6 ms·

Things Hiring Managers Wish You Knew

22 points by edw519 16y ago

brazzy 16y ago
Should be "Things Hiring Managers Wish You Would Do Because It Would Make Their Jobs Easier, But Many Of Which May Hurt Your Chances Relative To People Who Don't Do Them."
- tptacek 16y ago
  Which of these recommendations do you think might hurt your chances?
  - praptak 16y ago
    Honestly talking about your weaknesses.
    - notauser 16y ago
      That depends how you do it. This is a good example of being both honest and positive: "I know that I'm a bit weak at financial forecasting, so I'm currently studying for a certification. Actually I'm finding it really interesting and I'm pretty confident I'll crack it soon."
    - iamdave 16y ago
      "I know the usual advice is to take something only slightly bad and turn it into something positive. But I don't think that's honest. So I guess my problem is that I don't like to play games with interviewers."
    - tptacek 16y ago
      Meh. The "turn a weakness into a strength" trick is such a cliche that I'm confident managers were seeing through it in 1950. So, if you're asking this question and you try to dodge it, what you're really communicating is "I'm not comfortable talking about my weaknesses", which is itself a weakness. The one thing I will say for being ``honest'' about your weaknesses: it allows you to control the conversation. Common sense: if you torture and kill squirrels in your spare time for fun, don't be honest about that.
  - patio11 16y ago
    A cynical man might read "You should address being overqualified in your cover letter" as "Please compromise your salary negotiating position in return for, well, absolutely nothing." Maybe I'm being overly cynical. We need to hear things like: “At this stage in my career, having a job I enjoy is more important to me than salary. I have no problem earning less than I have in the past. Or maybe not!
    - tptacek 16y ago
      The only problem I had with this article is that it mistakes the purpose of a resume, as would any advice about salary negotiation prior to receiving an offer. As we both well know: the sole purpose a resume is to get an interview. So, yes, I read that sentence carefully; I almost yapped about it, except that the last suggested sentence didn't make the huge mistake of opening up salary negotiation before interviewing.
- hga 16y ago
  Could you be more specific? I didn't see many or maybe any of these. Of course, it depends on your goals. Get a job, any job, or get one with a good fit that might last? Perhaps "We need to know your real weaknesses." But she's stating it as a fact that's hard to dispute and tells you how not to reply.
hga 16y ago
A very good set of recommendations. Here's a few of the less usual ones: "You should address being overqualified in your cover letter." "We may check references beyond your list. "Some of us actually care about candidates." For the latter the author decries firms that don't respond to candidates they pass over. He's right that it's inexcusable and that a few do care enough. Unfortunately it's very few, but there are some.
jbarciauskas 16y ago
A couple disagreements: We'd like a thank-you note right away. Honestly, this level of formality would drive me bonkers and I would be more likely to think of the candidate as an overachiever type Reference-checkers can call anyone you've worked for or who might know you, even if they aren't on the list you provide This just seems rude and invasive. I'm all for due diligence but if you don't want to be stalked by your candidates, don't stalk them back And I want to emphasize this one, as someone who has had multiple candidates come in over a half an hour early in the last month: You can be too early to the interview. Really. If you're that early, go for a walk. Find a coffee shop. Anything but interrupting the pre-arranged schedule and making everyone in the office uncomfortable while you sit in the waiting area that no one ever uses.
- mattm 16y ago
  >We'd like a thank-you note right away. They want a thank-you note for doing their job? Does the interviewee also get a thank-you note for taking time out of their day to go see them?
  - bcaulf 16y ago
    If I sent a thank you note to my interviewer, I would certainly expect a thank you note back. http://www.theonion.com/articles/gratitude-for-thankyou-note-plunges-friends-into-i,5966 http://www.theonion.com/articles/gratitude-for-thankyou-note...
- tomjen3 16y ago
  It isn't even about formality, it is about power. By sending a thank-you note, you acknowledge that they did something for you that you should be grateful for but all that happened was that you entered into negotiations over a possible future sale. Do you get a thank-you note from your grocer?
inmygarage 16y ago
I think this article represents an extremely old-school view of hiring and job searches. Who writes cover letters any more? Granted, my view is completely biased toward tech companies, but believing that if you just have a "really good cover letter" that it will help you land your dream job I think is foolish. All the people I know who have awesome jobs tried to meet as many people as they could from the company where they wanted to work (outside of the recruiting dept.) and made an impression by showing off actual skills - stuff they've worked on - as opposed to a great cover letter/resume.
- RyanGWU82 16y ago
  In my experience, the cover letter is still quite important. Last time I looked for jobs (a year ago) I cold-contacted some "hot" startups and included a cover letter and resume. The cover letter was very specific to each position, and detailed my fit for the position and my enthusiasm for the company. It was incredibly time-consuming to write those, but it paid off: I got a phone interview at nearly every place I applied.
  - dlo 16y ago
    I second that. A great cover letter won't be the sole reason you were hired for a job (or even a big reason), but it will be a big reason you were called in for the interview. And from my own experience, people who take the time to write a cover letter also tend to be people who do better on the subsequent interview (probably because candidates will only take the time write a cover letter for job positions that they're genuinely qualified to fill). Joel Spolsky offers an interesting perspective (which I believe is right on) in his piece, "Getting Your Resume Read." http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ResumeRead.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ResumeRead.html
  - edge17 16y ago
    cover letters are sometimes the only way to convey enthusiasm. conveying enthusiasm in a resume is quite difficult
- tptacek 16y ago
  Virtually everyone who has applied to Matasano has written a "cover letter" of some sort. The only ones who don't are clearly resume spammers. So the answer to your question is, from what I can tell, "everybody". You're right that resumes are a crappy way to land a great job. To get a great job, pick 5 companies you desperately want to work for, ignore their job reqs, and track down the person inside each that runs the group that could hire you. Use your friends to help you do this, or to come up with ideas for companies to work for. Do not simply bounce around your network; that's a great way to lose 10 years of your life in mediocre roles. Notice how some of your friends have f'ing awesome gigs and some of them don't. But: either do the resume/"job application" thing right, or don't bother doing it at all. Why waste your time? If the job is worth getting, it's worth playing the interview/negotiation game 100% perfectly.
raffi 16y ago
I like the end point about the question your resumé should answer: what did you do that someone else in the same job wouldn't have. That's a nice twist.
j_baker 16y ago
I'm pretty sure every candidate knows #1. But candidates that are too honest rarely get anywhere. I'm not saying you necessarily need to lie. I'm just saying that interviewing is the time to sell yourself more than it is the time to be completely honest.
patio11 16y ago
Something rubs me wrong about "Please don't call more than once a week. We don't talk to candidates not selected for further interviews. Where is my thank-you letter?"
- mseebach 16y ago
  I couldn't find that line in the article?
  - hga 16y ago
    It's a summation and it's not accurate, in specifics like how the author actually decries the common practice of not "talk[ing] to candidates not selected for further interviews" and in why a thank you letter was encouraged.
- tptacek 16y ago
  It's not fair, but it's (almost) true. Fair or not: send the silly letter. I barely read them but I remember the people who send them and chalk up an informal "professionalism" point for it. The "don't call more than once a week" advice is lethal and you follow it at your peril. • Figure out exactly how often it's reasonable to contact the hiring manager. • If they go even a little bit dark, contact them at least that often. Don't nag. Nagging is bad. Rub a couple brain cells together and come up with valid reasons for getting back in touch, and time-box that Q&A so that you and the employer have a notion of when the next time you'll talk is. • In any position you actually want, you cannot lose points for asking questions and keeping in touch. • In any position anywhere, you can lose points for going dark yourself, even if nobody asks you any questions. • It's your job to create a demand for your talents. If you give a potential employer the option on hiring you, they'll hold the option until they have to execute it, and you can't blame them for that. This one (overblown) recommendation is the piece of advice I feel most compelled to offer. It is, I think, so critically misunderstood that it is practically the only reason I jump into job-hunting discussions online. People treat job applications like a junior high school prom. They sit on one side of the gym, and the managers sit on the other. People, that is, except for the ones who know how to land roles.
jrockway 16y ago
I don't care about any of these things when I interview people. I know what position I am in -- sheer desperation. I know what position the candidate is in -- tons of other opportunities if they don't like mine. I'm not going to disqualify someone who is too casual or who arrives too early or who doesn't send a thank-you note or who doesn't have a cover letter. All I care about are programming ability and whether or not the person is going to be easy to work with.
- skybrian 16y ago
  If you get someone who seems not to care or makes you uneasy then you're not going to hire them, right? The thank you note is a little bit old school, but how else do you figure out if they're going to be easy to work with, if not how they behave on the interview?
  - jrockway 16y ago
    Right, that's what I care about. I don't care if they are running late or if they have a beautifully typeset resume. That stuff just doesn't matter. How they answer interview questions does matter.
    - tobtoh 16y ago
      If they run late, or have a badly formatted resume, it shows their lack of attention to detail or poor planning/preparation. That is exactly the qualities I don't want in an employee. I've interviewed hundreds of people in my time as a manager and employed around 100 people (probably around a 10 to 1, interview to hire ratio average) and one thing I've learnt is the small issues are important things to note because they are the early warning indicators of issues. Being a good employee and fit for the team is much much more than simply answering a question correctly.
      - jrockway 16y ago
        I disagree. Not being able to find a building in a fixed amount of time is not a skill I care about. A misformatted resume doesn't really mean anything except that Word is buggy. I'm hiring a programmer, not a typesetter. Anyway, YMMV.
Enlightenment 16y ago
We need to write an article called "Things We Wish Hiring Managers and HR Losers Knew!". Some companies have the sht together and the HR department is incredible, but others are total morons and have a fcking clue what they are doing. Dating is a 2-way street, so the ones looking for a job notice how things are run in your HR department and hiring process. I can't believe how many companies that I wouldn't even want a job because their HR dept or hiring process was fcked up!!! To everyone in Human Resources and Head Hunters...you need to fcking understand the technology in your company...you don't need to know how to do everyones jobs, but you better have some reasonable concepts. The companeis that hire some stupid bimbo to push papers are the worst!!
donaldc 16y ago
There is no indication of what qualifies the author, Alison Green, to make statements about what hiring managers want. Presumably, she's a hiring manager of sorts, but the article doesn't actually state this. It is therefore impossible to know what hiring contexts she thinks this list is appropriate for. Certainly, in any hiring situation I've been connected with (as a software engineer), the main concern has always been, "Can they actually design and write code that works?", with a strong side of "Can they work with and get along with the existing engineers?". Nobody cares if they arrive slightly early or what their greatest weakness is. I suspect this list is made for interviewees fairly new to the job market who lack any skills that are in high demand.
mkramlich 16y ago
Many good points in the OA but overall I don't think it jives well with the software field. Because in software there's such a lop-sided balance of power in favor of the good programmer (due to talent rarity and availabilty) that it's much more important that the candidate has the skills, talent and availability. If a candidate sucks or is a faker the power lies with the potential employer. Otherwise it lies with the candidate. I also think the OA's advice misses out on the notion that it is a two-way street: the employer is also applying to the candidate for the priviledge of getting that person's future time and commitment, and taking on the opportunity costs that candidate will incur if they end up working for you.

22 points by edw519 16y ago

Should be "Things Hiring Managers Wish You Would Do Because It Would Make Their Jobs Easier, But Many Of Which May Hurt Your Chances Relative To People Who Don't Do Them."

tptacek 16y ago
Which of these recommendations do you think might hurt your chances?
- praptak 16y ago
  Honestly talking about your weaknesses.
  - notauser 16y ago
    That depends how you do it. This is a good example of being both honest and positive: "I know that I'm a bit weak at financial forecasting, so I'm currently studying for a certification. Actually I'm finding it really interesting and I'm pretty confident I'll crack it soon."
  - iamdave 16y ago
    "I know the usual advice is to take something only slightly bad and turn it into something positive. But I don't think that's honest. So I guess my problem is that I don't like to play games with interviewers."
  - tptacek 16y ago
    Meh. The "turn a weakness into a strength" trick is such a cliche that I'm confident managers were seeing through it in 1950. So, if you're asking this question and you try to dodge it, what you're really communicating is "I'm not comfortable talking about my weaknesses", which is itself a weakness. The one thing I will say for being ``honest'' about your weaknesses: it allows you to control the conversation. Common sense: if you torture and kill squirrels in your spare time for fun, don't be honest about that.
- patio11 16y ago
  A cynical man might read "You should address being overqualified in your cover letter" as "Please compromise your salary negotiating position in return for, well, absolutely nothing." Maybe I'm being overly cynical. We need to hear things like: “At this stage in my career, having a job I enjoy is more important to me than salary. I have no problem earning less than I have in the past. Or maybe not!
  - tptacek 16y ago
    The only problem I had with this article is that it mistakes the purpose of a resume, as would any advice about salary negotiation prior to receiving an offer. As we both well know: the sole purpose a resume is to get an interview. So, yes, I read that sentence carefully; I almost yapped about it, except that the last suggested sentence didn't make the huge mistake of opening up salary negotiation before interviewing.
hga 16y ago
Could you be more specific? I didn't see many or maybe any of these. Of course, it depends on your goals. Get a job, any job, or get one with a good fit that might last? Perhaps "We need to know your real weaknesses." But she's stating it as a fact that's hard to dispute and tells you how not to reply.

hga 16y ago

A very good set of recommendations. Here's a few of the less usual ones: "You should address being overqualified in your cover letter." "We may check references beyond your list. "Some of us actually care about candidates." For the latter the author decries firms that don't respond to candidates they pass over. He's right that it's inexcusable and that a few do care enough. Unfortunately it's very few, but there are some.

jbarciauskas 16y ago

A couple disagreements: We'd like a thank-you note right away. Honestly, this level of formality would drive me bonkers and I would be more likely to think of the candidate as an overachiever type Reference-checkers can call anyone you've worked for or who might know you, even if they aren't on the list you provide This just seems rude and invasive. I'm all for due diligence but if you don't want to be stalked by your candidates, don't stalk them back And I want to emphasize this one, as someone who has had multiple candidates come in over a half an hour early in the last month: You can be too early to the interview. Really. If you're that early, go for a walk. Find a coffee shop. Anything but interrupting the pre-arranged schedule and making everyone in the office uncomfortable while you sit in the waiting area that no one ever uses.

mattm 16y ago
>We'd like a thank-you note right away. They want a thank-you note for doing their job? Does the interviewee also get a thank-you note for taking time out of their day to go see them?
- bcaulf 16y ago
  If I sent a thank you note to my interviewer, I would certainly expect a thank you note back. http://www.theonion.com/articles/gratitude-for-thankyou-note-plunges-friends-into-i,5966 http://www.theonion.com/articles/gratitude-for-thankyou-note...
tomjen3 16y ago
It isn't even about formality, it is about power. By sending a thank-you note, you acknowledge that they did something for you that you should be grateful for but all that happened was that you entered into negotiations over a possible future sale. Do you get a thank-you note from your grocer?

inmygarage 16y ago

I think this article represents an extremely old-school view of hiring and job searches. Who writes cover letters any more? Granted, my view is completely biased toward tech companies, but believing that if you just have a "really good cover letter" that it will help you land your dream job I think is foolish. All the people I know who have awesome jobs tried to meet as many people as they could from the company where they wanted to work (outside of the recruiting dept.) and made an impression by showing off actual skills - stuff they've worked on - as opposed to a great cover letter/resume.

RyanGWU82 16y ago
In my experience, the cover letter is still quite important. Last time I looked for jobs (a year ago) I cold-contacted some "hot" startups and included a cover letter and resume. The cover letter was very specific to each position, and detailed my fit for the position and my enthusiasm for the company. It was incredibly time-consuming to write those, but it paid off: I got a phone interview at nearly every place I applied.
- dlo 16y ago
  I second that. A great cover letter won't be the sole reason you were hired for a job (or even a big reason), but it will be a big reason you were called in for the interview. And from my own experience, people who take the time to write a cover letter also tend to be people who do better on the subsequent interview (probably because candidates will only take the time write a cover letter for job positions that they're genuinely qualified to fill). Joel Spolsky offers an interesting perspective (which I believe is right on) in his piece, "Getting Your Resume Read." http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ResumeRead.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ResumeRead.html
- edge17 16y ago
  cover letters are sometimes the only way to convey enthusiasm. conveying enthusiasm in a resume is quite difficult
tptacek 16y ago
Virtually everyone who has applied to Matasano has written a "cover letter" of some sort. The only ones who don't are clearly resume spammers. So the answer to your question is, from what I can tell, "everybody". You're right that resumes are a crappy way to land a great job. To get a great job, pick 5 companies you desperately want to work for, ignore their job reqs, and track down the person inside each that runs the group that could hire you. Use your friends to help you do this, or to come up with ideas for companies to work for. Do not simply bounce around your network; that's a great way to lose 10 years of your life in mediocre roles. Notice how some of your friends have f'ing awesome gigs and some of them don't. But: either do the resume/"job application" thing right, or don't bother doing it at all. Why waste your time? If the job is worth getting, it's worth playing the interview/negotiation game 100% perfectly.

raffi 16y ago

I like the end point about the question your resumé should answer: what did you do that someone else in the same job wouldn't have. That's a nice twist.

j_baker 16y ago

I'm pretty sure every candidate knows #1. But candidates that are too honest rarely get anywhere. I'm not saying you necessarily need to lie. I'm just saying that interviewing is the time to sell yourself more than it is the time to be completely honest.

patio11 16y ago

Something rubs me wrong about "Please don't call more than once a week. We don't talk to candidates not selected for further interviews. Where is my thank-you letter?"

mseebach 16y ago
I couldn't find that line in the article?
- hga 16y ago
  It's a summation and it's not accurate, in specifics like how the author actually decries the common practice of not "talk[ing] to candidates not selected for further interviews" and in why a thank you letter was encouraged.
tptacek 16y ago
It's not fair, but it's (almost) true. Fair or not: send the silly letter. I barely read them but I remember the people who send them and chalk up an informal "professionalism" point for it. The "don't call more than once a week" advice is lethal and you follow it at your peril. • Figure out exactly how often it's reasonable to contact the hiring manager. • If they go even a little bit dark, contact them at least that often. Don't nag. Nagging is bad. Rub a couple brain cells together and come up with valid reasons for getting back in touch, and time-box that Q&A so that you and the employer have a notion of when the next time you'll talk is. • In any position you actually want, you cannot lose points for asking questions and keeping in touch. • In any position anywhere, you can lose points for going dark yourself, even if nobody asks you any questions. • It's your job to create a demand for your talents. If you give a potential employer the option on hiring you, they'll hold the option until they have to execute it, and you can't blame them for that. This one (overblown) recommendation is the piece of advice I feel most compelled to offer. It is, I think, so critically misunderstood that it is practically the only reason I jump into job-hunting discussions online. People treat job applications like a junior high school prom. They sit on one side of the gym, and the managers sit on the other. People, that is, except for the ones who know how to land roles.

jrockway 16y ago

I don't care about any of these things when I interview people. I know what position I am in -- sheer desperation. I know what position the candidate is in -- tons of other opportunities if they don't like mine. I'm not going to disqualify someone who is too casual or who arrives too early or who doesn't send a thank-you note or who doesn't have a cover letter. All I care about are programming ability and whether or not the person is going to be easy to work with.

skybrian 16y ago
If you get someone who seems not to care or makes you uneasy then you're not going to hire them, right? The thank you note is a little bit old school, but how else do you figure out if they're going to be easy to work with, if not how they behave on the interview?
- jrockway 16y ago
  Right, that's what I care about. I don't care if they are running late or if they have a beautifully typeset resume. That stuff just doesn't matter. How they answer interview questions does matter.
  - tobtoh 16y ago
    If they run late, or have a badly formatted resume, it shows their lack of attention to detail or poor planning/preparation. That is exactly the qualities I don't want in an employee. I've interviewed hundreds of people in my time as a manager and employed around 100 people (probably around a 10 to 1, interview to hire ratio average) and one thing I've learnt is the small issues are important things to note because they are the early warning indicators of issues. Being a good employee and fit for the team is much much more than simply answering a question correctly.
    - jrockway 16y ago
      I disagree. Not being able to find a building in a fixed amount of time is not a skill I care about. A misformatted resume doesn't really mean anything except that Word is buggy. I'm hiring a programmer, not a typesetter. Anyway, YMMV.

Enlightenment 16y ago

We need to write an article called "Things We Wish Hiring Managers and HR Losers Knew!". Some companies have the sht together and the HR department is incredible, but others are total morons and have a fcking clue what they are doing. Dating is a 2-way street, so the ones looking for a job notice how things are run in your HR department and hiring process. I can't believe how many companies that I wouldn't even want a job because their HR dept or hiring process was fcked up!!! To everyone in Human Resources and Head Hunters...you need to fcking understand the technology in your company...you don't need to know how to do everyones jobs, but you better have some reasonable concepts. The companeis that hire some stupid bimbo to push papers are the worst!!

donaldc 16y ago

There is no indication of what qualifies the author, Alison Green, to make statements about what hiring managers want. Presumably, she's a hiring manager of sorts, but the article doesn't actually state this. It is therefore impossible to know what hiring contexts she thinks this list is appropriate for. Certainly, in any hiring situation I've been connected with (as a software engineer), the main concern has always been, "Can they actually design and write code that works?", with a strong side of "Can they work with and get along with the existing engineers?". Nobody cares if they arrive slightly early or what their greatest weakness is. I suspect this list is made for interviewees fairly new to the job market who lack any skills that are in high demand.

mkramlich 16y ago

Many good points in the OA but overall I don't think it jives well with the software field. Because in software there's such a lop-sided balance of power in favor of the good programmer (due to talent rarity and availabilty) that it's much more important that the candidate has the skills, talent and availability. If a candidate sucks or is a faker the power lies with the potential employer. Otherwise it lies with the candidate. I also think the OA's advice misses out on the notion that it is a two-way street: the employer is also applying to the candidate for the priviledge of getting that person's future time and commitment, and taking on the opportunity costs that candidate will incur if they end up working for you.