
Follow up on the reverse job application. - bluishgreen
http://www.reversejobapplication.com/followup/
======
devmonk
"why didn't you spend your unemployment working on a project to flesh out your
portfolio?"

Could the real answer be that you are just the kind of person who considers
spending time on a reverse job application and then advertising it to be time
better and more efficiently spent than working on a portfolio? And that is at
least one of the reasons that you were probably hired by hopefully one of the
better employers that were able to recognize that.

~~~
bretthoerner
While that may be true, if I recall correctly he was unemployed for over 2
years. I have a feeling the reverse application didn't take up all of his
time.

~~~
eitland
Look at the bottom of the article for an explanation of why he hasn't an
impressive portfolio.

------
spanktheuser
Such an interesting reaction. I'm at the company that hired Andrew. Since he
didn't post our name on his blog, I won't reveal his secret destination here.
But we are both awesome and a start-up.

That said, we obviously saw Andrew the way that cosgroveb and mcknz. He seemed
opinionated, smart, and very creative. We were pretty sure he'd fit culturally
and be interested in learning the type of development we do.

Is he a master of OO design patterns? Probably not. Were you when you just
graduated college? Once again, probably not.

Should he have developed more of a portfolio and completed a few personal
projects? It might have shortened his job search. Was putting together
reversejobapplication.com a very creative and effective solution to the
problem of getting hired without said portfolio or personal projects? Yes. Yes
it was.

See you Monday, Andrew.

~~~
toast76
You DO realise that people can look at your previous comments and see what
startup you work at/for? No such thing as secrets on the interwebs :)

~~~
csomar
and it happens to be the comment before this one :D

------
mcknz
Wow. The guy creates an entertaining, creative, and novel approach to finding
a job, succeeds, shares his story for the benefit of others, and is apparently
still getting beat up.

I'm just going to say thanks and congratulations.

~~~
geebee
I think part of the problem was the use of "cover letter/resume" language in
the context of a blog posting.

On a job application, it's ordinary to praise your own accomplishments and
abilities. So you declare things like "excellent writing skills", and nobody
really bats an eye [1]. However, if you were at a dinner party, and you
praised your own "excellent cooking skills", it would probably rub people the
wrong way. Blogs fall more into the second category, I think, which may
account for some of the reaction.

All in all, this was a clever approach that worked out well, and maybe it
_should_ be more of a norm. Unlike Andrew, I've been in the workforce for well
over a decade, but I think that I may have a skill set that doesn't match up
neatly with a most job descriptions. As a result, want ads don't do much for
me. I always figured that this is just because really good jobs are never
listed on recruitment sites - they're the jobs you create and grow into. But
who knows, a reverse job application might be a good way to see if there's one
out there.

If I try it, I'll make sure to heed the lessons I learned from this first go-
around, which is when many of the mistakes are first made.

[1] Watch out, though. In the tech world, describing yourself as an expert in
a programming language may be a bit like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

------
cosgroveb
He hacked this terribly inefficient system we call the "jobs market." I think
that's impressive.

To everyone who still thinks he's arrogant, or narcissistic, or whatever...
Meh.

~~~
ghurlman
That's the point... he didn't "hack" anything. He posted an ad, it got a
desired result. Good for him, but nothing remotely special.

~~~
cosgroveb
It may not be unique but it is at the very least a very unusual approach. So I
respectfully disagree that it is nothing remotely special.

------
zugumzug
Maybe this is better addressed to his site than this one, but I'm curious what
type of job he netted with his reverse job application. Many people postulated
it would be something in marketing, I wonder if that's true.

~~~
kgroll
I don't think I'm entitled to share the company, but based on a certain
comment in this thread, it looks like he's landed in real estate.

The positions currently listed on the Jobs page for that company are:

* RoR developers

* Customer Acquisition / Marketing

* Loan processing

I imagine that he'll be trained for the first category.

Hope this isn't too intrusive - kind of reminds me of that analysis of patio11
from a month or two ago. Willing to remove this post if requested.

~~~
epochwolf
Removing the post doesn't hide it. Anyone with showdead turned on in their
account will see it.

------
krmmalik
And as promised, i'm going to give you a follow up on the
'reversemarriageproposal'. The next lady that my mum found as a suitor (which
was last week), i went in with a view that she had to impress me!

Lo and behold. She has said 'yes' to moving things forward. Its not an
official engagement or anything like that, but suffice to say, i've gotten
further than i have ever before.

So there you have it! :D

~~~
AlexC04
Ha ha - I remember your reverse marriage proposal comment from the original
thread.

Congratulations :)

~~~
krmmalik
Thanks! I'll keep you posted ;-)

------
AngeloAnolin
The thing which made this more appealing to me is the fact that (would-be) job
seekers could learn a lot from how he approached the situation.

1\. Use your creativity and imagination.

2\. Make the people (and employers) get curious about you.

3\. There are a lot of ways to achieve the goals you desired.

At the end of the day, we should simply be happy that he shared with us
something we can learn a lot from and he was able to get a job with a company
that realized his potentials.

------
eggbrain
He still sounds self-centered, and I do have a psych degree. He took credit
for everything that worked ("Look, I got a job!" "Look, my bold daring attempt
at being clever worked!") , then dismissed any naysayers almost entirely out
of hand (Paraphrased: "It's easy to be anonymous on the internet", "Oh, you
thought I was being serious? I was just exaggerating for my silly website",
"You think I'm "x"? LOL well, you're the expert")

I'm glad he got a job, and working at a start-up will definitely be a great
learning experience. But I wish the followup focused on things he did both
right and wrong, and how he or other people could improve the experience next
time, instead of acting so defensive.

~~~
BrandonM
With people like you who have never had a real conversation with him judging
him based on a single action, how can he be expected _not_ to act defensive?
Was part of that psych degree learning how to form opinions of someone based
on one piece of his writing, without even seeing him in person to see his body
language?

And who cares if you're self-centered, anyways? The world you see is _your
world._ You can take control of it and make your life what you want it to be,
or you can float along on the tides of fate and call the ones who don't self-
centered.

The funniest part, to me, is that you call him self-centered, but at the same
time you expect him to write _his article_ in a way that _gives you_ value.

~~~
eggbrain
One of the argument he makes is that everyone on the internet is an amateur
psychologist, and that anonymity was the only prerequisite for a psych degree.
He then used this to assume that people who called him self-centered had no
basis for doing so. I was asserting the fact that he came across as self-
centered, and I did, in fact, have a psych degree. His response wasn't a good
argument, it was dismissing naysayers out of hand as not having expertise in
the area. What will his response be to me? That I don't have a PHD? That I
have never met him? If I met him, and still thought he was self-centered,
would that change his mind? What about 50 people who meet him? Even if he
knows he is not self-centered, if his perception is as such, wouldn't that
warrant addressing outside of "no you guys don't understand me, you never met
me, you guys are a bunch of amateur psychologists".

You do three things in your post: claim that I can't tell he's self centered,
claim that self-centeredness isn't important, then call me self-centered.
Which is it? Is it all three? If so, what does it matter that I think he's
self centered, since it doesn't matter?

As for the final statement, I gave my opinion as to how I think his post could
have helped more people, including me. Is it self-centered to lament that
there could have possibly been a better way to go about the followup? Or
should critique not be part of any article or post at all?

~~~
BrandonM
I wish your followup focused on things I did both right and wrong, and how I
or other people could improve my comments next time, instead of acting so
defensive.

~~~
eggbrain
This is a completely wrong analogy. In the original post, I said he should
have used his followup to focus on what HE did right/wrong. Why in your
comment has it suddenly changed to me improving what YOU did right/wrong? This
seems like a straw man, that is also trying to be an Ad Hominem attack.

------
danio
Glad that he bothered to follow up but disappointingly short on the details.

When I read the original I thought it was all good, apart from:

1\. <<Possess strong written, verbal and interpersonal communication skills.
If you can't tell the difference between "you're" and "your", your never going
to be able to get you're points across to me.>> There are plenty of people out
there who have correct grammar but terrible communication skills.

2\. he seems to think that people are unable to type their e-mail address
correctly and that they have not yet figured out how to copy and paste their
e-mail address on web forms.

These seemed very arrogant to me and the anonymous psychologists comments in
the follow-up re-inforce that.

~~~
Tycho
I thought it was supposed to be a parody of real job adverts / application
forms, which are usually quite arrogant and ridiculous and almost never
evidence of 'excellent interpersonal communication skills.'

------
jasonlotito
I wonder how much of an impact HN had on the success of this. Did he get any
job offers _before_ it was submitted to places like this? In this case, the
success is based more on the exposure provided via HN then on the actual idea.
HN adds a level of credibility that simply putting up a website does not.

~~~
jfager
How do you separate the credibility of a website on its own from the
credibility lent to it by exposure on websites like HN? Ideally you'd hope
that the reason something gets exposure on HN is because it meets a minimum
level of inherent credibility on its own, wouldn't you?

~~~
jasonlotito
> Ideally you'd hope that the reason something gets exposure on HN is because
> it meets a minimum level of inherent credibility on its own, wouldn't you?

Ideally. In practice, I think HN lends more credibility to some things that
don't deserve that extra credibility.

I'm not trying to suggest that the original article was wrong or not credible.
Rather, would it be successful without the HN influence? While I don't think
the original idea is bad, I think the success was due to HN.

------
sabat
I'm glad this guy took a chance and that it worked out for him. I can't speak
for all members of Generation X, but this member is a little tired of how much
GenY is being picked on. Lazy, selfish, slovenly, worthless -- everything that
we were called, and that the baby boomers were called, too. It's called
_youth_ , people. And you were young once, even though you may pretend you
don't remember it.

~~~
jdvolz
With respect to this, I think that people are jealous of youth, which is why
the generation that has it catches all the flak. Youth and Freedom travel
together. Looking at youth from the other side of marriage, job, mortgage,
kids only amplifies the jealousy for that freedom we've long given up (and in
my case, I would give up again, but still the calling of freedom is there).

