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People who participated in ACM competitions is my (now no longer secret) secret weapon when forced to filter thousands of resumes. It’s probably the most stron
by mercutio2 7y ago
People who participated in ACM competitions is my (now no longer secret) secret weapon when forced to filter thousands of resumes.
It’s probably the most strongly correlated with liking and being able to do the job signal I’ve ever seen.
- codeisawesome 7y agoWould you say the same about Google CodeJam? Some people didn’t have the chance to go to college...
- mercutio2 7y agoProbably not, no. First, you’re not going to get your resume in front of me without a college degree, CS degree or equivalent experience is a bar that recruiters apply well before I’m involved. But as far as I can tell, Google CodeJam is an individual sport (I may be mistaken about that, but Google’s page won’t load in my browser, so I could only read the Wikipedia page about it). The key thing about the ACM contest is it requires BOTH effective cooperation with a teammate AND the desire to solve programming puzzles. Now, just to be clear, I’ve fired people who passed this bar; being a smart puzzle solver who’s social enough to collaborate is a great start, but it turns out lots of people just aren’t interested in shipping software. I still think ACM team participation is a strong signal, it just doesn’t cover the fact that being an adult means 90% of every job is boring, and not everyone is ready to do the boring stuff when they’re fresh out of college.
- codeisawesome 7y agoThat’s interesting info, thanks.
- wdroz 7y agoDiscussions about this in HN in 2015 [0]. [0] -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9324209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9324209