Why I Won't Hire You

https://www.golemtechnologies.com/blog/why-i-wont-hire-you-and-how-to-win-the-interview

by lovelyLaney • 15 years ago

111 124 15 years ago

llambda2• 15 years ago

tl;dr - He won't hire you because he has a hyper-focus on the process of the interview rather than the process of finding a suitable individual for the opening. His attitude can be summed up in this one line, "Most people looking for jobs don't deserve them."

peteretep• 15 years ago

> "Most people looking for jobs don't deserve them."

I don't know about that, but my experience suggests that most CVs you get for a job interview will be unsuitable.

jmilloy2• 15 years ago

Yes. But it could be true that most people looking for jobs don't deserve them, and yet it would still be important to remember that the interview is nothing but a process for finding a good match.

anons2011• 15 years ago

tl;dr indeed! Although he does sound like a bit of a dick though.

iksor99• 15 years ago

What's your feeling on remote workers?

@Llambda - isn't the process of the interview also the process of finding a suitable candidate?

llambda2• 15 years ago

I think it can be tricky. We know the process doesn't always work. Some companies, e.g. Google, believe that it's better to adhere to a tough hiring process and reject most people even if a certain number of those people who are rejected may be brilliant engineers. But what I think is important to remember is that the goal is to hire the right person for the job. The hiring process you use may or may not be an effective and efficient means of finding that person. But certainly having a very narrow view, say by having a very strong focus on the process and little else, is a sure way to miss the right person at least some of the time.

csomar4• 15 years ago

Why I Won't Work For You:

Because you are a dick.

Now who are you? What are you going to give me in return? Why should I tell you that I love my job and my career. Why should I tell you about my vision and plans? What are you really looking for in that.

The hiring should be a lot simpler:

- You have a problem. You need someone with the right skills, and hire him.

- I have a problem (need money). I pick a job that I have the skills for.

Thinking the way you do, accepting your daily bull-shit and philosophy (worse, making myself sound like I enjoy and I belong to it) is only a sign for me that you are the wrong person to work for.

zalew5• 15 years ago

Why should I tell you about my vision and plans? What are you really looking for in that.

These 'where do you see yourself in 5 years' questions sound like straight from a 'HR for dummies' book. I would really appreciate if an interviewer reading this post explained me what such cliches are trying to test, other than BS skills. Cliche question => cliche response.

gk13• 15 years ago

I'm not from HR, but my guess is that a question like that is for learning whether the candidate is goal-oriented or just goes by living day-to-day. I agree that it's a cliche question, and could be phrased more originally and/or specifically in most cases, but it is not _totallt_ useless.

asolove2• 15 years ago

(This post is not defending the original article, just discussing this specific comment.)

Having never read an HR for Dummies book, and as a pure technical interviewer, I still frequently ask this question. The point is to not think of it as an adversarial question, like I'm going to mark you off for a bad answer.

It's simply to know how you want your career to proceed. Do you want to be an expert at some specific part of the programming world, an experienced generalist (consultant?), an architect, a manager or product lead, start your own startup, ... ?

This is a very important question for you and your manager to be on the same page about. It helps your manager know how to motivate you and what kinds of work will excite you to move your career forward. And it helps you evaluate via small experiences whether your vision matches up with your skills and what you actually enjoy.

kls3• 15 years ago

These 'where do you see yourself in 5 years' questions sound like straight from a 'HR for dummies' book.

Many of these open ended questions came about from large companies hiring physiologist to help build and identify a profile of an individual that the company would like the hire. Organizations such as the FBI use similar strategies as well. The problem is that many smaller organizations that did not want to spend the money or simply did not know to spend the money on professionals started to emulate the larger companies, but they did not posses the answer keys once they had the answers they just left it up to the interviewer to divine whether it was the right answer or not. Read that last sentence again and then read the definition of a Cargo Cult. you will laugh at the mental image I promise. You see, these interviewing practices are simply the same mentality that created Cargo Cults, somewhere along the way they lost the intelligence and are just emulating the process in ritual and then divining the results.

triviatise3• 15 years ago

I ask this question to better understand whether we can provide an environment that will be right for the candidate in 5 years. I dont want to hire someone that wont have a shot at achieving their long term goals with us because it wouldnt be fair to them.

On the flip side, I just hired a new finance person. I wanted someone who can eventually become a controller then CFO. I have no idea if they are really capable of it, but I want them to at least want it and to have demonstrated some activities to have tried working towards it.

GiraffeNecktie4• 15 years ago

It's funny that I had the reverse response. Your post makes you sound like a dick and he sounds like someone who is being totally reasonable. He's looking for excellent people that will fit in well with his team (i.e. won't waste time, has sufficient energy and passion, thinks clearly, communicates well and doesn't sit around loathing their career). Technical skills are important, but putting together a successful team takes more than that. And even if it didn't, it only makes sense, given a pile of resumes with roughly equivalent skills, to filter out the people you don't like to be around. Sucks if you need the job and you're not that type of person, but that's life.

andreadallera2• 15 years ago

csomar's response is, IMHO, the right reaction to the blog post author's rambling.

What I've found out by experience is that usually recruiters with such restricting requirements aren't ready to back up said requests with the appropriate money. He wants top notch, highly motivated talent. How much is he willing to pay? That's definitely a part of the equation but he's not even mentioning it. If he offers 200-300% the market price then he's right to ask that much skill and dedication, otherwise his pretenses are absolutely unjustified.

csomar4• 15 years ago

Then talk to me about the advantages of working for you. If I'm to work for you for the money, then state that you are offering $200K/year. If I'm interested in health care, then you should have some health insurance package. A good one probably.

I'm skilled, you can see that from the projects I did, worked on, my blog, Github and source code.

Then hire me for a couple of months and see how I fit in the team. Certainly, you should apply your hiring skills to figure out if I'll be a right fit, otherwise you'll waste lots of time hiring/firing/figuring.

benjaminwootton2• 15 years ago

- You have a problem. You need someone with the right skills, and hire him. - I have a problem (need money). I pick a job that I have the skills for.

If you were hiring someone to dig a hole for you, this may be true.

But software is a team sport and you do need an element of interviewing for personality, goals, and attitude as well as skills and aptitude.

csomar4• 15 years ago

But software is a team sport and you do need an element of interviewing for personality, goals, and attitude as well as skills and aptitude.

Seriously, you figure that from a 2 hour interview? I fall in love with a girl which I thought/seemed/was told was a very good one. Turns out she's a complete slut. Knew that only after 2 weeks getting out with her.

Get the person to work with you for few weeks or may be a couple of months. Scan his history (blog, projects, education, work history, github...) and figure out if he'll match your team ethics and he really know what he does.

thinkdevcode• 15 years ago

I had the exact same response from reading this article. Thank you for articulating it. Hopefully the author see's this and responds.

mootothemax3• 15 years ago

Why I Won't Work For You:

Because you are a dick.

You do realise that you're being just as confrontational as the post's author?

eykanal• 15 years ago

I disagree with most of this post, and I'm glad I didn't apply to any position with him as an interviewer. Specifically:

You can’t tell me why you like your current job - Maybe I hate my current job, and took it to pay the bills. Maybe I actually did take it because I like the challenge. Sure, I could and should give more details about it, but that's a valid response, which shouldn't be thrown out so quickly. While the interviewee should do his/her best to give good answers, it's the interviewer's job to ask intelligent follow-up questions; there's a give and take in an interview.

No career plans or vision - My career plans for most of my life were "keep my options open". That served me very well. It sounds like this interviewer is only interested in people who have been completely focused on a single goal since kindergarten, ignoring everyone else. His loss, I guess.

nimblegorilla2• 15 years ago

How many people have you interviewed? I haven't done a lot, but when I was interviewing a lot of people for a couple positions it seemed like everyone said they were "creative" or "liked a challenge."

Claiming they were creative didn't really disqualify, but it didn't make anyone stand out unless they had a couple examples.

ww520• 15 years ago

You ask general generic questions and you will get general standard answers. Try asking engaging questions that can get more specific answers. Like "can you give me an example where you devised a creative solution to a problem?"

benjaminwootton2• 15 years ago

This is a very confrontational and adverserial style of interviewing and hiring.

I get the impression that author is looking for reasons to make the candidate a 'no hire' rather than using those silly questions such as 'tell me a time when....' as a starting to point to open a two way conversation.

My tip is to approach interviews with a positive mind WANTING the candidate to succeed and display their strengths rather than wanting them to fail. You should hire based on positives, not on lack of negatives!

This post really demonstrates how broken interviewing is. These are TERRIBLE and yet still WIDELY USED filters with a high chance of introducing false negatives in the hiring process.

Two examples:

1. The multi year career plans he hints at in a number of places. I personally would be more interested in a candidate with a passion and genuine interest in the job on offer, rather than someone using it as a stepping stone on their ten year plan to get to something tangentially related. I personally don't know what I'll be doing in ten weeks let alone ten years, but a developer it'll probably an interesting and challenging variation of what I'm doing now rather than being somewhere in management.

2. The long CV example is one example of a commonly used signal that tells you precisely nothing about the quality of the candidate. It is a completely arbitrary rule that is no way correlated with their skills or personality. After an initial filter, would it really be so bad spending 5 or so minutes considering and comparing the candidates on offer if that improved your outcomes by even a small percent?

Sigh....

astral3032• 15 years ago

Long CV definitely tells me something about the quality of the candidate.

If I am interviewing someone fresh out of school, I can forgive a rambling resume. However, for an experienced person, I am looking for some ability to present information concisely. It's like a design skill: can you present a focused view of the most relevant information? If you think that more than two pages of information is required to advertise yourself for a job, then you are quite likely lacking that skill.

I still think that a one-page limit is where it's at. Don't put down obvious bullet points. If you were a Windows system admin, don't waste a line on writing that you administered an active directory server. Of course you did that as a Windows sysadmin. No, tell me what you did that made you different than a run-of-the-mill person doing the same job.

cunac2• 15 years ago

One page resume might work for people with not so much experience but it is very hard to put 25+ years of work in one page except obvious "I solve your problems for money" :-). Just plain listing all places of work with dates can be 20+ lines How much insight can you get from 1995-1996 Company X , Senior Consultant , project Y ??

jmilloy2• 15 years ago

I will go into every interview expecting that we are equals. You know what you or your company already is and what it wants. I know what I am and what I want. Then, we decide together. Interviewing/recruiting does not give you high-status.

The interview failures described in the article occur when neither party understands this.

bjdixon• 15 years ago

It blows my mind that so many people don't understand that as an interviewee they are just as responsible for deciding if this relationship is a good fit as the interviewer. Otherwise you may end up jumping through the correct hoops only to get hired by a guy like this.

I find many interviewers have no idea that it's a two way street as well. I guess it shortens the interview for me though. I don't want to work for someone who only wants answers, not a conversation.

leftnode• 15 years ago

What a completely horrible way to interview and speak to people.

No career plans or vision Why would this matter to the interviewer? I just can't get over how ridiculous of an answer he provides. Why would he care what my career plans and vision (whatever that is) are? Who can honestly plot out the next 10 years of their life? Very few, and I'd be wary of anyone who claims they could.

I'm not surprised this person is not finding the right candidates for his company, but I think he has no clue why.

gk13• 15 years ago

I'm not surprised this person is not finding the right candidates for his company, but I think he has no clue why.

Where does he say that he is having trouble finding people?

While I agree that the example he provides is a rare case, it's not entirely a stupid question. (However, as I said elsewhere about other interview questions, it definitely could use a more original approach.) I think many interviewers are worried about hiring someone who is just going to use the company as a year-long hopping stone, and therefore won't be committed.

jsnell• 15 years ago

The guy is rejecting more than 99% of people who make it to an onsite interview. Clearly they aren't finding the right candidates. And they must be totally desperate if they're willing to still do interviews with that low a hit rate.

code-dog• 15 years ago

As someone who has done the interviewing thing, I can see where this article is coming from. I don't really buy into all of it though. All this stuff about being a great communicator. That is cool but not always required. I have spent a lot of time working with amazing people who are crap communicators and crap people who are great communicators.

But - I am sure a lot of people interviewing use indicators like these so it it worth knowing about them.

Finally, on the CV thing. This is a hard issue because agents look for buzz words. If you've done a lot of stuff you need to write a lot to get all the buzz words in. That is the only way the agent will forward our CV. Then - you cannot tailor the CV to the job because you did not submit one for that job, you submitted one for buzz words.

hcayless• 15 years ago

Yeah, it tends to make me a bit irritable after the 500th time I've seen a resume touting the candidate's skills with DreamWeaver, so I sympathize. But while the article is a well-intentioned rant, it's still a rant.

In short, if you're looking for a job, try to put yourself in the position of the interviewer and adjust your approach accordingly. Don't go in cold, and don't assume the interviewer will make allowances for you.

keeran• 15 years ago

Based on the comments in this thread I think I'm glad HN has taken his server down ;)

x3c• 15 years ago

The thing about this interview process is that you'll lose those candidates who have potential and can thrive in correct environment but:

a) Currently work in a job that they don't really like and, hence, are looking to switch (because they cannot come up with a satisfactory answer for: "You can’t tell me why you like your current job")

Also, since they don't know much about your company besides second-hand information, they cant answer: "why you think this job will give you the same passion". Interview is a conversation, you'll have to tell them what your company culture is and how it can benefit potential employees.

b) Candidates who are fresh out of college / don't have much experience.

c) Candidates who are probably good enough for your job but aren't good enough to pass the, very high bar, you've set up for them.

So it depends on the profile for which you're hiring and the prerequisites you are looking for. I personally won't mind if an interviewee can't answer most of these questions but can do the job I'm giving and has done something simiiar to it in the past with reasonable success and is a good cultural fit in my organisation based on what I can deduce during the interview.

Swizec• 15 years ago

You know what I really hate? Being asked about my career plans or vision. Wanna know what my career plans are?

To create something cool and reach financial independence in X amount of years. But first I need to pay for food for the next couple of months until somebody better than Your Company starts begging for programmers and sending me emails. And to be honest, your project likely won't be able to hold my interest for more than a few months, it will become boring and routine, nothing like anything fun I'll be working on in my own time.

Most interviewers hate that answer. (which is why I freelance, it's perfect)

PS: I have yet to give the answer that directly, but I should try every time I go in to talk about a freelancing project and it turns into an interview.

reverend_gonzo• 15 years ago

For someone who said he doesn't want to a long resume that rambles on forever he sure had a long blog post that rambled on with very little content.

Attacking each point:

You send me a stupidly long resume

Some recruiters/HR desks look for resumes with specific keywords, and we need to tailor our resumes to get past those (admittedly retarded) filters. As an interviewee, I understand that and have made my resume longer to get past them to the people that actually look at it. As an interviewer, I've rarely looked at the resume until the interview, and only scanned over it to look for things that I can ask about, in addition to our normal quetions.

You can’t tell me why you like your current job

You don't have to like your current job. Especially in this economy, some people are glad to have jobs. Of course, it'd be nice if you like your job, but then again, that's why he's interviewing. Whether or not a person likes a previous job has nothing to say about whether or not he'll like his next job, unless, of course, you're looking for a spineless twit who will go with the flow regardless of how they treat him.

It's more important to recognize a cultural fit and find someone that will get along with the employees, but again, this can vary wildly. I worked at a startup and we interviewed a manager from a large corporate company to be our BA. We went into the interview thinking there's no way we'll like this guy, but it turned out he was awesome, and a great cultural fit too.

No career plans or vision

Not everyone has a long-term. Not everyone knows what they'll be doing in five years, especially when they're younger. My first two jobs, I told them I'd be gone within a year and a half. I don't remember saying it, but when I quit a year a half later, they aid I told them that during the interview and they just didn't believe me. The better question is what will it take to keep me here for five years, and what is your firm going to do for it as well? Of course, people most likely can't answer this question until they've had a few jobs under their belt, so they realize what they like and don't like.

No skills

There's really the primary thing that matters.

Answer my skills with conjecture

I didn't read this far, but it sounds like 'Don't BS me'. I'll agree there as well.

I agree with csomar. I probably wouldn't work for you.

ntkachov2• 15 years ago

>If I have to spend more than 30 seconds finding out what you have accomplished, forget it.

Well then, Don't expect me to even bother writing a cover letter or tailor my resume. In fact, if your only going to be scanning over my resume in 30 seconds why, on earth, should I even spend any time filling out your form to send you my resume? When I send people my resume, I at the very least expect them to read through it. If my skill set matches what you are looking for and you are thinking of an interview, I expect you to at the very least Google my name, or check out my website/github which I conveniently include as a QR code.

>The worst answers? “Well I like the challenge” or some other BS.

Well, Enjoy working with the worst developers possible. Most of the best guys I know will take a job with worse pay, less benefits, and further commute if the work sounds interesting (read: challenging). "I enjoy the challenge" is probably one of the best answers to why you want to work somewhere. Unless, of course the work you do involves mundane repetitive tasks every single day then you probably don't want developers that enjoy challenge, because they will leave very quickly.

You take this stance of "I have the elixir of life and you will bend over backwards to get it because you are desperate". So the only people that do end up bending over are the ones who are really desperate.

queensnake2• 15 years ago

> When I send people my resume, I at the very least expect them to read through it.

Wait till you're on the employing side, like, even, your boss asks you to look over /100+ resumes/ that are 95% irrelevant.

foolinator3• 15 years ago

You should read through a resume if you're going to interview them.

Signed,

A person that has viewed 1000s of resumes a week from time to time.

techperson• 15 years ago

Did you know this comment was cited by Ramit Sethi at http://bit.ly/AqWxRH as "delusional" and "transparently kooky"?

talmand2• 15 years ago

Interesting.

-He expects he won't hire me in the first five minutes? If in the first five minutes I get that vibe I no longer wish to have the job.

-Tailor-made resume for his job? As if people are supposed to create new resumes for every job that they apply for? Get serious. Plus different companies expect different style of resumes since there is no standard and what amounts to close to standard changes every couple of years. What he wants is people to magically read his mind to craft a resume just for him to meet his expectations.

- He won't hire if I can't say why I love my current job? If I love my current job then there's not much reason to leave it, now is there? Plus, he claims to have a BS detector but he seems to be asking for BS from the applicant.

- No career plans or vision? For most people laying out five year plans is BS, which means he won't hire you. What good does such a question do for anyone anyway? Looking back over my career I've only had one job that I actually planned for. The rest are from changes in things I can't control with changes in what interests me.

- I agree with the no skills part. As someone who's been on the hiring side of the table there's nothing more annoying when someone can't back up what's on their resume.

- "Don’t sit there and tell me what you would do in the future. I didn’t ask what you would do, I asked what you did." Um, yes you did, it was two bullet points ago.

- He apparently requires the perfect candidate. I wonder how many people he actually manages to hire and how many of them stay for their "career"?

- He talks of bad advice out there discussing the topic of his post and he seems to assume his will not get lumped into that list. I would say it's the same as any other post on the topic, some good and some bad.

He sounds a lot like the kind of guy that has a high turnover rate of first-year hires who leave for more money and he can't figure out why.

minsight• 15 years ago

"If I have to spend more than 30 seconds finding out what you have accomplished, forget it."

Not to worry. I will only work for someone who can manage to conquer problems of scale such as skimming a resume and finding pertinent points. If you are unable or unwilling to do so, we'll eventually have a problem and I'll be better off elsewhere.

edw519• 15 years ago

I am expecting you to be one of the 99%+ people who I know I won’t hire in the first 5 minutes.

If you can't narrow down resumes and phone interviews to candidates with better than a 1% chance of being accepted, then your interviewing pre-screening process is flawed. What other processes in our everyday work will also be flawed?

You send me a stupidly long resume

90% of all written correspondence (from customers, users, collaborators, vendors, etc.) is too long. Do you think they're all stupid, too?

You have annoyed me.

You're a manager. Your job is to properly deal with issues that would annoy others. Why would anyone want to work for someone so easily annoyed?

...do I really want to look forward to your rambling emails every day?

Do I really want to look forward to your sour attitude every day?

You can’t tell me why you like your current job

If I liked my current job, I wouldn't be here.

I don’t hire awesome people who don’t have the right skill mix.

Here's a clue: technologies change. By definition, anyone with the "right skill mix" won't have the "right skill mix" for long. Amesome people adapt. But how would you even know that if you don't hire them?

No career plans or vision

I've been programming for 33 years and still have no idea what I want to do when I grow up. This is an interview for an open job, not Dr. Phil.

If you don’t think well on your feet, spend some time reading through and practicing situational interview questions.

Are you serious? I'm a programmer, not an Americas Got Talent contestant. What you see is what you get.

If you are missing even one, I’m probably going to pass you up for someone who doesn’t.

Wait a minute. You want to hire perfect people, but you also want them to have "career plans or vision"?

I have a super BS detector

Obviously not, since so many of your questions can only be answered with BS.

The End

That's just about the only thing you've said that I agree with.

You sound like you have a serious attitude problem. I can't imagine working for someone like you. But thanks for writing this. You've solved many problems in advance. I won't be applying. And I don't imagine many people like me will be either.

shareme• 15 years ago

I was going to ask if he is a relative of Jason Calacanis as it sounds like that type of blowhard not too much depth type spiel

prophetjohn• 15 years ago

> Do I really want to look forward to your sour attitude every day?

This sums it up for me. The author sounds like a grumpy person who would be terrible to work for. I also suspect many of these rejections are self-fulfilling prophecies. When you're actively looking for a reason to reject candidates, you're probably going to find one.

zalew5• 15 years ago

and this:

> Do you have hiring war stories (interviewer or interviewee)? Share them in the comments!

looking for an employee is a WAR for this guy?!!

kls3• 15 years ago

You summed it up well, this guy needs to stay as far away from interviewing as possible. This attitude is why people can't find the 10Xers, they interviewing process is set up to filter them out. Your observation here:

gets to the heart why they cant. 10Xers are not a technology they are personality and a attitude. Hell some of them are not ever that great at some of the technologies they use, but they know how to use the parts they need to get them to the finish line. They know the principles of elegance in clean code, and simple systems that are only as complex as they need to be.

These people are not showing up to the door of people that interview like the author, and if they do they are not taking the position and probably recommending to other 10Xers to go ahead and avoid the interview.

I get the feeling from reading the article, that the author has not learned how to spot technical talent and is growing frustrated with it.

foolinator3• 15 years ago

The author just seems like a narcissistic sad man.

Peroni• 15 years ago

Thank you.

Interviews are a two way street. If I am applying for a job, my role during the interview is to convince you why I am a worthwhile hire, your role during the interview is to convince me that you are a worthwhile employer. If he was one of my clients I would disassociate myself from him very quickly.

As for his 5 points, I wonder if he realises that all 5 inversely apply to him just as much as they do to the candidate being interviewed.

1.Show me you can get things done. This means you can set realistic deadlines for projects and meet them consistently. You must be a good motivator.

2.Show me you are intelligent. I will ask you questions to discern how in touch you are with todays market. I don't care if you've interviewed a dozen people for this job, I want to know if you've actually read my resume.

3.Show me how I fit into your vision. Truthfully, we’ll work best together if you sincerely think I am the best person for this job in the long run. I want to know how you can help me succeed in my career, Tell me.

4.Be highly skilled. If your job advert says that you need a highly skilled Developer then don't have me sitting in a corner refactoring shitty code for the first 6 months.

5.Be Passionate. If I feel like the interview process is boring you, I will end the interview prematurely but politely.

/rant

triviatise3• 15 years ago

this is absolutely true. almost 100% of job ads are terrible. They are focused exclusively on what the company wants. Instead the ads should be marketing to attract the best. The ads should explain why someone great would want to work there.

amorphid• 15 years ago

edw519, I love your response :)

I think the article would have been more constructive it was titled "Why I Will Hire You."

argv_empty• 15 years ago

Obviously not, since so many of your questions can only be answered with BS.

Then we get to his example of a "good" answer for career plans: yet another instance of "In this many years, I see myself that many steps up the corporate ladder. … communication … leadership … responsibility …"

bambax• 15 years ago

Yes.

Also this: "Let me know your passionate or don’t waste my time." (you're!)

This is why I love being a contractor / consultant. Clients don't ask for a little lap dance and a smile before we can do business, like this guy seems to expect.

They have a job to do that they think I can do, I give a quote, they say yes or no (usually yes, if we went this far). I do it, they pay me.

No resume-this, resume-that, what's your vision, are you passionate, what do you love or hate. I hate being in an office with a stranger in the middle of the afternoon, talking about my passions.

InclinedPlane• 15 years ago

It's great how the same sort of folks who put out these diatribes on how easy it is to run afoul of their hiring processes will also complain about how very difficult it has been to find qualified candidates.

timwiseman• 15 years ago

"You send me a stupidly long resume

90% of all written correspondence (from customers, users, collaborators, vendors, etc.) is too long. Do you think they're all stupid, too? "

I agree with most of your post, but after doing a lot of interviews as the hiring manager, I have to agree that resumes should be short. I won't exclude a candidate just for sending a resume that is long, but as a general rule, don't expect me to go past page 2, especially for an entry-to-mid level position.

wccrawford2• 15 years ago

Pretty much exactly right. 1 difference for me, though. I already know what I want to be when I grow up:

A programmer!

Yes, I've reached the end of my career. I'm where I want to be, and I don't want to change. I don't want to be a manager, team leader, or otherwise do anything other than programming. If there were any change I wanted, it would be 'do fewer non-programming things'.

nikki9696• 15 years ago

THANK YOU! I feel the same way. Why is it that people who supposedly love programming are somehow expected to no longer want to be programmers at some point in their career? Being a great manager / team leader takes a whole different skill set than being a great coder.

ascold• 15 years ago

If you are looking for a good communicator among nerds, you are definitely looking in the wrong place. You need a salesman.

cchurch3• 15 years ago

There's a difference between "excellent at communicating" and "obviously does not care".

An excellent example of the latter is the presence of spelling errors that could have been fixed with spell-check, completely random font changes due to copy-and-paste, etc. These typically are just the superficial signs that no thought was put into the content.

It's like showing up for an interview in a dirty t-shirt and sneakers. I'm not looking for excellent fashion sense; I'm looking for a basic awareness of the world around them.

dsolomon• 15 years ago

Of the 100 people who look at his website searching for employment 90 are disinterested due to his poor grammar, spelling, and punctuation skills. Another eight realize that a professional services site with HTTP 403 and 404 errors isn’t that professional. One more reads the "official company blog" and concludes that the owner is a douche bag. The remaining 1% apply simply to keep their H1B status alive.

So in his own special way that guy is telling the 1% to f*ck off. Well played.

darrikmazey• 15 years ago

I find it amusing that he starts off with a rant about long resumes. Then half of what follows goes on to talk about all the extensive information you have to communicate on your CV just to get an interview.

I severely disagree with the attitude conveyed. People would do well to remember that a work arrangement is mutually beneficial, always. You take a job because it is in your interest to do so. You are offered a job because it is in their interest to do so. No one employs someone while taking a loss on them, yet companies treat interviewees as if they would be lucky to land such a wonderful job.

If this attitude came out in my interview, I'd immediately walk out. If you're treating me in this way before I even work for you, odds are it's not ever going to get better, only worse.

mootothemax3• 15 years ago

I really don't understand the offence some people seem to be taking from this blog post. The author's listing, directly and to the point, what he wants to see from interviewees.

You might not like the tone of the author's writing, but having sat on the other side of the interview table, it is thoroughly depressing when a candidate tells you "Yeah, I just want a job - money, isn't it?", when you know that the role available is great, and someone who wants to care about will really enjoy it.

cunac2• 15 years ago

It is all perspective , you like to think that role is great but maybe is not so much as you think. Maybe you just don't know better

mootothemax3• 15 years ago

It is all perspective , you like to think that role is great but maybe is not so much as you think. Maybe you just don't know better

Don't get me wrong; we all have to pay the rent. There there are indisputably times when, guess what, one just needs a damned job that'll pay the bills.

But for a lot of smaller companies with cool little projects? Yeah, I think it's totally reasonable for them to discriminate on that level.

ereckers• 15 years ago

Looks like he passed over all the guys with scaling experience.

bh42222• 15 years ago

Be highly skilled.

Be Passionate. If you are bored working in a similar job somewhere else, you’ll be bored with me.

Does the job involve rockets or something like that? No?

Well good luck finding exactly someone who is both highly skilled AND not bored by your job.

drone• 15 years ago

It seems somewhere along the line, every person who is aspiring to become someone great in the industry gets the wrong cue. They see some conceited individual writing blog posts about how great they are, and they assume mimicking this style of writing will make them equally as great. The truth is: most of us barely tolerate this attitude from those who are truly great because we don't have much choice. Until you are truly great (i.e. on the cover of time magazine, and solving the largest problems we all face with ease), you would do better to present yourself with humility.

That you thought it appropriate to write a blog post with simply the title of "Why I won't hire you," is the reason "Why I will never interview with you." (And, for many others as well, I'm sure.) It has little to do with the content (although in fact, the content only gets worse with conceit and self-inflating statements) and everything to do with your attitude.

Who wants to work for someone who already thinks they're better than the majority of humanity? I'd want to work for a manager who knows how to communicate effectively without being abrasive, and who has excellent skills in resolving conflict and helping their team grow to their maximum potential. Everything about your blog post suggest the opposite combined with such a level of hubris, that I could only imagine working for you would be the worst job I've ever had.

Good luck with that hiring thing.

tkiley• 15 years ago

/No career plans or vision/

The best developers I've ever worked with tend to lack career plans. If you're sufficiently happy with your life that you don't need a change strategy, that's pretty cool.

wccrawford2• 15 years ago

Are you sure they didn't? Perhaps, like me, they have already finished their career plan and they are working their dream job.

That's the thing these interviews fail to take into account. They assume that everyone wants more, when that's not always the case. Happiness means knowing when you have what you want, and enjoying it.

bitdiffusion• 15 years ago

If there were more engineers than jobs and we were all fiercely competing for scraps, I would say ok - it's a "buyers market" and we are forced to put up with attitudes like this.

The situation is very different however. In my experience, top talent either a) have their own company or b) are well-looked after by their current employer (at least one would hope so) so they need to actively lured away; how about you tell me why I SHOULD work for you rather than give all the reasons why I can't?

Oh yes - and the author is an arrogant dick.

atacrawl• 15 years ago

Wow, I'm pretty surprised to see such a collectively sensitive reaction to this post.

Try to see things from this guy's perspective -- this comes across as a guy who's grown really tired of being bombarded by terrible resumes. Then, the few candidates whose resumes appeal to him result in terrible interviews because the candidate either doesn't give a shit about what he/she does, or misled (if not flat-out lied) about his/her skill set.

That would leave anyone a little ornery after a while.

Personally, I found the post rather unenlightening, only because I think it's common sense to be passionate about what you do -- otherwise, why do it? -- and to have the right skills, etc.

But a little tough love never hurt anybody. (And if you think this guy is a dick, I want to work for your bosses, because I've worked with some real doozies.)

mikeash• 15 years ago

Ornery is fine, the trouble is that half the stuff he wants is crap. You want everybody to have a good answer ready for what their career plan is extending out a full decade? Well, that eliminates a whole lot of people, many of them perfectly qualified, for no good reason.

There's some good stuff in here, but that's outweighed by the large serving of nonsense.

Confusion• 15 years ago

In kneejerk fashion, you assume the people responding strongly don't interview people and that's why they disagree. The truth is that they do interview people and still strongly disagree.

paulhauggis• 15 years ago

My problem is that I have to give my future employers absolute bullshit when they ask me where I see myself in the next 5 years.

Why? I hate working for other people. I only want to work for myself. The only reason I even take a regular job is to fund my projects until they become successful. But, I can't ever tell them that.

zwieback• 15 years ago

I don't think this guy's that unreasonable, there's a bit of attitude and maybe frustration but having interviewed a bunch of people lately I can relate.

I think the biggest issue with interviewing is that it can only be done well in a team. We usually have at least 5 or 6 people interviewing and some of them have to be from unrelated projects. We have the luxury of drawing from a large pool of engineers from different projects but for smaller companies it might be a good idea to pull in people from other companies as neutral observers, if that's possible.

I always find it interesting to discover my own biases during the debrief meeting.

+1 on the long resumes, though. Also, listing every programming language or CAD program in the skills list is very off-putting.

radarsat12• 15 years ago

> I have a super BS detector, and most other interviewers do too.

I have a good BS detector too. Lots of people do.

Here's the problem: Lots of people are full of BS. That includes interviewers.

Since people are very sensitive to BS either way, a BS impedance mismatch can completely ruin an interview. That means that the BS-appraisal process must complete efficiently and accurately within the first 30 seconds of the interview, which is quite a difficult demand.

Let's discretize the BS axis into two categories: full of BS / hates BS.

So we have 4 situations:

* Interviewer is full of BS, wants to hear BS. Interviewee is full of BS, provides BS. WIN

* Interviewer hates BS. Interviewee is full of BS, provides BS. FAIL.

* Interviewer is full of BS. Interviewee hates BS. FAIL.

* Interviewer and interviewee both hate BS. SUPER WIN.

The problem is that neither the interviewer nor the interviewee are aware of the BS-status of the other individual.

The interviewer, however, is generally in a power position, since we can assume the interviewee wants the job. Therefore it is really up to the interviewee to estimate the BS-status of the interviewer.

So, only two situations are really going to be fundamentally compatible, one of which has much of a chance of landing a good candidate. There is easily a 50% chance of something going wrong at this point just out of luck, or as a result of a misestimated BS status.

If there is a detected mismatch, the interviewee can make a choice: Fake personal BS status (BSer tries to be "real", anti-BSer gives up on personal integrity and provides some BS because that's what is expected by the BS interviewer); or, be true to himself, and either walk out of the interview (politely!), or get down to business and present himself as a serious individual (for the non-BS interviewer).

So, the BS estimate is critical. Moreover, since it's easy to get the impression that most people are full of BS, there may be bias present in the estimator that helps to get things off on the wrong foot.

Notice that _none_ of this has anything to do with whether the interviewee is actually the right candidate for the job. Right off the bat, the BS-status and accuracy and speed of the interviewee's BS estimator is a huge factor in job-getting ability, regardless of other skillsets.

And that is why interviewing sucks, for both parties.

radarsat12• 15 years ago

I should mention that in reality things are, of course, more subtle, and this two-category quantization is not realistic. In the real situation you'll not only want to identify the BS-status of the interviewer, but give them just the right amount of BS. Don't be too honest, you have to sell yourself after all. Frankly, it's tricky, especially for people who aren't used to talking about themselves.

nsxwolf• 15 years ago

99%+?!

This guy must spending every waking hour interviewing.

balloot2• 15 years ago

Why I won't work for you:

1) You are a self-important douche who writes lengthy blog posts on all the reasons you deem people unworthy of working with you.

balloot2• 15 years ago

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/golem-technologies

Employees: 1

He's been doing this for almost a year and hasn't hired anyone. Sounds about right.

Also, the website is taking 20s to serve any page. Maybe he should spend less time blogging about how awesome he is and how everyone sucks, and instead build a website that can handle a surge of traffic.

Semiapies• 15 years ago

Notably, going through his blog's archives, there's no post on the subject of "Why on Earth You'd Want to Work for Me."

maeon3• 15 years ago

He has every right to be bitter. Good candidates are avoiding him like the plague, and what is left over is terrible. It's a feedback loop.

noduerme• 15 years ago

I wrote this in their comments, and got blocked by an auto filter. Wonder why?

"About halfway through the first bullet point I decided I wasn't interested in reading every juicy word of this boring essay. I thought about writing a rebuttal along the lines of "why I won't work for you", but it boils down to this -- you sound like a bad listener and a self-important jerk."

Response:

Your posting on Golem Technologies from ... has been automatically flagged by our spam filters as being inappropriate for this website.

groggles• 15 years ago

HN has been soundly trolled.

This guy -- who apparently rejects 99% of interviewees -- apparently runs a single-person company of dubious purpose. This absurdly trollish post is over the top because that's what ensured it a front-page showing.

Kudos on the pagerank earned by trolling the gullible folks on HN.

sbisker• 15 years ago

Hey, lovelyLaney - I noticed that your HN account is probably tightly linked to Golem Technologies in some way (given that you've only submitted twice, both articles from this domain). There are over 100 comments on this article, and not a single one is from you. If you wrote this post, I think I speak for a large portion of HN when I say - we'd love to hear from you. Yes, seriously.

I know some people will probably downvote whatever you post without thinking, no matter what you say - because judging from the comments, you seem to have angered the mob. Indeed, I disagree with this article strongly myself - and would be happy to chat with you about why it doesn't resonate with my personal experience. However, if you have thoughtful answers to what people here have to say, the community only wants to help you, and see its own succeed.

If you want to stand behind your article, please do. If you want to recant or clarify parts of things you've said, you can do that too. You're a one person company - are you hiring right now, and what sorts of positions are you having trouble hiring for? We'd love to hear specifics - and to hear you engage in the community about something it obviously feels passionately about in a deliberate, measured way. Many may disagree with what you have to say, but no one here should fault you simply for your attempts to say it, for contributing to the discussion around your own ideas. Hope to hear from you.

darklajid• 15 years ago

I don't get it. I zoned out after the

'I am going to drop 99% of all candidates because they fail the following'

and

'You sent me a looooong resume'

In my world you're sending the resume before the interview. If that's such a big issue (is it?), then - don't invite those guys. Your 99% rate just dropped significantly and you're not wasting time on both sides.

ainsleyb• 15 years ago

A startup is not a 5000 person corporation and shouldn't be run as such. I remember the author posting a Show HN last February introducing his company. At that point in time he was still in a full time job. Now, I don't know what's happened in the life of his company over the past 11 months, but I would venture to guess he has less than 10 employees. I'd even venture to guess it's somewhere less than 5. At this stage you're more looking for collaborators, not people to manage. And when you're looking for early stage employees you should really be looking for a true personality fit, in addition to the required technical prowess (which, incidentally, doesn't necessarily mean "knows ruby").

Yes, hiring is hard. Yes, as an early-stage startup it will take you a very long time to hire. But you have to remember those you're hiring today will make or break the company tomorrow. Their "5 yr plan" should have no bearing on whether or not they get a job at a very early startup, but by the end of the interview you should know not only that they're technically capable, but can roll with any changes you foresee the company making, and that they have the right personality to mesh with you and the rest of your team (you'll be spending a lot of time together - could you grab beers with them?). You should also know that they're so sold on the idea and vision of your company that their 5 year plan and your 5 year plan become one (or are at least related). Realistically, your startup probably won't even be alive in five years.

Of course I know a lot of people look at things differently, and I have complete respect for different opinions and methods (and love reading about them). We're still trying to figure out hiring ourselves, but I think the best engineers come with all sorts of non-corporate eccentricities. If we had followed the author's suggestions, we wouldn't have hired either of our two founders (including myself) or our first engineer. I'll leave it up to the reader to decide whether that would have been a mistake or not. :)

prpatel• 15 years ago

must be nice to have such a large pool of people to interview to fit your needs perfectly, especially for technical people. The OP's points are valid and I feel the same way about _almost_ all of them. Even when I worked in the large corporate(s), I always hired people as if they were working for me in an intimate setting like a startup. Hiring capable, yet diverse, people always provided me with a winning team.

spiredigital• 15 years ago

So if I'm skilled, get things done, am intelligent, project vision and am passionate you'll hire me? Unfortunately, that makes me a perfect candidate to start my own company, so I think I'll probably do that instead. But thanks for the interview tips.....

j45• 15 years ago

"I am expecting you to be one of the 99%+ people who I know I won’t hire in the first 5 minutes. "

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For a doubter wanting to succeed, I'm already turned off. Smart people don't have to prove they're smart. Give them a problem and they'll leave your head spinning about why you didn't see it like that before.

I like looking at possibilities. It probably wouldn't work out that you know how to recognize someone great.

"You send me a stupidly long resume"

------------------------------------

I wouldn't send you a resume at all. I would send you a personal letter I wrote just for you outlining the things I've done and offer an actual, live, tour of everything I work on and the names and numbers of those clients.

You might not know how to process this calling of your bluff that you're in fact, ready to hire the perfect person.

"You can’t tell me why you like your current job"

-------------------------------------------------

If I'm talking to you I'm open to possibilities of liking more than one thing. It's up to you to tell me why and how what you're doing is so much different and not a glorified CRUD/Reporting app just like the other 40-50 apps I've built in the last 15 years.

How about I tell you that you're no different than any other company? You just want the answer to one question. Where is x at? That's all everyone wants with their own data.

"No career plans or vision"

---------------------------

You must have been the first person ever to predict what exactly would happen in the technology world, exactly in the last 20 years so you could chart a perfect plan, or vision through it.

Why has no one given you a Nobel Peace Prize? I can nominate you.

My vision is to be a very curious person about everything I come across. I like knowing how everything works, and doesn't work. You know what that does? I'm not afraid of anything that comes across my plate whether others say it can be solved or not.

My career plan is to do interesting work helping people get more done with less effort so they can do what they do best -- interact with other people. Do you fit that? I do.

I don't need a plan or a vision when I can engage my passion from the second I wake up to the second I go to sleep, 7 days a week. I've seen more plans and visions not work out (much like girlfriends who have "plans" and "timelines" that never work out) to know better than to expect life to work on my watch. All I can pick is a direction and give every situation my all.

Sadly, you probably don't get this.

"NO SKILLS"

-----------

Right. And you're qualified to measure them. If you did, you'd know there's no real thing as a skill. Just an aptitude with a technology that comes and goes to the latest tool.

Your brain might blue screen if I told you that .NET isn't a language, but 30+. Imagine how silly you must have sounded beating that .NET developer drum.

Most importantly, real developers can quickly learn anything they need to get anything done. That's all they do all the time to solve a problem under unreasonable circumstances, and a skill you can't seem to imagine.

"Answer my questions with conjecture"

-------------------------------------

I will call your bluff and tell you to hire me for 2 weeks unpaid. If I don't make you swoon like a fairytale it's probably not meant to be anyways.

That's the answer to all of those questions because I've done hiring for myself, and my customers with those same questions and they don't reveal as much about the person as you believe. I bet I could know more about you from how you load a dishwasher (telling each dish why you won't use it because it won't load itself into the dishwasher).

"How to Win the interview"

--------------------------

If you're having trouble finding people getting things done and that's a big deal for you to hire, I think you're still going to be collecting emotionally scarred baggage to put into future blog posts.

How are you the top player you're looking for others to be? We can only find and know deeply in others what we have and know deeply in ourselves. :)

Why I Won't Hire You

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