thing to do and has down-voted me. I'd welcome the opportunity to learn: why should adding the link be regarded as the wrong thing to do? Thanks.

View on HN

You are likely downvoted not for the link, but for the actual comment.

The OP appears to be trying to get an internship position in the US while being in Egypt. It is absolutely positively has nothing to do with the cover letter, so your comment is just off by a very wide margin, but it sits at the top because of your massive karma.

    > The OP appears to be trying to get an internship
    > position in the US while being in Egypt.  It is
    > absolutely positively has nothing to do with the
    > cover letter, so your comment is just off by a
    > very wide margin, ...

Are you sure about that? It's been a long time since I had much to do with internships as opposed to job applications, but it always seemed to me that the cover letter was the hook that made me want to check the CV to see if there was evidence supporting the claims made. I don't see why that should have changed at all, but I'd be very interested in learning why you claim that the cover letter is completely irrelevant.

    > ... it sits at the top because of your massive karma.

Actually it now has 18 points. I'd be interested to know for sure what effect a contributor's karma has on their comment ranking. I know it used to, but I was sure I'd seen a comment from the mods saying that the effect had been removed. With no points shown it's now rather harder to be sure, or to do experiments.

> Are you sure about that?

Positive. No US company will bother with visa headaches for an intern regardless of how exciting the cover letter is. Further compounded by the fact that he's from Egypt, which is a 3rd world country with a highly unstable situation. I suspect you were never exposed to all the pleasures of the US visa process, which would explain your rather naive view of the situation.

Internships in European countries are entirely plausible. US visa situation is an exception to the rule among developed countries.

For example, Facebook has London offices, which is their go-to solution for US visa troubles.

Egypt might be "3rd world" in somebody's book, but I've never heard about the visa process being particularly racially biased (at least US visa process).

>I've never heard about the visa process being particularly racially biased (at least US visa process)

I just dont even know where to begin. The only way I can understand this statement is if you never heard anything about the process, period.

Its not about racial bias. Its about background checks, and making sure that the internship is genuine and in one of your uncle's US companies. Plus you should appear confident and genuine, in the in-person interview.

Microsoft bothered with the visa headaches for me when I interned from Australia. It makes sense, too: internships lead to full-time positions.

Are you serious? Why would a U.S. company want to hire an intern that they have to get a visa for? Unless this guy is applying for internships with Facebook in Egypt, there's absolutely no incentive for a U.S. based company to seek to employ foreign nationals for a position that is largely non-skilled.

That would be a reasonable guess, but it seems not to be the case. It got downvoted when it was just the link and nothing else. I added the extra comments to try to flesh it out, and since then have received around 15 up-votes.

Edit: and more down-votes as well. Fascinating to see the drive-by down-votes.

I highly doubt this has to do with cover letters. From Google's Job FAQ: "Cover letters are optional, and applications with them are not preferred over those without. We recommend using a cover letter only to bring up anything that would not be evident from the rest of your application. It can also be an opportunity to let Google know about you as an individual, in addition to why you're a good fit for the organization. We strongly recommend using your resume to represent your candidacy." http://www.google.com/intl/cn/jobs/students/sga/mba/internsh...

From a Google Screener: "As a heavy interviewer and occasional resume screener at Google, I rarely look at the cover letter. Your resume should give me enough context for whether you have the key experience for the role." http://www.quora.com/How-should-a-cover-letter-for-Google-lo...

Right. Based on one of the other comments I've gone to have a look at that. Things have changed, and may be significantly different at places like Google as opposed to my experience. I've only ever been hiring at startups and small companies, and never in the US.

I guess it's also different for an internship as opposed to a job. As someone with 20 years of experience in running companies, when faced with a bare CV I can never tell what someone will be like in a company. I always like to see someone tell me why they add value, and then back up their claims with evidence from their CV, but I guess that doesn't apply here.

All that being said, if all they look at is the CV then a bare recitation might not be the best presentation. It would be interesting to look at how to make a better "CV" for this purpose.

Anyway, thanks for the information - appreciate it.

AFAIK, a number of these companies don't even ask for a cover letter as part of the internship application process.

Interesting, I did not know that. I should look into it, because I'd be very surprised if the application process just asked for a bare CV.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll go and do some quiet digging.

For the companies in this list that I have direct experience with, the cover letter is never read and not even available during hiring decisions.

I don't remember the last time I wrote a cover letter..

I'm the opposite, the last two jobs I've gotten I've written a cover letter, and not included a CV (does that make it just a 'letter'?).

> Yet someone clearly thinks this is the wrong thing to do and has down-voted me. I'd welcome the opportunity to learn: why should adding the link be regarded as the wrong thing to do?

It has nothing to do with the content of your comment. Baseless downvoting is part of the HN culture and it's usually corrected by upvotes in an hour or so.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com