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From observation, this is often done in job postings for startups - several that I've encountered will contain an innocuous line something like "include an Ital
by JimmyL 17y ago
From observation, this is often done in job postings for startups - several that I've encountered will contain an innocuous line something like "include an Italian sonnet in your cover letter to guarantee that your application will be forwarded to the development manager", presumably as a way to make sure that applicants read the entire posting and associated administrivia.
- tptacek 17y agoWow, what a great way to arbitrarily lower the quality of the applicant pool you end up with.
- cdr 17y agoHow is screening out people who don't read the listing going to lower the quality?
- jgilliam 17y agoBecause you'll still filter out people who can read the listing, but either can't or don't want to write an italian sonnet.
- coryrc 17y agoIt doesn't say /your/ Italian sonnet
- JimmyL 17y agoExactly - I think this is what they were going for. Another posting asked for a definition of a specific term from Star Trek, which you could find by putting the term into Google and reading any one of the first 20 results. For the record, I included a sonnet that I found on Wikipedia, cited it, and got a call-back - so they're clearly OK with poetry being outside of my skill set.
- cool-RR 17y agoWhy should the job applicant waste his time reading the job description of every one of the hundreds of jobs he will try to apply to? I think the best thing to do is to just send the resume, and if they'll want you they'll contact you.
- JimmyL 17y agoI think an explicit purpose of this strategy is to avoid people who are resume-bombing to hundreds of jobs. In all cases that I've seen, the companies are small (5-15 current employees) startups where hiring a candidate with the right personality and attention to detail is just as important as having the right skills on paper. These companies seem to want people who have spent some time looking at the posting to make sure they want to be part of the startup experience, as opposed to people who will take anything. It's a way to start to filter out people who want a job from people who want this job, which is something the hiring company wants to do.
- cool-RR 17y agoThe fact that a job applicant doesn't read through the entire job posting doesn't mean he doesn't have attention to detail - it can mean he decided that reading it thoroughly is just not worth the time. Just because someone sends his resume without reading the ad doesn't mean he'll take the job. He may just want to know whether the company finds him interesting before he will think whether this job is what he wants.
- ShabbyDoo 17y agoI always read the entire thing to see if there's anything special that the company's interested in -- "Familiarity with X, Y, and Z (all rare things) desired but not necessary." Let's say I happen to know a lot about Y, but it's hidden mid-way through my resume. I'd adjust my email w/ resume to highlight what I know.
- nostrademons 17y agoIf reading the job posting thoroughly is not worth his time, why should the company believe he'll think doing the job is worth his time?
- kscaldef 17y agoIt also screens out people who read the ad and don't want to be bothered with your silly games.
- mst 17y agoIf it reliably screens out the idiot recruiters who didn't read anything, the odd false positive is probably worth it. Remember - manual filtering has a failure rate just as much as any automated approach, the trick is to balance out the false positive/negative rates so that they're acceptable for your purposes. In any case, if you're a startup, you probably don't want anybody who doesn't have enough of a sense of humour to enjoy the odd silly game in the middle of the mind numbing toil of a job hunt. If I was looking and saw an ad like this I'd probably take a few minutes off to learn about italian sonnets whether I was planning to apply for the job or not, and be glad that I'd been inspired to look.
- loumf 17y agoYou don't need to ask for Italian sonnets. I have found that just asking for a cover letter and asking them to address one simple relevant question is enough to screen out most people that don't read the ad. I do it mostly because I want to see a little writing sample along with the resume.