
Why I Won't Hire You - lovelyLaney
https://www.golemtechnologies.com/blog/why-i-wont-hire-you-and-how-to-win-the-interview
======
edw519
_I am expecting you to be one of the 99%+ people who I know I won’t hire in
the first 5 minutes._

If you can't narrow down resumes and phone interviews to candidates with
better than a 1% chance of being accepted, then your interviewing pre-
screening process is flawed. What other processes in our everyday work will
also be flawed?

 _You send me a stupidly long resume_

90% of all written correspondence (from customers, users, collaborators,
vendors, etc.) is too long. Do you think they're all stupid, too?

 _You have annoyed me._

You're a manager. Your job is to properly deal with issues that would annoy
others. Why would anyone want to work for someone so easily annoyed?

 _...do I really want to look forward to your rambling emails every day?_

Do I really want to look forward to your sour attitude every day?

 _You can’t tell me why you like your current job_

If I liked my current job, I wouldn't be here.

 _I don’t hire awesome people who don’t have the right skill mix._

Here's a clue: technologies change. By definition, anyone with the "right
skill mix" won't have the "right skill mix" for long. Amesome people adapt.
But how would you even know that if you don't hire them?

 _No career plans or vision_

I've been programming for 33 years and still have no idea what I want to do
when I grow up. This is an interview for an open job, not Dr. Phil.

 _If you don’t think well on your feet, spend some time reading through and
practicing situational interview questions._

Are you serious? I'm a programmer, not an Americas Got Talent contestant. What
you see is what you get.

 _If you are missing even one, I’m probably going to pass you up for someone
who doesn’t._

Wait a minute. You want to hire perfect people, but you also want them to have
"career plans or vision"?

 _I have a super BS detector_

Obviously not, since so many of your questions can only be answered with BS.

 _The End_

That's just about the only thing you've said that I agree with.

You sound like you have a serious attitude problem. I can't imagine working
for someone like you. But thanks for writing this. You've solved many problems
in advance. I won't be applying. And I don't imagine many people like me will
be either.

~~~
Peroni
Thank you.

Interviews are a two way street. If I am applying for a job, my role during
the interview is to convince you why I am a worthwhile hire, your role during
the interview is to convince me that you are a worthwhile employer. If he was
one of my clients I would disassociate myself from him very quickly.

As for his 5 points, I wonder if he realises that all 5 inversely apply to him
just as much as they do to the candidate being interviewed.

1.Show me you can get things done. This means you can set realistic deadlines
for projects and meet them consistently. You must be a good motivator.

2.Show me you are intelligent. I will ask you questions to discern how in
touch you are with todays market. I don't care if you've interviewed a dozen
people for this job, I want to know if you've actually read my resume.

3.Show me how I fit into your vision. Truthfully, we’ll work best together if
you sincerely think I am the best person for this job in the long run. I want
to know how you can help me succeed in my career, Tell me.

4.Be highly skilled. If your job advert says that you need a highly skilled
Developer then don't have me sitting in a corner refactoring shitty code for
the first 6 months.

5.Be Passionate. If I feel like the interview process is boring you, I will
end the interview prematurely but politely.

/rant

~~~
triviatise
this is absolutely true. almost 100% of job ads are terrible. They are focused
exclusively on what the company wants. Instead the ads should be marketing to
attract the best. The ads should explain why someone great would want to work
there.

------
csomar
Why I Won't Work For You:

Because you are a dick.

Now who are you? What are you going to give me in return? Why should I tell
you that I love my job and my career. Why should I tell you about my vision
and plans? What are you really looking for in that.

The hiring should be a lot simpler:

\- You have a problem. You need someone with the right skills, and hire him.

\- I have a problem (need money). I pick a job that I have the skills for.

Thinking the way you do, accepting your daily bull-shit and philosophy (worse,
making myself sound like I enjoy and I belong to it) is only a sign for me
that you are the wrong person to work for.

~~~
zalew
_Why should I tell you about my vision and plans? What are you really looking
for in that._

These 'where do you see yourself in 5 years' questions sound like straight
from a 'HR for dummies' book. I would really appreciate if an interviewer
reading this post explained me what such cliches are trying to test, other
than BS skills. Cliche question => cliche response.

~~~
kls
_These 'where do you see yourself in 5 years' questions sound like straight
from a 'HR for dummies' book._

Many of these open ended questions came about from large companies hiring
physiologist to help build and identify a profile of an individual that the
company would like the hire. Organizations such as the FBI use similar
strategies as well. The problem is that many smaller organizations that did
not want to spend the money or simply did not know to spend the money on
professionals started to emulate the larger companies, but they did not posses
the answer keys once they had the answers they just left it up to the
interviewer to divine whether it was the right answer or not. Read that last
sentence again and then read the definition of a Cargo Cult. you will laugh at
the mental image I promise. You see, these interviewing practices are simply
the same mentality that created Cargo Cults, somewhere along the way they lost
the intelligence and are just emulating the process in ritual and then
divining the results.

~~~
Natsu
When asked the stock question "What is your biggest weakness?" I have actually
answered it with "Answering standard interview questions."

And I still got the job.

------
ntkachov
>If I have to spend more than 30 seconds finding out what you have
accomplished, forget it.

Well then, Don't expect me to even bother writing a cover letter or tailor my
resume. In fact, if your only going to be scanning over my resume in 30
seconds why, on earth, should I even spend any time filling out your form to
send you my resume? When I send people my resume, I at the very least expect
them to read through it. If my skill set matches what you are looking for and
you are thinking of an interview, I expect you to at the very least Google my
name, or check out my website/github which I conveniently include as a QR
code.

>The worst answers? “Well I like the challenge” or some other BS.

Well, Enjoy working with the worst developers possible. Most of the best guys
I know will take a job with worse pay, less benefits, and further commute if
the work sounds interesting (read: challenging). "I enjoy the challenge" is
probably one of the best answers to why you want to work somewhere. Unless, of
course the work you do involves mundane repetitive tasks every single day then
you probably don't want developers that enjoy challenge, because they will
leave very quickly.

You take this stance of "I have the elixir of life and you will bend over
backwards to get it because you are desperate". So the only people that do end
up bending over are the ones who are really desperate.

~~~
queensnake
> When I send people my resume, I at the very least expect them to read
> through it.

Wait till you're on the employing side, like, even, your boss asks you to look
over /100+ resumes/ that are 95% irrelevant.

~~~
foolinator
You should read through a resume if you're going to interview them.

Signed,

A person that has viewed 1000s of resumes a week from time to time.

~~~
queensnake
Obviously, but you barely skim in order to know whether to read.

------
benjaminwootton
This is a very confrontational and adverserial style of interviewing and
hiring.

I get the impression that author is looking for reasons to make the candidate
a 'no hire' rather than using those silly questions such as 'tell me a time
when....' as a starting to point to open a two way conversation.

My tip is to approach interviews with a positive mind WANTING the candidate to
succeed and display their strengths rather than wanting them to fail. You
should hire based on positives, not on lack of negatives!

This post really demonstrates how broken interviewing is. These are TERRIBLE
and yet still WIDELY USED filters with a high chance of introducing false
negatives in the hiring process.

Two examples:

1\. The multi year career plans he hints at in a number of places. I
personally would be more interested in a candidate with a passion and genuine
interest in the job on offer, rather than someone using it as a stepping stone
on their ten year plan to get to something tangentially related. I personally
don't know what I'll be doing in ten weeks let alone ten years, but a
developer it'll probably an interesting and challenging variation of what I'm
doing now rather than being somewhere in management.

2\. The long CV example is one example of a commonly used signal that tells
you precisely nothing about the quality of the candidate. It is a completely
arbitrary rule that is no way correlated with their skills or personality.
After an initial filter, would it really be so bad spending 5 or so minutes
considering and comparing the candidates on offer if that improved your
outcomes by even a small percent?

Sigh....

~~~
astral303
Long CV definitely tells me something about the quality of the candidate.

If I am interviewing someone fresh out of school, I can forgive a rambling
resume. However, for an experienced person, I am looking for some ability to
present information concisely. It's like a design skill: can you present a
focused view of the most relevant information? If you think that more than two
pages of information is required to advertise yourself for a job, then you are
quite likely lacking that skill.

I still think that a one-page limit is where it's at. Don't put down obvious
bullet points. If you were a Windows system admin, don't waste a line on
writing that you administered an active directory server. Of course you did
that as a Windows sysadmin. No, tell me what you did that made you different
than a run-of-the-mill person doing the same job.

~~~
cunac
One page resume might work for people with not so much experience but it is
very hard to put 25+ years of work in one page except obvious "I solve your
problems for money" :-). Just plain listing all places of work with dates can
be 20+ lines How much insight can you get from 1995-1996 Company X , Senior
Consultant , project Y ??

~~~
cchurch
As someone who reads a lot of resumes, I regularly see two types of resumes:

1) Those that are roughly 1-2 pages per 10 years of experience with care taken
to emphasize relevant and recent experience. Skills and knowledge that I
actually care about are placed such that I cannot help but notice them on a
first glance. Thought is clearly present in this resume.

2) Those that are roughly 13-21 pages (I have one on my desk that is 17 pages
for work experience dating to an internship in 1996). Each job is discussed in
mind numbing detail without ever giving me any of the details that I may
actually care about. Each job includes an "environment" section that lists
every tool that was in the building while that project was going on. Spelling
and grammar issues are present. Any skills section will be overloaded with
undefined in-house tools and frighteningly basic items (such as a senior
developer/architect who lists 11 years of experience with FTP and EMAIL).

When you see an interviewer complaining about resumes that are too long and
waste time, understand that they're complaining about the latter. I can easily
accept minor issues. It is a huge warning sign when their resume makes me
wonder if it is their judgement or motivation that is seriously lacking.

~~~
jasonlotito
> When you see an interviewer complaining about resumes that are too long and
> waste time...

No. I'd love to agree with you, but I've seen articles from people just like
you (or so they claim) that complain about resumes longer than 1 page. Resumes
that include/don't include a cover letter. Resumes that are too short. Resumes
that don't cover experiences outside employments. Resumes that _do_ include
those experienced.

You see, you mention #2. This guys clearly has a lot of experience. He
probably didn't just create that resume _just_ for your job. He's probably
been updating a single resume whenever he needs. This means, that resume has
gotten him employed at every company on that list.

Think about that.

It's not a problem with people applying, it's with who does the hiring.

~~~
cchurch
While every interviewer has different opinions on what should/should not be
present, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not cargo culting, I'm
complaining about receiving garbage.

Extreme length is commonly a sign that the person is too lazy to ever prune or
clean up things. And my complaint about excessive length is "if they cannot
bother to revisit it, why should I?"

I'm aware that every resume is not created from scratch just for me. Still, I
should be able to create a guess as to who the person is, what they're looking
for, and (generally) why they might be a good fit. If not, why am I reading
their resume at all? What am I possibly getting out of it?

While updating resumes usually means adding, that doesn't have to mean that a
1/2 page discussion on tweaking spreadsheets for a law office in 1992 will
stand there until retirement. Do I really need to see that someone has
experience with Visual Studio 2010, 2008, 2005, 2003, 2000? How about every
version of every Office product that they have ever used?

How about a skills section that lists 4 versions of MS DOS? Sure, there's a
possibility we have a legacy system to update, but really, if you want to
include that stuff, separate the (likely to be) relevant information so that I
can find it easily without wading through crap like your Code Warrior
Certification in 1995.

I'm not your mother and I'm not going to do the equivalent of cleaning your
room just to find out if you might be worth a phone call.

~~~
jasonlotito
> I'm not your mother and I'm not going to do the equivalent of cleaning your
> room just to find out if you might be worth a phone call.

And you shouldn't. But, what you say conflicts, in some way, with your stated
goal:

> I should be able to create a guess as to who the person is, what they're
> looking for, and (generally) why they might be a good fit.

And guess what? That 15-page resume is looking for a place where a 15-page
resume will fit in.

My point was that every person who has ever talked about the hiring process
and how to put together a resume with the "I read resumes every day"
credential is giving you advice on how to get the interview with them: nothing
more.

With that in mind, why should _I_ customize my resume for you? Rather, I
should write a resume that represents _me_. If you don't like the resume, you
won't interview with me. And that, hopefully, means I wouldn't fit in.

Listen, I've had interviews canceled on me because I play board games (at a
company that promotes the fact that they have XBox 360s).

So, I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm just saying that your advice is, at
least in my opinion, advice on what _you_ look for. You have no need to defend
what your criteria is, I wasn't attacking it. I apologize if you think I was.

In some ways, you should thank the 15-page resumes coming in. They make your
decision much easier (I'd assume). If that person adjusted their resume merely
to get the interview, are they really the type of person you want to hire?

------
eykanal
I disagree with most of this post, and I'm glad I didn't apply to any position
with him as an interviewer. Specifically:

 _You can’t tell me why you like your current job_ \- Maybe I hate my current
job, and took it to pay the bills. Maybe I actually did take it because I like
the challenge. Sure, I could and should give more details about it, but that's
a valid response, which shouldn't be thrown out so quickly. While the
interviewee should do his/her best to give good answers, it's the
interviewer's job to ask intelligent follow-up questions; there's a give and
take in an interview.

 _No career plans or vision_ \- My career plans for most of my life were "keep
my options open". That served me very well. It sounds like this interviewer is
only interested in people who have been completely focused on a single goal
since kindergarten, ignoring everyone else. His loss, I guess.

~~~
nimblegorilla
How many people have you interviewed? I haven't done a lot, but when I was
interviewing a lot of people for a couple positions it seemed like everyone
said they were "creative" or "liked a challenge."

Claiming they were creative didn't really disqualify, but it didn't make
anyone stand out unless they had a couple examples.

~~~
ww520
You ask general generic questions and you will get general standard answers.
Try asking engaging questions that can get more specific answers. Like "can
you give me an example where you devised a creative solution to a problem?"

~~~
nimblegorilla
Some employers might be better prepared to ask engaging questions, but the
reality is that most interviewers are like the guy in that article. You can
fight it all you want, but people who are serious about finding good jobs are
better off if they can sell themselves rather than waiting for some HR guy to
ask the right questions.

------
talmand
Interesting.

-He expects he won't hire me in the first five minutes? If in the first five minutes I get that vibe I no longer wish to have the job.

-Tailor-made resume for his job? As if people are supposed to create new resumes for every job that they apply for? Get serious. Plus different companies expect different style of resumes since there is no standard and what amounts to close to standard changes every couple of years. What he wants is people to magically read his mind to craft a resume just for him to meet his expectations.

\- He won't hire if I can't say why I love my current job? If I love my
current job then there's not much reason to leave it, now is there? Plus, he
claims to have a BS detector but he seems to be asking for BS from the
applicant.

\- No career plans or vision? For most people laying out five year plans is
BS, which means he won't hire you. What good does such a question do for
anyone anyway? Looking back over my career I've only had one job that I
actually planned for. The rest are from changes in things I can't control with
changes in what interests me.

\- I agree with the no skills part. As someone who's been on the hiring side
of the table there's nothing more annoying when someone can't back up what's
on their resume.

\- "Don’t sit there and tell me what you would do in the future. I didn’t ask
what you would do, I asked what you did." Um, yes you did, it was two bullet
points ago.

\- He apparently requires the perfect candidate. I wonder how many people he
actually manages to hire and how many of them stay for their "career"?

\- He talks of bad advice out there discussing the topic of his post and he
seems to assume his will not get lumped into that list. I would say it's the
same as any other post on the topic, some good and some bad.

He sounds a lot like the kind of guy that has a high turnover rate of first-
year hires who leave for more money and he can't figure out why.

------
Swizec
You know what I really hate? Being asked about my career plans or vision.
Wanna know what my career plans are?

To create something cool and reach financial independence in X amount of
years. But first I need to pay for food for the next couple of months until
somebody better than Your Company starts begging for programmers and sending
me emails. And to be honest, your project likely won't be able to hold my
interest for more than a few months, it will become boring and routine,
nothing like anything fun I'll be working on in my own time.

Most interviewers hate that answer. (which is why I freelance, it's perfect)

PS: I have yet to give the answer that directly, but I should try every time I
go in to talk about a freelancing project and it turns into an interview.

------
leftnode
What a completely horrible way to interview and speak to people.

 _No career plans or vision_ Why would this matter to the interviewer? I just
can't get over how ridiculous of an answer he provides. Why would he care what
my career plans and vision (whatever that is) are? Who can honestly plot out
the next 10 years of their life? Very few, and I'd be wary of anyone who
claims they could.

I'm not surprised this person is not finding the right candidates for his
company, but I think he has no clue why.

~~~
gk1
_I'm not surprised this person is not finding the right candidates for his
company, but I think he has no clue why._

Where does he say that he is having trouble finding people?

While I agree that the example he provides is a rare case, it's not entirely a
stupid question. (However, as I said elsewhere about other interview
questions, it definitely could use a more original approach.) I think many
interviewers are worried about hiring someone who is just going to use the
company as a year-long hopping stone, and therefore won't be committed.

~~~
jsnell
The guy is rejecting more than 99% of people who make it to an onsite
interview. Clearly they aren't finding the right candidates. And they must be
totally desperate if they're willing to still do interviews with that low a
hit rate.

------
sbisker
Hey, lovelyLaney - I noticed that your HN account is probably tightly linked
to Golem Technologies in some way (given that you've only submitted twice,
both articles from this domain). There are over 100 comments on this article,
and not a single one is from you. If you wrote this post, I think I speak for
a large portion of HN when I say - we'd love to hear from you. Yes, seriously.

I know some people will probably downvote whatever you post without thinking,
no matter what you say - because judging from the comments, you seem to have
angered the mob. Indeed, I disagree with this article strongly myself - and
would be happy to chat with you about why it doesn't resonate with my personal
experience. However, if you have thoughtful answers to what people here have
to say, the community only wants to help you, and see its own succeed.

If you want to stand behind your article, please do. If you want to recant or
clarify parts of things you've said, you can do that too. You're a one person
company - are you hiring right now, and what sorts of positions are you having
trouble hiring for? We'd love to hear specifics - and to hear you engage in
the community about something it obviously feels passionately about in a
deliberate, measured way. Many may disagree with what you have to say, but no
one here should fault you simply for your attempts to say it, for contributing
to the discussion around your own ideas. Hope to hear from you.

------
reverend_gonzo
For someone who said he doesn't want to a long resume that rambles on forever
he sure had a long blog post that rambled on with very little content.

Attacking each point:

 _You send me a stupidly long resume_

Some recruiters/HR desks look for resumes with specific keywords, and we need
to tailor our resumes to get past those (admittedly retarded) filters. As an
interviewee, I understand that and have made my resume longer to get past them
to the people that actually look at it. As an interviewer, I've rarely looked
at the resume until the interview, and only scanned over it to look for things
that I can ask about, in addition to our normal quetions.

 _You can’t tell me why you like your current job_

You don't have to like your current job. Especially in this economy, some
people are glad to have jobs. Of course, it'd be nice if you like your job,
but then again, that's why he's interviewing. Whether or not a person likes a
previous job has nothing to say about whether or not he'll like his next job,
unless, of course, you're looking for a spineless twit who will go with the
flow regardless of how they treat him.

It's more important to recognize a cultural fit and find someone that will get
along with the employees, but again, this can vary wildly. I worked at a
startup and we interviewed a manager from a large corporate company to be our
BA. We went into the interview thinking there's no way we'll like this guy,
but it turned out he was awesome, and a great cultural fit too.

 _No career plans or vision_

Not everyone has a long-term. Not everyone knows what they'll be doing in five
years, especially when they're younger. My first two jobs, I told them I'd be
gone within a year and a half. I don't remember saying it, but when I quit a
year a half later, they aid I told them that during the interview and they
just didn't believe me. The better question is what will it take to keep me
here for five years, and what is your firm going to do for it as well? Of
course, people most likely can't answer this question until they've had a few
jobs under their belt, so they realize what they like and don't like.

 _No skills_

There's really the primary thing that matters.

 _Answer my skills with conjecture_

I didn't read this far, but it sounds like 'Don't BS me'. I'll agree there as
well.

I agree with csomar. I probably wouldn't work for you.

------
jmilloy
I will go into every interview expecting that we are equals. You know what you
or your company already is and what it wants. I know what I am and what I
want. Then, we decide together. Interviewing/recruiting does not give you
high-status.

The interview failures described in the article occur when _neither_ party
understands this.

~~~
bjdixon
It blows my mind that so many people don't understand that as an interviewee
they are just as responsible for deciding if this relationship is a good fit
as the interviewer. Otherwise you may end up jumping through the correct hoops
only to get hired by a guy like this.

I find many interviewers have no idea that it's a two way street as well. I
guess it shortens the interview for me though. I don't want to work for
someone who only wants answers, not a conversation.

------
darrikmazey
I find it amusing that he starts off with a rant about long resumes. Then half
of what follows goes on to talk about all the extensive information you have
to communicate on your CV just to get an interview.

I severely disagree with the attitude conveyed. People would do well to
remember that a work arrangement is _mutually_ beneficial, always. You take a
job because it is in your interest to do so. You are offered a job because it
is in their interest to do so. No one employs someone while taking a loss on
them, yet companies treat interviewees as if they would be lucky to land such
a wonderful job.

If this attitude came out in my interview, I'd immediately walk out. If you're
treating me in this way before I even work for you, odds are it's not ever
going to get better, only worse.

------
minsight
"If I have to spend more than 30 seconds finding out what you have
accomplished, forget it."

Not to worry. I will only work for someone who can manage to conquer problems
of scale such as skimming a resume and finding pertinent points. If you are
unable or unwilling to do so, we'll eventually have a problem and I'll be
better off elsewhere.

------
drone
It seems somewhere along the line, every person who is aspiring to become
someone great in the industry gets the wrong cue. They see some conceited
individual writing blog posts about how great they are, and they assume
mimicking this style of writing will make them equally as great. The truth is:
most of us barely tolerate this attitude from those who are truly great
because we don't have much choice. Until you are truly great (i.e. on the
cover of time magazine, and solving the largest problems we all face with
ease), you would do better to present yourself with humility.

That you thought it appropriate to write a blog post with simply the title of
"Why I won't hire you," is the reason "Why I will never interview with you."
(And, for many others as well, I'm sure.) It has little to do with the content
(although in fact, the content only gets worse with conceit and self-inflating
statements) and everything to do with your attitude.

Who wants to work for someone who already thinks they're better than the
majority of humanity? I'd want to work for a manager who knows how to
communicate effectively without being abrasive, and who has excellent skills
in resolving conflict and helping their team grow to their maximum potential.
Everything about your blog post suggest the opposite combined with such a
level of hubris, that I could only imagine working for you would be the worst
job I've ever had.

Good luck with that hiring thing.

------
tkiley
/No career plans or vision/

The best developers I've ever worked with tend to lack career plans. If you're
sufficiently happy with your life that you don't need a change strategy,
that's pretty cool.

~~~
wccrawford
Are you sure they didn't? Perhaps, like me, they have already finished their
career plan and they are working their dream job.

That's the thing these interviews fail to take into account. They assume that
everyone wants more, when that's not always the case. Happiness means knowing
when you have what you want, and enjoying it.

------
llambda
tl;dr - He won't hire you because he has a hyper-focus on the process of the
interview rather than the process of finding a suitable individual for the
opening. His attitude can be summed up in this one line, "Most people looking
for jobs don't deserve them."

~~~
jmilloy
Yes. But it could be true that most people looking for jobs don't deserve
them, and yet it would still be important to remember that the interview is
nothing but a process for finding a good match.

------
bitdiffusion
If there were more engineers than jobs and we were all fiercely competing for
scraps, I would say ok - it's a "buyers market" and we are forced to put up
with attitudes like this.

The situation is very different however. In my experience, top talent either
a) have their own company or b) are well-looked after by their current
employer (at least one would hope so) so they need to actively lured away; how
about you tell me why I SHOULD work for you rather than give all the reasons
why I can't?

Oh yes - and the author is an arrogant dick.

------
radarsat1
> _I have a super BS detector, and most other interviewers do too._

I have a good BS detector too. Lots of people do.

Here's the problem: Lots of people are full of BS. That includes interviewers.

Since people are very sensitive to BS either way, a BS impedance mismatch can
completely ruin an interview. That means that the BS-appraisal process must
complete efficiently and accurately within the first 30 seconds of the
interview, which is quite a difficult demand.

Let's discretize the BS axis into two categories: full of BS / hates BS.

So we have 4 situations:

* Interviewer is full of BS, wants to hear BS. Interviewee is full of BS, provides BS. WIN

* Interviewer hates BS. Interviewee is full of BS, provides BS. FAIL.

* Interviewer is full of BS. Interviewee hates BS. FAIL.

* Interviewer and interviewee both hate BS. SUPER WIN.

The problem is that neither the interviewer nor the interviewee are aware of
the BS-status of the other individual.

The interviewer, however, is generally in a power position, since we can
assume the interviewee wants the job. Therefore it is really up to the
interviewee to estimate the BS-status of the interviewer.

So, only two situations are really going to be fundamentally compatible, one
of which has much of a chance of landing a good candidate. There is easily a
50% chance of something going wrong at this point just out of luck, or as a
result of a misestimated BS status.

If there is a detected mismatch, the interviewee can make a choice: Fake
personal BS status (BSer tries to be "real", anti-BSer gives up on personal
integrity and provides some BS because that's what is expected by the BS
interviewer); or, be true to himself, and either walk out of the interview
(politely!), or get down to business and present himself as a serious
individual (for the non-BS interviewer).

So, the BS estimate is critical. Moreover, since it's easy to get the
impression that most people are full of BS, there may be bias present in the
estimator that helps to get things off on the wrong foot.

Notice that _none_ of this has anything to do with whether the interviewee is
actually the right candidate for the job. Right off the bat, the BS-status and
accuracy and speed of the interviewee's BS estimator is a huge factor in job-
getting ability, regardless of other skillsets.

And that is why interviewing sucks, for both parties.

~~~
radarsat1
I should mention that in reality things are, of course, more subtle, and this
two-category quantization is not realistic. In the real situation you'll not
only want to identify the BS-status of the interviewer, but give them _just
the right amount_ of BS. Don't be _too honest_ , you have to sell yourself
after all. Frankly, it's tricky, especially for people who aren't used to
talking about themselves.

------
bh42222
_Be highly skilled._

 _Be Passionate. If you are bored working in a similar job somewhere else,
you’ll be bored with me._

Does the job involve rockets or something like that? No?

Well good luck finding exactly someone who is both highly skilled AND not
bored by your job.

------
balloot
<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/golem-technologies>

Employees: 1

He's been doing this for almost a year and hasn't hired anyone. Sounds about
right.

Also, the website is taking 20s to serve any page. Maybe he should spend less
time blogging about how awesome he is and how everyone sucks, and instead
build a website that can handle a surge of traffic.

------
x3c
The thing about this interview process is that you'll lose those candidates
who have potential and can thrive in correct environment but:

 _a)_ Currently work in a job that they don't really like and, hence, are
looking to switch (because they cannot come up with a satisfactory answer for:
"You can’t tell me why you like your current job")

Also, since they don't know much about your company besides second-hand
information, they cant answer: "why you think this job will give you the same
passion". Interview is a conversation, you'll have to tell them what your
company culture is and how it can benefit potential employees.

 _b)_ Candidates who are fresh out of college / don't have much experience.

 _c)_ Candidates who are probably good enough for your job but aren't good
enough to pass the, very high bar, you've set up for them.

So it depends on the profile for which you're hiring and the prerequisites you
are looking for. I personally won't mind if an interviewee can't answer most
of these questions but can do the job I'm giving and has done something
simiiar to it in the past with reasonable success and is a good cultural fit
in my organisation based on what I can deduce during the interview.

------
ainsleyb
A startup is not a 5000 person corporation and shouldn't be run as such. I
remember the author posting a Show HN last February introducing his company.
At that point in time he was still in a full time job. Now, I don't know
what's happened in the life of his company over the past 11 months, but I
would venture to guess he has less than 10 employees. I'd even venture to
guess it's somewhere less than 5. At this stage you're more looking for
collaborators, not people to manage. And when you're looking for early stage
employees you should really be looking for a true personality fit, in addition
to the required technical prowess (which, incidentally, doesn't necessarily
mean "knows ruby").

Yes, hiring is hard. Yes, as an early-stage startup it will take you a very
long time to hire. But you have to remember those you're hiring today will
make or break the company tomorrow. Their "5 yr plan" should have no bearing
on whether or not they get a job at a very early startup, but by the end of
the interview you should know not only that they're technically capable, but
can roll with any changes you foresee the company making, and that they have
the right personality to mesh with you and the rest of your team (you'll be
spending a lot of time together - could you grab beers with them?). You should
also know that they're so sold on the idea and vision of your company that
their 5 year plan and your 5 year plan become one (or are at least related).
Realistically, your startup probably won't even be alive in five years.

Of course I know a lot of people look at things differently, and I have
complete respect for different opinions and methods (and love reading about
them). We're still trying to figure out hiring ourselves, but I think the best
engineers come with all sorts of non-corporate eccentricities. If we had
followed the author's suggestions, we wouldn't have hired either of our two
founders (including myself) or our first engineer. I'll leave it up to the
reader to decide whether that would have been a mistake or not. :)

------
code-dog
As someone who has done the interviewing thing, I can see where this article
is coming from. I don't really buy into all of it though. All this stuff about
being a great communicator. That is cool but not always required. I have spent
a lot of time working with amazing people who are crap communicators and crap
people who are great communicators.

But - I am sure a lot of people interviewing use indicators like these so it
it worth knowing about them.

Finally, on the CV thing. This is a hard issue because agents look for buzz
words. If you've done a lot of stuff you need to write a lot to get all the
buzz words in. That is the only way the agent will forward our CV. Then - you
cannot tailor the CV to the job because you did not submit one for that job,
you submitted one for buzz words.

~~~
hcayless
Yeah, it tends to make me a bit irritable after the 500th time I've seen a
resume touting the candidate's skills with DreamWeaver, so I sympathize. But
while the article is a well-intentioned rant, it's still a rant.

In short, if you're looking for a job, try to put yourself in the position of
the interviewer and adjust your approach accordingly. Don't go in cold, and
don't assume the interviewer will make allowances for you.

------
ereckers
Looks like he passed over all the guys with scaling experience.

------
darklajid
I don't get it. I zoned out after the

'I am going to drop 99% of all candidates because they fail the following'

and

'You sent me a looooong resume'

In my world you're sending the resume before the interview. If that's such a
big issue (is it?), then - don't invite those guys. Your 99% rate just dropped
significantly and you're not wasting time on both sides.

------
groggles
HN has been soundly trolled.

This guy -- who apparently rejects 99% of interviewees -- apparently runs a
single-person company of dubious purpose. This absurdly trollish post is over
the top because that's what ensured it a front-page showing.

Kudos on the pagerank earned by trolling the gullible folks on HN.

------
keeran
Based on the comments in this thread I think I'm glad HN has taken his server
down ;)

------
balloot
Why I won't work for you:

1) You are a self-important douche who writes lengthy blog posts on all the
reasons you deem people unworthy of working with you.

------
Semiapies
Notably, going through his blog's archives, there's no post on the subject of
"Why on Earth You'd Want to Work for Me."

------
spiredigital
So if I'm skilled, get things done, am intelligent, project vision and am
passionate you'll hire me? Unfortunately, that makes me a perfect candidate to
start my own company, so I think I'll probably do that instead. But thanks for
the interview tips.....

------
atacrawl
Wow, I'm pretty surprised to see such a collectively sensitive reaction to
this post.

Try to see things from this guy's perspective -- this comes across as a guy
who's grown really tired of being bombarded by terrible resumes. Then, the few
candidates whose resumes appeal to him result in terrible interviews because
the candidate either doesn't give a shit about what he/she does, or misled (if
not flat-out lied) about his/her skill set.

That would leave anyone a little ornery after a while.

Personally, I found the post rather unenlightening, only because I think it's
common sense to be passionate about what you do -- otherwise, why do it? --
and to have the right skills, etc.

But a little tough love never hurt anybody. (And if you think _this_ guy is a
dick, I want to work for your bosses, because I've worked with some real
doozies.)

~~~
mikeash
Ornery is fine, the trouble is that half the stuff he wants is crap. You want
everybody to have a good answer ready for what their career plan is extending
out a full decade? Well, that eliminates a whole lot of people, many of them
perfectly qualified, for no good reason.

There's some good stuff in here, but that's outweighed by the large serving of
nonsense.

------
zwieback
I don't think this guy's that unreasonable, there's a bit of attitude and
maybe frustration but having interviewed a bunch of people lately I can
relate.

I think the biggest issue with interviewing is that it can only be done well
in a team. We usually have at least 5 or 6 people interviewing and some of
them have to be from unrelated projects. We have the luxury of drawing from a
large pool of engineers from different projects but for smaller companies it
might be a good idea to pull in people from other companies as neutral
observers, if that's possible.

I always find it interesting to discover my own biases during the debrief
meeting.

+1 on the long resumes, though. Also, listing every programming language or
CAD program in the skills list is very off-putting.

------
prpatel
must be nice to have such a large pool of people to interview to fit your
needs perfectly, especially for technical people. The OP's points are valid
and I feel the same way about _almost_ all of them. Even when I worked in the
large corporate(s), I always hired people as if they were working for me in an
intimate setting like a startup. Hiring capable, yet diverse, people always
provided me with a winning team.

------
mootothemax
I really don't understand the offence some people seem to be taking from this
blog post. The author's listing, directly and to the point, what he wants to
see from interviewees.

You might not like the tone of the author's writing, but having sat on the
other side of the interview table, it _is_ thoroughly depressing when a
candidate tells you "Yeah, I just want a job - money, isn't it?", when you
_know_ that the role available is great, and someone who _wants_ to care about
will really enjoy it.

~~~
cunac
It is all perspective , you like to think that role is great but maybe is not
so much as you think. Maybe you just don't know better

~~~
mootothemax
_It is all perspective , you like to think that role is great but maybe is not
so much as you think. Maybe you just don't know better_

Don't get me wrong; we all have to pay the rent. There there are indisputably
times when, guess what, one just needs a damned job that'll pay the bills.

But for a lot of smaller companies with cool little projects? Yeah, I think
it's totally reasonable for them to discriminate on that level.

~~~
b1daly
Given that most people need a job to pay the bills, it seems that "I need the
money" has to be one of the most truthful answers in a job interview (or "I
want more money"). That's why it's a job and not just a fun thing to do. A lot
of talented people probably wouldn't have a job if they didn't need it, but
since they do they curtail their own desires to fit the needs of an employer
in exchange for money. A lot of really great work gets done this way, but
somehow it seems bad to say it.

------
iksor99
What's your feeling on remote workers?

@Llambda - isn't the process of the interview also the process of finding a
suitable candidate?

~~~
llambda
I think it can be tricky. We know the process doesn't always work. Some
companies, e.g. Google, believe that it's better to adhere to a tough hiring
process and reject most people even if a certain number of those people who
are rejected may be brilliant engineers. But what I think is important to
remember is that the goal is to hire the right person for the job. The hiring
process you use may or may not be an effective and efficient means of finding
that person. But certainly having a very narrow view, say by having a very
strong focus on the process and little else, is a sure way to miss the right
person at least some of the time.

------
nsxwolf
99%+?!

This guy must spending every waking hour interviewing.

------
ascold
If you are looking for a good communicator among nerds, you are definitely
looking in the wrong place. You need a salesman.

~~~
cchurch
There's a difference between "excellent at communicating" and "obviously does
not care".

An excellent example of the latter is the presence of spelling errors that
could have been fixed with spell-check, completely random font changes due to
copy-and-paste, etc. These typically are just the superficial signs that no
thought was put into the content.

It's like showing up for an interview in a dirty t-shirt and sneakers. I'm not
looking for excellent fashion sense; I'm looking for a basic awareness of the
world around them.

------
j45
"I am expecting you to be one of the 99%+ people who I know I won’t hire in
the first 5 minutes. "

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For a doubter wanting to succeed, I'm already turned off. Smart people don't
have to prove they're smart. Give them a problem and they'll leave your head
spinning about why you didn't see it like that before.

I like looking at possibilities. It probably wouldn't work out that you know
how to recognize someone great.

"You send me a stupidly long resume"

\------------------------------------

I wouldn't send you a resume at all. I would send you a personal letter I
wrote just for you outlining the things I've done and offer an actual, live,
tour of everything I work on and the names and numbers of those clients.

You might not know how to process this calling of your bluff that you're in
fact, ready to hire the perfect person.

"You can’t tell me why you like your current job"

\-------------------------------------------------

If I'm talking to you I'm open to possibilities of liking more than one thing.
It's up to _you_ to tell me why and how what you're doing is so much different
and not a glorified CRUD/Reporting app just like the other 40-50 apps I've
built in the last 15 years.

How about I tell you that you're no different than any other company? You just
want the answer to one question. Where is x at? That's all everyone wants with
their own data.

"No career plans or vision"

\---------------------------

You must have been the first person ever to predict what exactly would happen
in the technology world, exactly in the last 20 years so you could chart a
perfect plan, or vision through it.

Why has no one given you a Nobel Peace Prize? I can nominate you.

My vision is to be a very curious person about everything I come across. I
like knowing how everything works, and doesn't work. You know what that does?
I'm not afraid of anything that comes across my plate whether others say it
can be solved or not.

My career plan is to do interesting work helping people get more done with
less effort so they can do what they do best -- interact with other people. Do
you fit that? I do.

I don't need a plan or a vision when I can engage my passion from the second I
wake up to the second I go to sleep, 7 days a week. I've seen more plans and
visions not work out (much like girlfriends who have "plans" and "timelines"
that never work out) to know better than to expect life to work on my watch.
All I can pick is a direction and give every situation my all.

Sadly, you probably don't get this.

"NO SKILLS"

\-----------

Right. And you're qualified to measure them. If you did, you'd know there's no
real thing as a skill. Just an aptitude with a technology that comes and goes
to the latest tool.

Your brain might blue screen if I told you that .NET isn't a language, but
30+. Imagine how silly you must have sounded beating that .NET developer drum.

Most importantly, real developers can quickly learn anything they need to get
anything done. That's all they do all the time to solve a problem under
unreasonable circumstances, and a skill you can't seem to imagine.

"Answer my questions with conjecture"

\-------------------------------------

I will call your bluff and tell you to hire me for 2 weeks unpaid. If I don't
make you swoon like a fairytale it's probably not meant to be anyways.

That's the answer to all of those questions because I've done hiring for
myself, and my customers with those same questions and they don't reveal as
much about the person as you believe. I bet I could know more about you from
how you load a dishwasher (telling each dish why you won't use it because it
won't load itself into the dishwasher).

"How to Win the interview"

\--------------------------

If you're having trouble finding people getting things done and that's a big
deal for you to hire, I think you're still going to be collecting emotionally
scarred baggage to put into future blog posts.

How are you the top player you're looking for others to be? We can only find
and know deeply in others what we have and know deeply in ourselves. :)

------
dsolomon
Of the 100 people who look at his website searching for employment 90 are
disinterested due to his poor grammar, spelling, and punctuation skills.
Another eight realize that a professional services site with HTTP 403 and 404
errors isn’t that professional. One more reads the "official company blog" and
concludes that the owner is a douche bag. The remaining 1% apply simply to
keep their H1B status alive.

So in his own special way that guy is telling the 1% to f*ck off. Well played.

------
paulhauggis
My problem is that I have to give my future employers absolute bullshit when
they ask me where I see myself in the next 5 years.

Why? I hate working for other people. I only want to work for myself. The only
reason I even take a regular job is to fund my projects until they become
successful. But, I can't ever tell them that.

------
noduerme
I wrote this in their comments, and got blocked by an auto filter. Wonder why?

"About halfway through the first bullet point I decided I wasn't interested in
reading every juicy word of this boring essay. I thought about writing a
rebuttal along the lines of "why I won't work for you", but it boils down to
this -- you sound like a bad listener and a self-important jerk."

Response:

Your posting on Golem Technologies from __. __. __. __has been automatically
flagged by our spam filters as being inappropriate for this website.

------
maeon3
He has every right to be bitter. Good candidates are avoiding him like the
plague, and what is left over is terrible. It's a feedback loop.

