6 ms·

"What single project or task would you consider your most significant accomplishment in your career to date?" If this is the best question you can ask people,

by pg 13y ago

"What single project or task would you consider your most significant accomplishment in your career to date?" If this is the best question you can ask people, we got really lucky, because this is the essential question on all YC's application forms for events (e.g. Startup School) and has been one of the core questions on the YC application since the beginning.

danmaz74 13y ago
On the other hand, in my experience, the question works much better when asked in person than in writing. Just seeing the face of the interviewee while you ask the question lets you understand if there is real passion for that kind of job; the answers I get in writing these days (ie by email while screening people) are unfortunately much less telling :(
- jseliger 13y ago
  Just seeing the face of the interviewee while you ask the question lets you understand if there is real passion for that kind of job; Is this deceptively informative? I hate to cite Malcolm Gladwell but I do think Blink shows us that first impressions and fleeting impressions can be dangerous and wrong. What do we think "real passion" is? Does it really show on the face, or do we only think we know? Can being flustered or off-kilter skew the impressions we give?
  - danmaz74 13y ago
    To be clear, I don't care what "real passion" really is. I just care about selecting a candidate who is interested in what we work on, and not just for the money. Interviewing is just a screening process, and of course fluster increases the risk of a false negative, but in that situation I'm much more concerned with false positives, and in that respect: No, watching also the body language for that kind of question isn't deceptively informative; it's much more informative than reading the same answer from a written text.
  - afterburner 13y ago
    I thought Blink primarily showed how first impressions can be more correct than considered and careful reasoning.
    - czep 13y ago
      That was my first impression too.
      - afterburner 13y ago
        Funny. Looks like it's about both. It had been a while since I'd read it. The downside of snap judgements is obvious, so I remembered the more interesting part, where trained experts' snap judgements are actually good.
- davidgerard 13y ago
  This selects for good actors, not capable people who aren't good at the face thing. This is a subset of the fact that the employment paradigm, with its multiple perverse incentives for all players, requires us to be liars. If we're very lucky, we just have to know how to be a liar.
  - danmaz74 13y ago
    You would need to be a VERY good actor, and you would also need to have studied a REALLY good script that covers all the details I'm going to ask you about your project. Possible, but not very likely.
compare 13y ago
Likewise, I continue to find myself shocked whenever I see developers' resumes that don't list even a single project they've worked on. It's part of a bigger problem seen here in Europe (at least for those who don't move away.) Online work profiles like Linkedin are an obsession here -- and these sites are all oriented around highlighting school and businesses associations, instead of around the list of projects one's worked on. Useless for hiring. This illustrates the two very different approaches to the problem of getting hired: A) If you convince school to certify you -> you will convince a company to hire you. B) If you achieve relevant work -> a company will hire you to perform more work.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  I think that's just symptomatic of a general lack of good careers advice in schools and universities. Most people I sit down with have no idea that they're meant to have been tracking their achievements and metrics. Even people who've led very impressive lives; worked in government, been pilots, etc. I suspect there's a certain self-serving aspect in that on the part of schools and universities. If students had the view that their education was going to be a foot in the door; maybe listed as a line at the base of their CV, and the time at uni listed as another job. - If students were expected to ask of the stuff they were doing right then, 'What is this helping me achieve that I'll be able to put on my CV?'... the answer would frequently be, 'Bugger all.' It's not in schools of universities interests to give you good advice if that advice contradicts a view of the world that supports the importance of their services. And there are precious few other sources of advice that are likely to know what they're talking about.
dominotw 13y ago
This is problematic and discriminatory. I hope this doesn't become a trend. What if you are interviewing a kid from south-side Chicago or kid from third world who against all odds went to college. Is smart and motivated and could be a great asset to your company but never had the exposure to great ideas. You can argue that she can just say 'Going to college was my most significant achievement' but are you in a position to rationally consider that as a 'significant achievement ' ? In a age if great socio economic inequality very few people at the top of the society get to have ' significant accomplishment', it is more of an indicator of you socio economic status than your actual capabilities.
- URSpider94 13y ago
  You're missing the point entirely. It's not that first question that gives you the information. That question is just setting the stage for all of the questions that follow. The main point, which is key to hiring, is that you need to ensure that people are answering questions based on actual experiences, not hypotheticals. When you ask someone "how WOULD you handle xyz", they feel free to answer with ideal behavior. When you ask "how did you handle the situation you just told me about," they tell you what they actually did. You should not be judging the significance of the person's achievement, in most cases -- you should be probing on WHY they think it was significant, what made it significant, how they worked with others to realize the achievement, where they stumbled, etc.
  - rattray 13y ago
    Agreed. In GP's scenario, telling the story of how they were able to balance working a night job with going to the public library to do their homework, say, or how they dealt with a rough situation at home, or whatever else it was, could be quite impressive. I don't look at academic success too hard when I hire, but if someone really worked their tail off to beat obstacles and get that 4.0, I'll find those stories to be a great indicator.
- nthj 13y ago
  A lot of success in life requires being able to tell a story. Not lie, but telling others your accomplishments in an interesting way. You can say, my greatest accomplishment this year was maintaining a large rails app, or you can say, I lead a team of 3 developers to architect and deliver a custom commerce app that helped a startup quadruple their revenues over the next quarter. Both are the same story, one of them is far more interesting. I would expect your hypothetical character to explain why going to college was his most significant achievement in an interesting way (not "I went to college" but "I overcame all $these_obstacles to achieve my dream of a college degree"), and then I don't see why a company wouldn't be excited by his accomplishment.
overgard 13y ago
I think this is incidentally how other hackers socially establish each other's credibility just in general. During my first week of college, almost every conversation with new CS people broke down to "so what have you made?" instead of the more standard social questions like "so what do you like to do?"
InclinedPlane 13y ago
Hah, I used to ask this all the time when I interviewed folks. Although I worded it as "most proud of", rather than significant. The best part about it is that it cuts so deeply. It gets to whether or not people are capable of getting things done. And it gets down to what a person thinks is important. It's amazing how common it is for devs to not care about the right things, and how easy it is for others not to notice such misaligned priorities.

by pg 13y ago

danmaz74 13y ago

On the other hand, in my experience, the question works much better when asked in person than in writing. Just seeing the face of the interviewee while you ask the question lets you understand if there is real passion for that kind of job; the answers I get in writing these days (ie by email while screening people) are unfortunately much less telling :(

jseliger 13y ago
Just seeing the face of the interviewee while you ask the question lets you understand if there is real passion for that kind of job; Is this deceptively informative? I hate to cite Malcolm Gladwell but I do think Blink shows us that first impressions and fleeting impressions can be dangerous and wrong. What do we think "real passion" is? Does it really show on the face, or do we only think we know? Can being flustered or off-kilter skew the impressions we give?
- danmaz74 13y ago
  To be clear, I don't care what "real passion" really is. I just care about selecting a candidate who is interested in what we work on, and not just for the money. Interviewing is just a screening process, and of course fluster increases the risk of a false negative, but in that situation I'm much more concerned with false positives, and in that respect: No, watching also the body language for that kind of question isn't deceptively informative; it's much more informative than reading the same answer from a written text.
- afterburner 13y ago
  I thought Blink primarily showed how first impressions can be more correct than considered and careful reasoning.
  - czep 13y ago
    That was my first impression too.
    - afterburner 13y ago
      Funny. Looks like it's about both. It had been a while since I'd read it. The downside of snap judgements is obvious, so I remembered the more interesting part, where trained experts' snap judgements are actually good.
davidgerard 13y ago
This selects for good actors, not capable people who aren't good at the face thing. This is a subset of the fact that the employment paradigm, with its multiple perverse incentives for all players, requires us to be liars. If we're very lucky, we just have to know how to be a liar.
- danmaz74 13y ago
  You would need to be a VERY good actor, and you would also need to have studied a REALLY good script that covers all the details I'm going to ask you about your project. Possible, but not very likely.

compare 13y ago

Likewise, I continue to find myself shocked whenever I see developers' resumes that don't list even a single project they've worked on. It's part of a bigger problem seen here in Europe (at least for those who don't move away.) Online work profiles like Linkedin are an obsession here -- and these sites are all oriented around highlighting school and businesses associations, instead of around the list of projects one's worked on. Useless for hiring. This illustrates the two very different approaches to the problem of getting hired: A) If you convince school to certify you -> you will convince a company to hire you. B) If you achieve relevant work -> a company will hire you to perform more work.

6d0debc071 13y ago
I think that's just symptomatic of a general lack of good careers advice in schools and universities. Most people I sit down with have no idea that they're meant to have been tracking their achievements and metrics. Even people who've led very impressive lives; worked in government, been pilots, etc. I suspect there's a certain self-serving aspect in that on the part of schools and universities. If students had the view that their education was going to be a foot in the door; maybe listed as a line at the base of their CV, and the time at uni listed as another job. - If students were expected to ask of the stuff they were doing right then, 'What is this helping me achieve that I'll be able to put on my CV?'... the answer would frequently be, 'Bugger all.' It's not in schools of universities interests to give you good advice if that advice contradicts a view of the world that supports the importance of their services. And there are precious few other sources of advice that are likely to know what they're talking about.

dominotw 13y ago

This is problematic and discriminatory. I hope this doesn't become a trend. What if you are interviewing a kid from south-side Chicago or kid from third world who against all odds went to college. Is smart and motivated and could be a great asset to your company but never had the exposure to great ideas. You can argue that she can just say 'Going to college was my most significant achievement' but are you in a position to rationally consider that as a 'significant achievement ' ? In a age if great socio economic inequality very few people at the top of the society get to have ' significant accomplishment', it is more of an indicator of you socio economic status than your actual capabilities.

URSpider94 13y ago
You're missing the point entirely. It's not that first question that gives you the information. That question is just setting the stage for all of the questions that follow. The main point, which is key to hiring, is that you need to ensure that people are answering questions based on actual experiences, not hypotheticals. When you ask someone "how WOULD you handle xyz", they feel free to answer with ideal behavior. When you ask "how did you handle the situation you just told me about," they tell you what they actually did. You should not be judging the significance of the person's achievement, in most cases -- you should be probing on WHY they think it was significant, what made it significant, how they worked with others to realize the achievement, where they stumbled, etc.
- rattray 13y ago
  Agreed. In GP's scenario, telling the story of how they were able to balance working a night job with going to the public library to do their homework, say, or how they dealt with a rough situation at home, or whatever else it was, could be quite impressive. I don't look at academic success too hard when I hire, but if someone really worked their tail off to beat obstacles and get that 4.0, I'll find those stories to be a great indicator.
nthj 13y ago
A lot of success in life requires being able to tell a story. Not lie, but telling others your accomplishments in an interesting way. You can say, my greatest accomplishment this year was maintaining a large rails app, or you can say, I lead a team of 3 developers to architect and deliver a custom commerce app that helped a startup quadruple their revenues over the next quarter. Both are the same story, one of them is far more interesting. I would expect your hypothetical character to explain why going to college was his most significant achievement in an interesting way (not "I went to college" but "I overcame all $these_obstacles to achieve my dream of a college degree"), and then I don't see why a company wouldn't be excited by his accomplishment.

overgard 13y ago

I think this is incidentally how other hackers socially establish each other's credibility just in general. During my first week of college, almost every conversation with new CS people broke down to "so what have you made?" instead of the more standard social questions like "so what do you like to do?"

InclinedPlane 13y ago

Hah, I used to ask this all the time when I interviewed folks. Although I worded it as "most proud of", rather than significant. The best part about it is that it cuts so deeply. It gets to whether or not people are capable of getting things done. And it gets down to what a person thinks is important. It's amazing how common it is for devs to not care about the right things, and how easy it is for others not to notice such misaligned priorities.