6 ms·

The inside story of how 382 recruiters pursued an imaginary engineer

78 points by jkopelman 14y ago

jmount 14y ago
Would this be as laugh-riot funny if somebody posted a fake job offering just to watch people squirm?
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  That's not a valid comparison. As I understand it, the Pete London persona didn't advertise himself as looking for work - recruiters effectively started spamming him. If someone created an entire fake company, and then laughed at engineers who tried to contact them to find out if they were hiring or not, that would probably not be very funny.
- mdanger 14y ago
  Already been done, actually: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/get-a-job-the-craigslist-experiment/ http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/get-a-job-the-craigslist-expe...
- drakeandrews 14y ago
  A bunch of people I grew up with created a website for a fake, unpaid media internship. It got several hundred applicants, including three people who tracked down one of the peoples phone number and called him, demanding an interview.
- slurgfest 14y ago
  Happens all the time, e.g. with postings for positions that are really intended to be filled internally, or with perpetual postings which do nothing but solicit people to go into a resume pool when there is no specific job. It wouldn't be funny because it's not even surprising for job searchers to be jerked around, just normal
- Fundlab 14y ago
  I know a colleague who tried this not for the laughs but to compare and refine his resume
- chrisbennet 14y ago
  There is a book "The Ax" about a laid off paper engineer who posts a fake job ad in order to see who his competition is. Then he kills them in order to increase his chances of getting a job.
vellum 14y ago
Wherry's original blog post was better. She has a nice graph of where she sourced all of her Javascript dev recruits. http://www.ewherry.com/2012/06/the-recruiter-honeypot/ http://www.ewherry.com/2012/06/the-recruiter-honeypot/
- enjalot 14y ago
  I also found this blog post hard to read, random missing punctuation and grammar mistakes made it hard to follow. I don't see much new in this one.
purplelobster 14y ago
Or, how about instead of trying to find the bestest Javascript ninja, you take a promising engineer and, I don't know, teach them? Whatever you might think, web technologies are NOT very difficult to learn. Most start-ups work on pretty trivial problems. People in the start-up crowd seem to believe that the smartest people on the planet are building web start-ups. Think again.
- marcuswestin 14y ago
  We did plenty of that as well :)
- at-fates-hands 14y ago
  The other great part of teaching someone is you can usually get decent talent at a lower cost, and they can learn your process and standards. I've been in a few places where devs come in and they feel like they own the place and everybody should get in line with how they code the process they feel is right.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- warbee 14y ago
  I studied Religious Studies in college, but have always loved coding (started with Basic, Pascal, C, into others) in my free time. One of my favorite jobs early on was where the lead of the department took the time to teach the department perl. It helped frame some of the basics of web-app development for me, and ultimately helped to pave the way to exploring other technologies. Having since moved to the bay area, I feel like this sentiment is shared, but hardly practiced. I've interviewed at a few startups, and can answer the typical fizz-buzz-baz problem. However, I feel like that potential is overlooked for someone that can hit the ground running. (Granted, there's probably a slew of other reasons for not getting an offer). Overall, would love to be mentored and am pursuing such a relationship now with my current employer.
- nir 14y ago
  Well said. Seems like companies are starting believe their own job ads, searching for Ninjas and Rock Stars and obsessing about hiring processes. We're not doing brain surgery, and we're not flying to the moon. The JS frameworks mentioned in the article can be learned on the job in a matter of weeks by any reasonably competent and motivated programmer, days by a good one.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
tapatio 14y ago
"Do not do what I did". Sure. Whatever you say boss.
pnathan 14y ago
I wonder what kind of insights could be gained by configuring a few Linkedin profiles with these characteristics: - C++ developer - Ruby developer - Java developer - COBOL developer Feed in similar backgrounds, experiences, ages, and see which one picks up the most interest, and what kind of interest. It'd be a bit mean to the recruiters out there, but, hmm... :-)
- wilfra 14y ago
  The degree from Stanford and the job at Meebo were definitely what got the attention - not the skills listed. Recruiters are heavily biased on what school you went to and which companies you have worked for.
swayvil 14y ago
How hard would it be to create an "imaginary engineer" generator? I would like to have a million fake engineers out there. I just want to see the industry burn.

78 points by jkopelman 14y ago

jmount 14y ago

Would this be as laugh-riot funny if somebody posted a fake job offering just to watch people squirm?

pavel_lishin 14y ago
That's not a valid comparison. As I understand it, the Pete London persona didn't advertise himself as looking for work - recruiters effectively started spamming him. If someone created an entire fake company, and then laughed at engineers who tried to contact them to find out if they were hiring or not, that would probably not be very funny.
mdanger 14y ago
Already been done, actually: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/get-a-job-the-craigslist-experiment/ http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/get-a-job-the-craigslist-expe...
drakeandrews 14y ago
A bunch of people I grew up with created a website for a fake, unpaid media internship. It got several hundred applicants, including three people who tracked down one of the peoples phone number and called him, demanding an interview.
slurgfest 14y ago
Happens all the time, e.g. with postings for positions that are really intended to be filled internally, or with perpetual postings which do nothing but solicit people to go into a resume pool when there is no specific job. It wouldn't be funny because it's not even surprising for job searchers to be jerked around, just normal
Fundlab 14y ago
I know a colleague who tried this not for the laughs but to compare and refine his resume
chrisbennet 14y ago
There is a book "The Ax" about a laid off paper engineer who posts a fake job ad in order to see who his competition is. Then he kills them in order to increase his chances of getting a job.

vellum 14y ago

Wherry's original blog post was better. She has a nice graph of where she sourced all of her Javascript dev recruits. http://www.ewherry.com/2012/06/the-recruiter-honeypot/ http://www.ewherry.com/2012/06/the-recruiter-honeypot/

enjalot 14y ago
I also found this blog post hard to read, random missing punctuation and grammar mistakes made it hard to follow. I don't see much new in this one.

purplelobster 14y ago

Or, how about instead of trying to find the bestest Javascript ninja, you take a promising engineer and, I don't know, teach them? Whatever you might think, web technologies are NOT very difficult to learn. Most start-ups work on pretty trivial problems. People in the start-up crowd seem to believe that the smartest people on the planet are building web start-ups. Think again.

marcuswestin 14y ago
We did plenty of that as well :)
at-fates-hands 14y ago
The other great part of teaching someone is you can usually get decent talent at a lower cost, and they can learn your process and standards. I've been in a few places where devs come in and they feel like they own the place and everybody should get in line with how they code the process they feel is right.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
warbee 14y ago
I studied Religious Studies in college, but have always loved coding (started with Basic, Pascal, C, into others) in my free time. One of my favorite jobs early on was where the lead of the department took the time to teach the department perl. It helped frame some of the basics of web-app development for me, and ultimately helped to pave the way to exploring other technologies. Having since moved to the bay area, I feel like this sentiment is shared, but hardly practiced. I've interviewed at a few startups, and can answer the typical fizz-buzz-baz problem. However, I feel like that potential is overlooked for someone that can hit the ground running. (Granted, there's probably a slew of other reasons for not getting an offer). Overall, would love to be mentored and am pursuing such a relationship now with my current employer.
nir 14y ago
Well said. Seems like companies are starting believe their own job ads, searching for Ninjas and Rock Stars and obsessing about hiring processes. We're not doing brain surgery, and we're not flying to the moon. The JS frameworks mentioned in the article can be learned on the job in a matter of weeks by any reasonably competent and motivated programmer, days by a good one.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

tapatio 14y ago

"Do not do what I did". Sure. Whatever you say boss.

pnathan 14y ago

I wonder what kind of insights could be gained by configuring a few Linkedin profiles with these characteristics: - C++ developer - Ruby developer - Java developer - COBOL developer Feed in similar backgrounds, experiences, ages, and see which one picks up the most interest, and what kind of interest. It'd be a bit mean to the recruiters out there, but, hmm... :-)

wilfra 14y ago
The degree from Stanford and the job at Meebo were definitely what got the attention - not the skills listed. Recruiters are heavily biased on what school you went to and which companies you have worked for.

swayvil 14y ago

How hard would it be to create an "imaginary engineer" generator? I would like to have a million fake engineers out there. I just want to see the industry burn.