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Custom resume from someone who wanted to work at Airbnb (2015)
- vonklaus 11y agoThis is awesome and a great way to get hired. Finding a company(or several) you really want to work at and targeting them specifically with a tailor made strategy is probably better than a shotgun approach. Best of luck to Nina.
- kirykl 11y agoI work at mega corp. Finding a small company is key. A hiring manager here wouldn't even be able to submit this to HR. Maybe her resume which would go into a giant stack, as if submitted online to be reviewed by committee.
- nashashmi 11y agoFWIW, she did this in April and talks about it as her most successful campaign yet. I don't think she got a job at Airbnb, but she did get an interview. Unfortunately, the kinds of talent she showcases on her website is the kind of talent "RESERVED" for higher ups. I see "too much ambition" there and HR may not exactly be willing to approve of her. (Such is the impression I have received from working in big corporate like places.)
- rym_ 11y agoToo much ambition is bad?
- czinck 11y agoCan be, if it seems likely that the ambition would cause them to leave the company, especially if within a year or 2 of hiring. There are a lot of costs to hiring someone (both money-wise and in opportunity cost) and if they seem likely to leave in less than 2 years than the company could end up net-negative for hiring them.
- nashashmi 11y agoIn corporate environments, there is too much management bureaucracy. A person with lots of ambition entering a weak or insignificant subsection of the company can quickly feel out of place. However, when you have the veterans who have already done something great, an ambitious person may seem like a rare opportunity to do something big again. In the words of Ip Man, it is difficult for a student to find a great teacher. It is more difficult for a teacher to find a great student.
- nommm-nommm 11y agoIt can be. Too much ambition can lead to losing sight of practicality, burn out, high stress, anxiety, depression, high turnover, as well as losing site of the bigger picture.
- rconti 11y agoYour higher-ups must be more talented than most.
- dikdik 11y agoI thought this too. But I am in the middle of my job search (applied for several on the ASK HN thread) and the calls I have received back are for jobs I did not write a cover letter or at most a paragraph that I sent with my resume. The two companies where I spent almost a week each writing a cover letter and editing it until I thought it was perfect, have not even bothered to send me a "not interested." Obviously anecdotal, but not sure if I will continue to put in that effort as it does not seem to make a difference for me.
- pinewurst 11y agoI'm in the midst of the same process and have observed exactly the same.
- dikdik 11y agoWell now I have to eat some crow. I ended up hearing back from one of these companies a couple days after my original comment. It was very positive, too! Hang in there, my friend, need lots of patience for this.
- soared 11y agoI've had the same experience. Written ~10 unique cover letters (for positions I really wanted), done a couple 'practice problems' but the only positive responses have been from 4 sentence long emails I sent out to people who posted on Ask HN.
- andrewfromx 11y agoi like it better than people who come to interviews without even creating a _free_ account with the company they want a job with.
- blammail 11y agoIt definitely checks the "passion to work here" checkbox.
- danso 11y agoHoly shit, putting on my protective suit before all the "DONT BREAK MY BROWSER'S BACK BUTTON" comments come pouring in :). Actually, I don't think it would break browser interaction, but yeah, I think she should consider re-creating the page as text rather than screenshots of text. First of all, much easier to edit (and style) when it's just text. Second, makes it much easier for the employer to Cmd-F search for keywords. My other recommendation would be to have a prominent resumé link, and have it point to a standard PDF. Though maybe a linkedin link is good enough? I know Airbnb is probably more tech-forward than most employers, but there are still some HR shops that print out candidates' resumes to read by paper..and if your web-ready resumé does _not_ print out well...you may be at a disadvantage. While this may not be the most technically well-executed page...have to give credit to the applicant for even trying to do something different, even if she's not a web developer. I've often introduced web dev to newbies by just pointing out that when they really need to get something online for the whole world to see...an image works just as well in a jiffy. The Web isn't just about HTML, but about having that URL that anyone in the entire world can freely and relatively instantaneously access. It's something we take for granted as web developers but it's a very different paradigm for those who are not webdevs.
- djsumdog 11y agoUntil I read this comment, I didn't realize those were all images instead of text. O_o
- CydeWeys 11y agoI have a habit of compulsively selecting text on webpages for no real reason. So I quickly realize when pages like this one aren't actually using text, and then I find it so distracting that I can't actually pay attention to anything and just give up.
- maxerize 11y agoI thought I was the only one...
- 27182818284 11y agoI think this worked out for Loren back in the day, right? http://thewc.co/misc/loren-wants-to-work-for-airbnb/ http://thewc.co/misc/loren-wants-to-work-for-airbnb/
- pen2l 11y agoYeahhhh... No it didn't. I was very surprised to learn he didn't land a job after he got an interview from Airbnb. I mean, seriously Loren showed some pretty good skill with that site.
- cheez 11y agoHere's the way I think about this: imagine you did this for a woman you want to date. How would she react? My guess, the same psychology applies
- jaequery 11y agoam I the only one fascinated by the use of images instead of text on the site?
- jaequery 11y agolooks like was built on wix.
- Linkd 11y agoPerhaps to avoid search engine indexing?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- enraged_camel 11y agoI'm fascinated too, but not every text is an image. Certain ones (scroll to learn more, the navbar buttons, etc.) are pure text. Inconsistency is my trigger! :P
- LargeWu 11y agoIf she doesn't have CSS chops, then it makes a lot of sense. Much easier to build the components in photoshop or whatever and just get them stitched together. It doesn't look like she's interested in any sort of development role, so it's not a skill I would expect her to have.
- hathym 11y agodesperate times call for desperate measures
- EC1 11y agoDesperate times if you're bad at what you do.
- unexpected 11y agoSpeaking as someone who works in a Middle Eastern country, most of these countries would totally lose their minds if AirBnB made serious penetration into the Middle East. They absolutely do not want/tolerate these types of services (Uber also comes to mind).
- konradb 11y agoHow come these services are unwanted/not tolerated? This sounds interesting.
- inanutshellus 11y agoTotally fascinating! Why on earth would anyone care what someone else does with their home/car?
- extra88 11y agoI care what my closest neighbors do with their apartment as I share a floor, ceiling, and common spaces with them. If I owned a car, I might care what neighbors on my street do as it could reduce availability of on-street parking (there's little off-street parking here). But I think the main point was not about the citizenry but the governments in the Middle East. The governments there would care for the same reasons governments in other countries do, companies like Airbnb and Uber are violating and/or inciting violation of zoning laws, regulations, avoiding relevant taxes & fees, etc. Relative to countries like the U.S. they might "lose their shit" because it's more novel to have such disruption. Such outfits might also not fit well with their forms of corruption, reducing bribe opportunities (e.g. why pay a bribe to get a zoning change for a hotel when you can just call the rooms "apartments" and list them on Airbnb?).
- welanes 11y agoOh you!
- randlet 11y agoIt looks like this from earlier in 2015 and there's a follow up post on her blog[1]. Ultimately she didn't get a job at AirBNB but seems like she did end up landing a job elsewhere as a result. [1] http://eatwritewalk.com/2015/07/14/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/ http://eatwritewalk.com/2015/07/14/the-good-the-bad-and-the-...
- startupfounder 11y ago1. This has been submitted before, 302 days ago in fact: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nina4airbnb.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nina4airbnb.com 2. This is actually a case study in how to market yourself: https://web.archive.org/web/20150714043548/http://media.wix.com/ugd/25c031_fab734c9df1e4424a0476f4ce932b2c9.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20150714043548/http://media.wix.... 3. From the case study: These are the numbers: • 445,000+ Visits to Nina4Airbnb • Hundreds of thousands of Tweets and millions of impressions • 30,000+ New visitors to my personal blog • 14,000+ LinkedIn profile views • 2,000+ Emails and messages of support from around the world • Global media coverage • An interview with Airbnb • A pipeline of interviews with dozens of other high impact companies 4. This is her blog post about it: http://eatwritewalk.com/2015/07/14/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/ http://eatwritewalk.com/2015/07/14/the-good-the-bad-and-the-... 5. Fireside chat: https://youtu.be/tcjaqeXjKuc?t=7m14s https://youtu.be/tcjaqeXjKuc?t=7m14s
- misterbwong 11y agoThe blog post is worth a read. This part was especially interesting to me: the person interviewing me was saying he couldn’t contextualize my experience because i “hadn’t worked at facebook or google or studied at stanford”.
- kelukelugames 11y agoThat's awful if true. Especially as a direct quote. So much for being inclusive.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- tlxwiggum 11y agoSV is far from inclusive. Pedigree is every thing out here. Else, you're just in the 'minor' leagues trying to break in.
- 11y ago
- bitwize 11y agoI was half expecting some Aleksey Vayner bit of hilarity but there's actual skill on display here.
- eigenvalue 11y agoOff topic, but I feel terrible every time I see him referenced given his very tragic suicide as a result of the endless humiliation he suffered from his one youthful indiscretion.
- aresant 11y agoThis made the circles ~a year ago when it was published, unfortunately didn't work out at AirBNB for Nina. "Now, three months later, Mufleh tells Business Insider that Airbnb decided she wasn't the right candidate for the marketing role she had been considered for." (1) But it's been succesful enough as a marketing piece to get her interviewed far-and-wide and - like a good marketer - she wrote a white paper to double down on the success.(2) (1) http://www.businessinsider.com/the-resume-that-got-nina-mufleh-job-interviews-with-uber-linkedin-and-airbnb-2015-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-resume-that-got-nina-mufl... (2) http://www.nina4airbnb.com/#!whitepaper/c1e1m http://www.nina4airbnb.com/#!whitepaper/c1e1m
- mdturnerphys 11y agoThis should have "(2015)" in the title.
- dang 11y agoYup. Added.
- winter_blue 11y agoIt's strange she emphasizes "Bedouin Hospitality" because bedouins[1] comprise a really small percentage of the natives/citizens of the U.A.E., Qatar, Bahrain, etc. Bedouins are a seminomadic group of people sort of like the gypsies of Europe. Most of the citizens of Arab countries are not bedouins. They're permanently settled in one location/area, and they do not identify as bedouin. This cultural gaffe indicates that she should have done more research before making such a prominent statement. "Arab hospitality" or "Middle eastern hospitality" would have been more appropriate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedouin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedouin
- djscram 11y agoPerhaps, but that Bedouin hospitality is part of the self-identity of most Arab groups, I believe. (source, was married to a Palestinian from Kuwait for several years and was exposed to a variety of Arab cultures in U.S.)
- lemcoe9 11y agoI do believe that ATL (Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport) is the busiest airport in the world, and has been so for quite some time. Dubai, indeed, is not.
- jklehm 11y agoJust changed it up: http://www.ibtimes.com/chicago-ohare-knocks-atlanta-title-busiest-airport-world-1791484 http://www.ibtimes.com/chicago-ohare-knocks-atlanta-title-bu...
- extra88 11y agoLooks like it depends on how you count. Atlanta moves the most people, Chicago moves the most planes, Dubai move the most people between countries. Dubai is also #3 for the most people regardless of origin and destination which makes me think they'll remain tops for moving people internationally; all the other top airports would have a much larger proportion of domestic passengers (unless flights between Hong Kong and the rest of China don't count as domestic). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_busiest_airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_busiest_airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_world%27s_busiest_airports_by_passenger_traffic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_world%27s_busiest_...
- geverett 11y agoI love this and I'm still surprised AirBnb didn't take a chance on Nina, though she seems quite happy in her current job. I'm still not sure why AirBnb largely ignores the Middle East, especially considering the popularity of couchsurfing in the region. I watched AirBnb explode in popularity in Istanbul, where I lived 2009-2012, and saw many services like Pillow-style concierges spring up there well before we heard of them in the States. As Nina points out, Muslim hospitality is a natural cultural fit with the type of exchange that is core to the AirBnb experience.
- cpncrunch 11y ago>I love this and I'm still surprised AirBnb didn't take a chance on Nina She gives a possible reason in her blog: the person interviewing me was saying he couldn’t contextualize my experience because i “hadn’t worked at facebook or google or studied at stanford” Also, the all lower-case thing in her blog seems a bit overly pretentious. I know she use normal capitalisation in her "resume", but it's still a bit odd that someone who wants a marketing job is writing in that way.
- alexashka 11y agoThe bigger story here is that given that she's clearly way above average at what she does - she couldn't find a job for a year and did this as a last resort - an act of desperation. Which also did not work out - she ended up with Elance. If we measure success by job vs no job, then yes, otherwise... eh... People 'say' they want creativity, passion, etc - but in reality, most people who work in successful companies didn't get there based on merit but largely, just dumb luck. If you know you're in a cushy spot, do you want to hire people who are way better than you? Nope. The job market is broken, and most people you know are the reason why. The people holding down the jobs are interested in keeping it that way - or else they'd get replaced. Imagine a basketball player who could choose his/her own teammates and knew that if he/she gets kicked off the team, nobody will hire him/her ever again... They'd rather see the whole team destroyed, they'll get to collect cheques a while longer that way. With regular jobs - this is much less obvious but truth of the matter is - there are too many young people hungry to replace the old, that the only way to prevent the whole system from beginning to collapse is to impose classicisms in subtle and not so much ways.
- poof131 11y agoWhile what you say can often be true, it is a sign of weak leadership. Strong leaders promote the best people and thereby lift themselves and the whole team. Bad leaders see strong subordinates as threats to their power and suffocate the team. Not saying there aren’t a LOT of bad leaders out there, but what you describe isn’t a law everywhere. The bigger point I think is your first sentence. She’s way above average and couldn’t get a job for a year. “Woe is us, the shortage of qualified candidates“. Like I was telling one friend who was complaining about not being able to find someone good, “The reality is you can’t find someone good at the price you want to pay.” There’s a shortage of talent that wants to live in a one bedroom apartment with their family for scraps of equity while the boss lives in a mansion and makes millions, that’s the real shortage in SV.
- jbotttt 11y agoTo summarise your first paragraph #notallmanagers
- greggarious 11y agoI wouldn't hire a designer who's application does not degrade gracefully - had to allow JS just to see her resume.
- rco8786 11y agoGood thing she's not a designer then
- anonx 11y agoShe's designing social media strategies. Do they have to degrade gracefully, too?
- douche 11y agoSocial media strategies are pretty degraded to begin with...
- true_religion 11y agoAh although it's typical for designers to do this sort of thing, marketers also do it. She's a marketer. This is the equivalent of nice PDF, which is the output of most marketing departments to their higher ups.
- logfromblammo 11y agoAgreed. I viewed the source of the page and immediately saw one of my pet peeves--a blank document body that is dynamically replaced via script. As I typically browse unfamiliar sites with scripts disabled, loading a blank page is instant failure for the site. You build a barebones static page first, and then you add bells and whistles. But then, after enabling script, what do I see? Images filled with mostly text. Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrgh... I bet they weren't even crushed. Luckily for her, no business in its right mind would ask someone like me to evaluate any new marketing hires. Engineer-types and marketer-types in the same company are like mortal enemies, forced by circumstance to work together toward a common goal.
- systems 11y agoshe also worked for queen rania the wife of a tyrant i have very little sympathy for her we should take this more seriously, dont help tyrants ... or their wives
- hnal943 11y agoDoes it bother anyone else that the colored boxes on the campaign results page seem to have random widths? That combined with the text-as-images make the whole experience rather disconcerting. I understand she's not a designer, but as a marketer her presentation needs to be polished. As it is, the visual mistakes undermine the content.
- mazzer 11y agoAirbnb has a history of enthusiastic individuals creating microsite "resumes": * 2011: https://kathleenkowal.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/custom-airbnb-resume/ Kathleen went very physical, but it wasn't a good fit for Airbnb in 2011 * 2012: http://www.ericlovesairbnb.com/ Eric more or less pioneered the "microsite" approach [at Airbnb, at least] and is still there today * 2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2600264 Loren was not extended an offer, and has unfortunately taken down his "resume" site * 2014: http://www.katielovesairbnb.com/ Katie was successful and is working on killer stuff at Airbnb these days I'm sure there are more examples, but I thought it would be interesting to contextualize. Some of these folks got jobs there. As for the "hadn’t worked at facebook or google or studied at stanford" from the recruiter ... well, sometimes startups become BigCos and idiots are tasked with interview duties.