I have been hired for more than 10 years, and I have this simple rule

https://twitter.com/rakyll/status/1114643660912517120

82 57 7 years ago

rubinelli• 7 years ago

What's the context I'm missing, here?

The post that she quotes is the original one, and if you click through to it, you can see that it wasn't particularly well received.

cowsandmilk• 7 years ago

What I particularly don't like from the original piece is "It shows resourcefulness, too, because the candidate often has to hunt down an email address the interviewer never gave them."

I write thank you e-mails to people who give me their business card during the interview. I'm sure as hell not hunting down your e-mail just to send you one. If you expect me to, you're not respecting my time as a candidate.

AlexTWithBeard• 7 years ago

The twit is a response to

Hey, I wrote something! … I’ve been hiring people for 10 years, and I still swear by a simple rule: If someone doesn’t send a thank you email, don’t hire them.

arkades• 7 years ago

Apparently a follow-up to an identical article written years past, that was also not well-received.

mcv2• 7 years ago

Even if they'd have to hunt down that email address themselves, according to the article she links to.

A thank you email to someone you're already in an email conversation with is not at all unreasonable, but expecting people to hunt down your email address just to send you a thank you, is downright weird.

whitakerch• 7 years ago

Eh, I see "Thank You" emails as annoying personally and think others feel the same way but apparently not haha.

jawilson2• 7 years ago

The real context is that it is still nearly impossible to follow conversations on Twitter.

jeanlucas• 7 years ago

Really?

baddox3• 7 years ago

I’m a frequent Twitter user, although I only use a third-party client but I’m not sure what’s difficult to follow here. The linked tweet is commenting on (parodying) the original tweet, the text of which is in the small box immediately below the text of the linked tweet. There’s no thread or “conversation” happening.

subjectsigma2• 7 years ago

Thanking someone for their time is free and takes only a minute. If I don't really want the job I won't be bothered, and if I do I will try everything I can to make myself stand out throughout the interview process, including sending a short email. Recruiters are not stupid, they know this. TIL this behavior is: classist, archaic, possibly sexist, possibly racist, and definitely "problematic". Who knew?

acjohnson557• 7 years ago

It seems like you're flipping it around. I don't see anything wrong with doing this as a candidate. What strikes me as biased is making it a secret handshake, from a hiring perspective, that rules out people who don't think to do it.

subjectsigma2• 7 years ago

I disagree. If qualified candidates do something, hiring managers will naturally look for those things in all their candidate, so it's a two way street.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect your problem is actually with the automatic dismissal part - and I agree, there are probably many cases where it would be inappropriate (or at the very least, stupid) to not consider someone for not sending a follow up. We can argue specifics all day, but in general I don't think it's unreasonable for hiring managers to expect that kind of communication.

acjohnson557• 7 years ago

I'm very much against hidden criteria used to filter people. It's a lazy, bias-driven way to convince yourself you're selecting the best people. The author of the original tweet (who this person is replying to) is trying to select for some sort of work characteristic she thinks correlates with success. It would be much better to identify that characteristic and focus part of the interview on trying to evaluate the candidate against it.

I haven't been hiring people for more than 10 years, but I swear by the simple process of being transparent about what I'm looking for in a new hire. The hard part is the reflection on exactly what that is.

I wrote about this several years ago: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/were-hiring-engineers-a.... It's basically a re-presentation of interview training I've gotten.

baddox3• 7 years ago

What evidence is there that the author of original hiring tweet thinks that sending thank you emails correlates with success? The person doesn’t claim that, and it would be such a preposterous belief that I would be shocked to hear them claim to hold it. My interpretation was merely that the author of the tweet likes people to behave according to some supposed social norm, and punishes people who don’t by refusing to hire them.

acjohnson557• 7 years ago

From the article:

How someone presents in interviews might not translate to effectiveness in the role. While sending a thank-you note doesn't necessarily guarantee the person will be a good hire, it gives you the tiniest bit more data: The candidate is eager, organized, and well mannered enough to send the note. It shows resourcefulness, too, because the candidate often has to hunt down an email address the interviewer never gave them. At Insider Inc., we look to hire "good eggs." The thank-you email is a mark for the good-egg column.

Maybe I'm extrapolating and she doesn't view "good egg" as part of being successful employee, but I think that's what she's getting at. I believe she's trying to identify soft skills at collaboration.

That's my most charitable interpretation. Either that, or she's trying to identify people who share her cultural norms, which is problematic in itself.

trickstra2• 7 years ago

Using ones position to deal punishments for deviation from supposed social norms, neat. I bet that's not what stands in her contract

Cthulhu_• 7 years ago

I'm very much against hidden criteria used to filter people.

I'm not, or at least, not everything should be spelled out; what you want to avoid is people 'cheating' at their job interview by trying to bullshit their way through the application process.

We have a technical assessment, but look at (and ask a lot of) things outside of what was asked exactly; basic expected software development skills such as unit testing, documentation, a grasp of technology used, a drive to keep up to date and learn new things, that kinda thing.

I guess you could fake those? But I think that if you've got the drive to "fake" learn a new technology you've got the drive we're looking for.

acjohnson557• 7 years ago

I'm just not that concerned about fakes faking their way in. Maybe it's a problem other folks have experienced, but it's not one I've had.

tomp2• 7 years ago

But if you don't tell the candidate what to do, how do you know if the candidate can do that or not?

Most programming exercises that companies use in interviews are much simpler (trivial really) than actual software projects, and personally I don't see the need to write 1 page of documentation and unittests for code that can fit on 3 pages... Does that mean I'm against documentation and can't write unittests? No, I'm simply being pragmatic.

marcv81• 7 years ago

I've had stalkers before and it'd freak me out if I received a thank you note from someone I did not exchange contact details with.

corodra4• 7 years ago

Interviewers typically email you to schedule the interview or share their business card with you during the interview...

bluntfang• 7 years ago

I've interviewed ~5 times in the last year...did not receive any business cards or email addresses. The recruiter/HR person actually denied my request for their email address when I asked for it in order to send a note on more than one occasion.

m0nty• 7 years ago

I know organisations which would automatically disqualify candidates who send "thank you" or any other kind of emails. They would call it "canvassing", which is forbidden for job-seekers in these organisations.

corodra4• 7 years ago

I mean... I was taught in high school to always send a thank you email to an interviewer after an interview.

Not only for the courtesy, but also to stay in the interviewer’s head if they were undecided. Most people don’t send these, thus, you’ll be a bit unique and might tip things in your favor.

An interviewer that uses it as a hiring requirement probably wants someone thoughtful and willing to do a little extra compared to others. Seems minor compared to multi hour programming tests.

nicoburns2• 7 years ago

someone thoughtful and willing to do a little extra compared to others

Seems to me that you'd be more likely be selected for people are willing to comply with arbitrary social conventions for the sake of getting ahead. Or even just those who happened grow up in an environment that passed on the folk knowledge that this is necessary. How many people who send these "thank you notes" are truly thankful for the experience?

Seems minor compared to multi hour programming tests.

It is minor if you know you need to do it. The thing is, that some applicants will, and some won't (entirely independently of their capacity to do the job).

corodra4• 7 years ago

I’m sorry, but a thank you is now considered arbitrary? Come on, seriously? What environment are you not taught to respect someone that gave you time of day?

And does it matter if they are truly thankful? It’s not like people share things on the internet to truly SHARE, out of their own good will. They either want fake internet points, recognition, or traffic to end up selling something down the road.

bandrade• 7 years ago

This is exactly the issue with these arbitrary gates in the hiring process. You were taught to do it. Someone with a different background (maybe they grew up in a different country or had parents that worked in a different industry) wouldn't necessarily even think to send a thank you and would be unfairly disqualified from the position.

corodra4• 7 years ago

Different industry? Different background?

Like Eastern European immigrant that could only afford to live among white trash blue collar folks? I should be too stupid to know how the great big American economy works then since my high school was surrounded by cattle farm. I’m pretty white trash still to this day. But even in our retarded educational system, we knew handshakes, pleases and thank yous were still important in a cooperative, functioning society.

You know what, that's funny. The poorer folks I know that escaped their poverty, we all know our pleases and thank yous. It's actually the people that grew up with money that are social idiots and ungrateful bastards that like to complain about every little thing under the sun.

linuxftw2• 7 years ago

I was taught in high school to always send a thank you email to an interviewer after an interview.

Ah yes, the folk-knowledge from high school. Always offered by the academic class with no background in having real jobs.

IMO, thank you letters seem desperate for anything other than an entry level job. Interviews should be testing you for fit (primarily technical) for the role. If you pass this criteria, they will be very excited for you to join with their team because there is high demand for skilled workers.

JasonFruit• 7 years ago

TIL teaching isn't a real job.

trickstra2• 7 years ago

learn programming and interviewers will be sending you 'thank you's.

Daniel32• 7 years ago

actual link https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-write-thank-you-email...

didymospl• 7 years ago

"It shows resourcefulness, too, because the candidate often has to hunt down an email address the interviewer never gave them."

So basically the author expects the candidate to send a thank you email even though she didn't exchange her email address. Well, I think such email is natural when you make a personal contact with the interviewer, but in this scenario(when you receive emails from noreply@bigcorporate.com) it feels unnecessary and intrusive to me.

Nasrudith• 7 years ago

I wonder why HR people keep on doing this shit - they get deservedly heckled by everyone who is stuck with their crap.

I'm not sure if it is a vapid bubble or they are just callous morons who don't get why people would get pissed off over being denied a job for arbitrary reasons and don't learn from experience.

stunt• 7 years ago

There is no golden rule. You are interacting with humans, and every situation is different. A recruiter with good people skills doesn't use one golden rule to filter everyone with it.

soniman• 7 years ago

The real solution here is, Don't go into an industry where supply vastly outnumbers demand and employers can delete half the resumes for no reason.

gumby• 7 years ago

I grew up in the age of handwritten thank you notes for everything and I still wouldn’t expect them for an interview. I’d also be dismayed if the company’s didn’t feel “thankful” to see me.

Companies need good employees. VCs need companies to invest their customers’ money into. The implicit power relationship in these situations is unhealthy.

seba_dos12• 7 years ago

Wait, you're expected to write a "thank you" mail after an interview? Is this some American culture thing?

ixwt• 7 years ago

I was told to do so by career services in the past while trying to get my first job. I got my first job without doing so though.

purplezooey• 7 years ago

Who is upvoting tweets here. Nobody cares about somebody's single sentence thought. Stop.

I have been hired for more than 10 years, and I have this simple rule

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