4 ms·

100%. Especially in a tough, competitive job market like today's, having a credible portfolio of work, published content, and external validation makes a huge d

100%. Especially in a tough, competitive job market like today's, having a credible portfolio of work, published content, and external validation makes a huge difference. It can take a good candidate to the top of the list, and when that list is a few dozen great applications, that's critical. As a hiring manager I weigh a candidate's public presence at 10~15% of my initial decision, even more if it's exceptionally impressive. And I hear from other hiring managers that they view this similarly. If you have good academic qualifications and a great record of past work experience ... guess what, there are several other candidates with great academic qualifications and an impressive work experience. Having a strong portfolio of public work can be what distinguishes you and gets you the opportunity to be invited to interview. One important note: just having publicly available content isn't enough. It also has to be credible and impressive. Original articles that demonstrate deep expertise and are valuable to others. Serious codebase you wrote yourself or made significant contributions to. Real achievements on things like Kaggle competitions. I sometimes see people including a link to a "business card" type website with their photo and links to their social media or a blurb about themselves. That doesn't impress and won't make a difference.

existencebox 3y ago
(Obvious disclaimer all views are my own and not my employer's) First, let me say that I don't disagree, pragmatically, with the truth of what you're saying, in terms of increasing your odds on the whole as a candidate. But that said, as another hiring manager, let me respectfully disagree with this as a strong hiring signal. I say this, to boot, as an engineer with an, in my experience, above average OSS contribution, research, and patent portfolio, although these things are a bit power-law-esque so obviously I'm nothing next to many. When I interview, I want to know you have a track record of high quality delivery, and are good for the skills you attest to. I can understand some folks looking at the public displays as a proxy to that, but I'd argue, at that point, indexing on the "public" part is orthogonal to what we're looking for it to display, and carries both false positives and negatives. To some degree we may be agreeing loudly here, where you'd say "well that's what them putting it in public is" but I'd worry that by caring about the public component vs. a more generalized examination of professionalism and accomplishment, we preclude folks who have no time or interest in curating that sort of profile. If I put myself into the absolute edge case of two candidates all things being equal but one seems to have also made a more visible portfolio of work, MAYBE, MAYBE that would move the needle in terms of establishing a degree of external validation, but I think I'd be looking _hard_ for other aspects to differentiate that would seem to have more direct applicability to our day-to-day needs, and am hard pressed to think of a time in the last few hundred interviews I've had to make such a choice without a stronger differentiator for any candidate above a very junior level.
- intellectronica 3y ago
  Didn't say that it's a hiring signal but rather that it's a filtering (get from application to being invited to interview) signal.
_sojh 3y ago
This may be the uncommon opinion, but hell no. Companies already want us working an amount of hours well beyond what our salaries should cover, being on-call, and often working well into the night for deadlines, and sometimes the entire night into the next work day when incidents arise. Then, when we need a job, we need to custom write a compelling “cover letter” that sucks the dick of some corporate entity in order to “tell us why you’d love to work for us” in a unique way that gets someone’s eyeballs in the 5 seconds of time your resume has to get attention or shredded. Why do I want to work for your company? Because I need to eat to survive and you’re hiring. That’s why. There may be more about your company I like, but at the end of the day I wouldn’t apply to work there if I didn’t need to in order to survive. Now, we need to be spending all of our time off, which if you work for a startup isn’t as much as you’d think, developing a blog with highly technical and relevant posts in an industry where all tech is a moving target with fads that move fast, Maintain open source projects that should not be “simple” in nature, speak at conferences, etc. That’s in addition to the never ending time commitment to continued learning we already have to do in order to stay somewhat relevant, while also trying to focus on specific tech enough to become a senior level expert or industry leader. No. Enough. Corporate America gets enough of our lives. The interview process from applying to offer is already a shit show circus of having to market yourself hoping you get picked to not become homeless, all while dealing with multiple rounds of lengthy calls with people on power trips who can often actually be threatened by an impressive portfolio and not recommend you for hire in order to secure their own role and status. If I work on open source it will be for me and not for a potential job (that won’t look at it or care anyway unless they can use you for it). You know what gets people offer letters? Word of mouth referrals coming from highly revered coworkers. If you have solid connections out there that are badass engineers who can vouch to their eng managers that you too are a badass engineer, the interview is essentially a formality.
- WJW 3y ago
  Tbh I don't think that is the uncommon opinion at all. In fact I agree with it myself. But it seems obvious that the more people share this opinion, the easier it will be to stand out if you do just a little bit extra.
- haspok 3y ago
Ygor 3y ago
Not necessarily disagreeing with this approach - but an interesting other side to this that should be considered: what about candidates who look great on their public profiles - real achievements and credible expertise - because they focus more on their public profile than their main job? Completely anecdotal and probably another extreme of the coin - but I'm curious if folks have some experience with this and how to spot this case.
- rewmie 3y ago
  > what about candidates who look great on their public profiles (...) because they focus more on their public profile than their main job? Not OP, but I'd want to chime in and state the following fact: if you're looking for a job, your goal is to sell yourself as the best choice that your potential employer can make. If you cannot make that case for your employer, why do you think any third party would make it for you? There are indeed a lot of paper tigers out there. I worked with a couple of them. They can interview better than most. If hiring managers have a limited amount of time to make that call, are you helping them find you by failing to present your case?
tgv 3y ago
What credible, impressive, publically available work did you do to become a hiring manager?
- intellectronica 3y ago
  Plenty. I have an unusual background with no education beyond high school and all-over-the-place career history, and everything I got in my career was on the strength of my work. It's amazing how many times my publicly available work was crucial for being able to get an opportunity.
drngdds 3y ago
Are you aware that this heavily biases your hiring process against parents and other people with little free time?

existencebox 3y ago

(Obvious disclaimer all views are my own and not my employer's) First, let me say that I don't disagree, pragmatically, with the truth of what you're saying, in terms of increasing your odds on the whole as a candidate. But that said, as another hiring manager, let me respectfully disagree with this as a strong hiring signal. I say this, to boot, as an engineer with an, in my experience, above average OSS contribution, research, and patent portfolio, although these things are a bit power-law-esque so obviously I'm nothing next to many. When I interview, I want to know you have a track record of high quality delivery, and are good for the skills you attest to. I can understand some folks looking at the public displays as a proxy to that, but I'd argue, at that point, indexing on the "public" part is orthogonal to what we're looking for it to display, and carries both false positives and negatives. To some degree we may be agreeing loudly here, where you'd say "well that's what them putting it in public is" but I'd worry that by caring about the public component vs. a more generalized examination of professionalism and accomplishment, we preclude folks who have no time or interest in curating that sort of profile. If I put myself into the absolute edge case of two candidates all things being equal but one seems to have also made a more visible portfolio of work, MAYBE, MAYBE that would move the needle in terms of establishing a degree of external validation, but I think I'd be looking _hard_ for other aspects to differentiate that would seem to have more direct applicability to our day-to-day needs, and am hard pressed to think of a time in the last few hundred interviews I've had to make such a choice without a stronger differentiator for any candidate above a very junior level.

intellectronica 3y ago
Didn't say that it's a hiring signal but rather that it's a filtering (get from application to being invited to interview) signal.

_sojh 3y ago

This may be the uncommon opinion, but hell no. Companies already want us working an amount of hours well beyond what our salaries should cover, being on-call, and often working well into the night for deadlines, and sometimes the entire night into the next work day when incidents arise. Then, when we need a job, we need to custom write a compelling “cover letter” that sucks the dick of some corporate entity in order to “tell us why you’d love to work for us” in a unique way that gets someone’s eyeballs in the 5 seconds of time your resume has to get attention or shredded. Why do I want to work for your company? Because I need to eat to survive and you’re hiring. That’s why. There may be more about your company I like, but at the end of the day I wouldn’t apply to work there if I didn’t need to in order to survive. Now, we need to be spending all of our time off, which if you work for a startup isn’t as much as you’d think, developing a blog with highly technical and relevant posts in an industry where all tech is a moving target with fads that move fast, Maintain open source projects that should not be “simple” in nature, speak at conferences, etc. That’s in addition to the never ending time commitment to continued learning we already have to do in order to stay somewhat relevant, while also trying to focus on specific tech enough to become a senior level expert or industry leader. No. Enough. Corporate America gets enough of our lives. The interview process from applying to offer is already a shit show circus of having to market yourself hoping you get picked to not become homeless, all while dealing with multiple rounds of lengthy calls with people on power trips who can often actually be threatened by an impressive portfolio and not recommend you for hire in order to secure their own role and status. If I work on open source it will be for me and not for a potential job (that won’t look at it or care anyway unless they can use you for it). You know what gets people offer letters? Word of mouth referrals coming from highly revered coworkers. If you have solid connections out there that are badass engineers who can vouch to their eng managers that you too are a badass engineer, the interview is essentially a formality.

WJW 3y ago
Tbh I don't think that is the uncommon opinion at all. In fact I agree with it myself. But it seems obvious that the more people share this opinion, the easier it will be to stand out if you do just a little bit extra.
haspok 3y ago

Ygor 3y ago

Not necessarily disagreeing with this approach - but an interesting other side to this that should be considered: what about candidates who look great on their public profiles - real achievements and credible expertise - because they focus more on their public profile than their main job? Completely anecdotal and probably another extreme of the coin - but I'm curious if folks have some experience with this and how to spot this case.

rewmie 3y ago
> what about candidates who look great on their public profiles (...) because they focus more on their public profile than their main job? Not OP, but I'd want to chime in and state the following fact: if you're looking for a job, your goal is to sell yourself as the best choice that your potential employer can make. If you cannot make that case for your employer, why do you think any third party would make it for you? There are indeed a lot of paper tigers out there. I worked with a couple of them. They can interview better than most. If hiring managers have a limited amount of time to make that call, are you helping them find you by failing to present your case?

tgv 3y ago

What credible, impressive, publically available work did you do to become a hiring manager?

intellectronica 3y ago
Plenty. I have an unusual background with no education beyond high school and all-over-the-place career history, and everything I got in my career was on the strength of my work. It's amazing how many times my publicly available work was crucial for being able to get an opportunity.

drngdds 3y ago

Are you aware that this heavily biases your hiring process against parents and other people with little free time?