Job Applications and the Entitlement Complex

http://hicks-wright.net/blog/reddits-entitlement-complex/

by gecko • 17 years ago

23 24 17 years ago

abyssknight2• 17 years ago

"Similarly, I'll be more likely to say "hire" to the Eagle Scout, triathlete developer than a candidate who bludgeons me with all of their "accomplishments"."

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.

tghw4• 17 years ago

That probably could have been phrased better. Of course accomplishments in the field are important. What I mean is that if I'm kind of on the fence about a candidate, I'm more likely to say 'hire' if they show me who they are.

holaberlin• 17 years ago

... if they show you who they are and you like them. I noticed from the hiring process where I work that hiring decisions are often based on personal chemistry, sometimes without regard to qualifications. Or more precisely, qualifications are sometimes used to rationalize a hiring decision that has already been made on the basis of personal chemistry. And I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing -- I'm more likely to be productive if I like my coworkers.

abyssknight2• 17 years ago

That makes complete sense. Thanks for the clarity. I really do appreciate your candid response to both my comment and the others above & below. Knowing what someone is passionate about, and how they might fit into your company is something that I can definitely understand and value.

DenisM2• 17 years ago

So listing field-relelvant "accomplishments" is bad form at Fog Creek? Ahem. Good to know, I suppose.

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.

tedunangst• 17 years ago

If they are "accomplishments", as opposed to accomplishments, yeah, leave them off the resume.

tghw4• 17 years ago

It's probably my fault for the wording, but you're completely misreading that. All I'm saying is that someone with a personality has a better chance, all else equal. Without a cover letter, I can't know that.

Alex39172• 17 years ago

"Would you have hired the basketball player?"

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.

scott_s2• 17 years ago

You make it sound like athletes are only athletes. I am a hacker, researcher and an athlete - none are mutually exclusive.

smanek• 17 years ago

Link seems to be broken - anyone have a mirror?

tghw4• 17 years ago

Forgot to enable caching. Should be up now.

cdr• 17 years ago

Still timing out for me. I'll try later.

WilliamLP• 17 years ago

> One, which was mostly held over at Hacker News, generated good discussion on the value of cover letters in various hiring situations.

...

> 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.

davidw2• 17 years ago

There's a difference between "respect is not automatically given" and the kind of nastiness that reddit regularly dishes out. To put it succinctly, they pretty much fail the 'say it to my face' rule. There are plenty of things people here disagree about, just that they say it in a civil manner.

Periodic• 17 years ago

I think the difference is more that the people on HN have a lot more shared culture and shared values, meaning many are willing to make the same assumptions and see the same outcomes; while the people at reddit are more diverse and many are starting with totally different assumptions which would make your argument invalid.

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.

nir2• 17 years ago

Is there a Spolsky Complex over at Fog Creek? :) Come on, guys - there isn't that much to say about the software process that haven't been said already. A short post with some code is way better than another discussion of "how to hire people". More _why, less Yegge.

(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.)

raganwald• 17 years ago

"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."

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.

nir2• 17 years ago

Good point. Personally, I think that articles describing how you do X (and why) - assuming the writer has some history of successfully doing X - are more valuable than articles that try to define how X should be done. And even more valuable are articles about an actual thing you've done, and how you went about it. More show, less tell.

HeyLaughingBoy• 17 years ago

From what I've seen, it's mostly down to decision makers having good people instincts

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.

Job Applications and the Entitlement Complex

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