
How to Get a Job - nsedlet
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/opinion/friedman-how-to-get-a-job.html
======
aliston
Did anyone else catch the irony in Friedman talking about employers that
"increasingly don’t care how those skills were acquired: home schooling, an
online university, a massive open online course, or Yale," then writing an
article entirely about two Yale graduates who went to work at McKinsey and
Goldman Sachs post-graduation?

Last time I checked, McKinsey isn't recruiting at University of Phoenix. Going
to Yale doesn't hurt in getting into YCombinator either. Nowadays, YC's name
recongnition functions as a credential as well. Dig a little deeper than the
title, and this op-ed only reinforces the reality that credentials and
connections matter a lot more than raw skill.

~~~
chatmasta
Have people considered that "credentials and connections" are actually a
valuable signaling mechanism? Connections (in the broadest sense of the word)
indicate that a candidate is able to form strong personal relationships.
People are not robots, and this ability goes a long way in the workforce. If
you are hiring someone, you know you're going to spend the majority of your
waking time with that person for the foreseeable future. So any kind of signal
that this will prove a positive use of your time is a valuable one. This is
not to say that other schools don't offer this mechanism. I'm simply observing
that the idea of "connections" does not carry nearly as much negative weight
as its connotations often imply.

Similarly, credentials indicate that a candidate has conaistently passed more
screening processes over a long duration of time than a company could
practically present to the candidate. Consider that nobody is born into Yale
(contrary to popular belief, and any exceptions to this are in the minority).
To get to Yale, you effectively must pass through a fifteen year funnel. No
company can match that kind of screening rigor, so why not leverage it? From a
company's point of view, it would be dumb not to. (Also, think about it this
way -- if you are a high school senior with a choice of any school, and
therefore one of the smartest in your class, will you choose Yale or a state
school? I parenthesized this because it's a straw man argument, but do
consider that financial barriers to the Ivy League are basically non-existent
nowadays.) Yes, you can get qualified candidates from other schools. But your
chances of getting a "lemon" candidate from Yale are, I presume, much lower
than getting one from another school. You know that at the very least the
candidate is capable of learning quickly on the job. In many industries,
especially those where most domain knowledge comes from real world experience,
like finance and consulting, the ability to learn quickly is a candidates most
valuable asset. If every candidate will arrive at the company with a "blank
slate"of knowledge and experience, why not recruit the ones who can fill up
their slate the best? This is why finance companies recruit history majors,
for instance. They know that success in a liberal arts education demonstrates
an ability to learn quickly (not to mention strong writing skills).

I know many people on here are anti-liberal arts or anti-Ivy favoritism. Those
arguments, especially the latter, have obvious validity. But I hope this post
will cause you to consider the other side of the argument.

Disclaimer: I go to Yale. I realize we are extremely spoiled in the job
market, but I also do not necessarily think it's undeserved. It's unfortunate
that other people suffer, but I do not feel like we are disproportionately
favored. I think a VERY high majority of Yale students are top 1% job
candidates. Everybody gets in here for a reason.

~~~
jdietrich
You got into Yale because you were privileged. You had literate, educated
parents. Your high school didn't have metal detectors on the doors and a
razorwire fence. You didn't have to cut school if a younger sibling got sick,
you didn't spend every spare minute looking after an elderly relative. Nobody
on your block was a crack dealer.

Sure, you're smart, but America is full of people much smarter than you who
didn't even finish high school. The "fifteen year funnel" is a filter
primarily of socioeconomic status and only secondarily of ability. Most people
fall out of that funnel through no fault of their own, because they didn't
catch the breaks that you did.

That's the fundamental failing of a meritocracy - unless you take steps to
ensure equality of opportunity, you just end up with an oligarchy.

~~~
obviousanon
Unless you personally know the other person, I'm not quite sure how you make
these claims. On the face of it, you're slinging mud at walls and, of course,
some may stick. In other words, your claims may be on point _some_ of the
time. _Some_ Yale students (undergraduate or graduate) may have had literate,
educated parents. Mine aren't. Many others here could say similar things.
_Some_ Yale students may have come from Andover, Loomis Chaffee, and the like.
Not all. And I'm willing to bet there are numerous students who came from high
schools like the ones you describe. Or, as in at least a few cases, came from
"schools" that were essentially converted sheds or barns. _Some_ Yale students
may not have had to worry about taking care of their families or being the
breadwinner during adolescence. But others did. _Some_ Yale students may not
have lived in shady areas. Many did.

We're an intelligent lot, certainly. And certainly there are many others who
are much more intelligent than us. But Yale does not exist to serve the world.
Yale is not a public service. Yale is exclusive by design. You don't get here
by being intelligent, but by the same token, being here does not mean we're
more intelligent than you (in the plural sense). The fifteen year funnel
notion that the other person described is, in fact, much more a filter of
ability, grit, and exceptional achievement than you could ever dream of. A
minority of students here come from the sort of Gatsby-ish background that
popular myth suggests. There are students here who may not be the most
intelligent in the world (certainly, not all of us are MENSA members), but
they are, for the most part, people who have proved time and again their
exceptional qualities. There is a reason this institution has been an
incubator for leaders around the world.

Yale is not a meritocracy. Yale is one among a few institutions that have
carefully cultivated the ability to choose from an exceptional pool of human
beings each year. If you point out the issue of legacy admits, I'd ask: why
not? Why not give back to those who have given to Yale? I don't simply mean
monetary contributions, though certainly I would wish to signal appreciation
of someone who has endowed a chair, a library, or has done something to grow
Yale as an institution. But, in general, if someone has reflected well on
Yale, then I believe it is worth nurturing that relationship. So, yes, not all
legacy admits are evil.

The world is not equal, and equality is not a given. We will never be equal,
as long as scarcity exists. But instead of whining about how "all Yale
students are privileged" and thereby exposing your own prejudices and
jaundiced perceptions, why not make the best of your circumstances, much as we
have of ours?

~~~
flyinRyan
> I'm not quite sure how you make these claims.

Because statistically, this is nearly always the case.

>And I'm willing to bet there are numerous students who came from high schools
like the ones you describe.

I'd be surprised if there is even one student from the kind of school the GP
describes. Even if you find one, you've found an anecdote. An exception that
proves the rule.

> There is a reason this institution has been an incubator for leaders around
> the world.

And right here is where your argument flies out the window. "Leaders around
the world" are usually not better than anyone else, often worse. They're
simply better connected. Which, incidentally, is what is being pointed out.

I know you really want to believe it was grit, determination, and something
extra that everyone else doesn't have that got you where you are but it was
actually privilege. If you had been born to the wrong family all the "grit"
you think you have wouldn't have gained you anything.

~~~
obviousanon
Statistically, _what_ is nearly always the case? Please, point out these
statistics specifically instead of making airy allusions.

You may be surprised to see "even one student" from the 'wrong' sides of the
city, the 'wrong' skin of colour, the 'wrong' nationality, or the 'wrong'
religion. Get here and get your mind exploded, then. Or learn to accept that
you are clinging (futilely) to popular misconceptions and that Yale, like most
other "elite" institutions, is a home to all kinds of people. Privilege may
have gotten _some_ of them in, but it sure as hell is not the norm.

As for your final claims: You wish to imply that leaders in various fields got
there solely by leveraging connections. I am pointing out that leveraging
connections is by no means disproportionally represented. Leveraging
connections is an incredibly useful skill, and of course it has its place.
What I am pointing out is that for most undergraduates who ever got here,
connections didn't exactly play a big role. Yes, the people here probably have
a lot more grit, determination, and "something extra" that most of you don't.
Some of us are here thanks to family connections, sure. Now go find out just
how many students Yale (for example) has graduated in its entire history, and
compare that with the number of legacy admits. Or compare that with the number
of admits for whom a plausible case of "connections" may be argued. I can
assure you that it won't be a pretty picture for your case.

I'll reiterate what I've said before. Most of you are using popular
misconceptions to make straw-man arguments. Most of us here are not from
"connected" families, and most of us are here not because of some mythical
privilege. The sort of logic you people are using would make the mere fact
that you can go to the corner store and buy a pack of bread a "privilege."
Privilege is relative. Most of us got here because, yes, we did a few things
more and were a little better at some things than a lot of other people.

No reason to whine about it.

~~~
flyinRyan
Let it go. You lost. Not only did you lose, you lost so bad that yahoo! wrote
an article about how stupid your post was.

No one likes a person telling them that he/she is better then them. Especially
when that's clearly not the case.

------
hkmurakami
_> The way HireArt works, explained Sharef (who was my daughter’s college
roommate), is that clients — from big companies like Cisco, Safeway and
Airbnb, to small family firms — come with a job description and then HireArt
designs online written and video tests relevant for that job. Then they cull
through the results and offer up the most promising applicants to the company,
which chooses among them._

So hireart is tackling the problem from the demand side for employees by
improving the signal to noise ratio of applicants, so to speak.

This is only a partial solution, since at least a significant part of the
problem is the skill mismatch of the more "ordinary Joes" (for lack of a
better word) and the skills that are asked of them by their prospective
employers.

I don't think there will be a one size fits all solution for the variety of
employment related issues we face today. We'll probably see many "winners" in
the market that offer very distinct sets of benefits to both job seekers and
employers.

That makes me think that my friend's startup [1] which does focus on the more
basic tier of the supply side of the job market problem, training ordinary
people to gain the specific skills that specific employers want.

We can't have enough hypotheses tested in this market, so I genuinely wish the
best for all the current and future players in this market.

[1] <http://www.learnup.me/about>

~~~
esharef
learnup is awesome. we need lots of companies to solve this problem. Elli (co-
founder @hireart)

------
ruswick
> _The company receives about 500 applicants per job opening._

This succinctly demonstrates everything that is wrong with the entry-level
labor market, especially in fields dominated by overabundant cohorts like
political science and english majors. There are a deluge of incompetent
graduates competing for a negligible number of jobs. They are either forced
into menial shift jobs for years or, if they're fortunate, will have the
privilege working 70 hours per week in an unpaid internship before taking a
jobs marginally above the poverty line.

~~~
jseliger
_especially in fields dominated by overabundant cohorts like political science
and english majors_

Actually, according to Louis Menand's book _The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform
and Resistance in American Universities_ , the absolute number of English
majors has declined over the last 40 or so years:

 _"Between 1945 and 1975, the number of American undergraduates increased 500
percent, but the number of graduate students increased by nearly 900 percent.
On the one hand, a doctorate was harder to get; on the other, it became less
valuable because the market began to be flooded with PhDs.

This fact registered after 1970, when the rapid expansion of American higher
education abruptly slowed to a crawl, depositing on generational shores a huge
tenured faculty and too many doctoral programs churning out PhDs. The year
1970 is also the point from which we can trace the decline in the proportion
of students majoring in liberal arts fields, and, within the decline, a
proportionally larger decline in undergraduates majoring in the humanities. In
1970–71, English departments awarded 64,342 bachelor's degrees; that
represented 7.6 percent of all bachelor's degrees, including those awarded in
non-liberal arts fields, such as business. The only liberal arts category that
awarded more degrees than English was history and social science, a category
that combines several disciplines. Thirty years later, in 2000–01, the number
of bachelor's degrees awarded in all fields was 50 percent higher than in
1970–71, but the number of degrees in English was down both in absolute
numbers—from 64,342 to 51,419—and as a percentage of all bachelor's degrees,
from 7.6 percent to around 4 percent._

What field has taken its place? Business, which now accounts for about a
quarter of all degrees awarded.

Moreover, according to the research done by Arum and Roska in _Academically
Adrift_ , undergrads in the hard sciences and humanities (including English)
tend to show substantial increases in their reading comprehension skills,
writing skills, and math skills over their first two years of college and over
their college careers.

------
ebbv
Friedman is such a shameless hack.

Using his column as an ad for his daughter's college roommate's business?
Honestly? Ugh.

Nothing against the HireArt folks who may be great people, and maybe they are
offering a useful service. I even understand why they couldn't tell Friedman
not to do this for them. I doubt anyone could turn down the free exposure.

But it's just tacky, and it doesn't help that Friedman is a hack to begin
with.

~~~
robg
It's really sad to me that the top comment on any thread at HN is ad hominem.
I'm not around much but this community really has changed.

Seriously, ebbv you have _nothing_ to add that is interesting or unique?
Calling a columnist at the NY Times a "hack" is hardly original or insightful.

~~~
ebbv
I pointed out he's shilling for his daughter's friend. That's not enough to
support my characterization for you? I think it's plenty.

But there's tons of other examples of how terrible Friedman is, and most
people don't need me to spell them out because they are very familiar with
them already.

Do a quick Google search and you'll see what the rest of us already know.

~~~
robg
There's nothing substantial about that "critique". You only know of the
relationship because he disclosed it. And any columnist of the last 50 years
at the Times provokes the same exact response from a segment of their
audience. In fact, as a columnist, that's the point of his job and so your
"test" would fail for every columnist at that paper.

My point still stands. Your comment adds no value to this community and itself
is a comment on the state of this community. You start with ad hominem then
work backwards to the "critique". When pushed, you simply re-state the ad
hominem. This community used to be much better than that, esp for a top
comment in well-read thread.

EDIT: At the very least, I'm glad vapid comments aren't staying at the topmost
position. I hope that's a combination of downvotes and the time-gravity
function. Too bad ad hominem is so easy to upvote and leads to the herd
mentality that begets the trivial.

~~~
ebbv
It's not a critique, it's a simple fact. He's shilling for a friend. That's
shady at best. Disclosing it is better than not disclosing it, but using your
Times Op Ed column to shill is always shady.

"Every columnist" at the Times (or anywhere else) does not elicit the same
response that Friedman does. That in itself is a baseless statement, which is
something you claim to dislike so very much.

Here's a short article pointing out _one_ of the problems with Friedman:

[http://gawker.com/5921030/thomas-friedman-writes-his-only-
co...](http://gawker.com/5921030/thomas-friedman-writes-his-only-column-again)

You seem like you could be a smart person from your profile, so I'd think that
if you actually read Friedman with any regularity you'd see what every other
intelligent person who reads him does; he's a hack. Call it an ad hominem if
you want, but to me it's like saying an apple is red. It's a statement of fact
backed up by evidence.

Also complaints about how the community used to be so much better based on one
comment you don't like being top temporarily is so ridiculous as to be
comical.

EDIT:

Also the subtext of your complaining about the decline of the community is
"ebbv get out you make this place worse." To which I say, you're the one who's
basically throwing a tantrum because you disagree with me regarding Thomas
Friedman.

~~~
robg
You've done nothing to substantiate that charge of being a shill short of
pointing out the very relationship he himself disclosed.

As to the claim on columnists all being "hacks", I have little doubt that
every single columnist at the NY Times has been called that or worse in their
tenure by some segment of their audience. Saying Person X is a "hack" (or
troll or asshat) has no place in rational dialogue. It's a non sequitur. Stick
to what's being said and dispute that. In this case, that would be a matter of
arguing that HireArt is not part of some broad new trend in hiring and being
hired. You are very far from arguing contra Friedman.

I don't know you. All I know is one ad hominem comment you made and continue
to defend. That's a problem for this community and indeed any community that
aspires toward rationality. What you continue to be (and this community, even)
is only up to you (and us). That you assume I'm throwing a "tantrum" and that
I disagree with you on Friedman won't ever get you (or us) there.

~~~
ebbv
Ok clearly my effort is wasted on you. You are not even reading what I'm
saying. So just a couple quick points:

1) Just because someone discloses something doesn't make it ethical / not
shilling.

2) I (and others) are not just calling Friedman a hack and leaving it at that
as you seem to insist we are. We are calling him a hack and backing it up with
evidence -- as I have said repeatedly, and I have pointed you to the evidence.
It absolutely does have a place in rational dialogue.

You pay lip service to being interested in discussion, but your behavior
indicates you are not at all interested as I have attempted to engage you
repeatedly and you pay it no heed whatsoever.

------
msellout
It seems a bit lazy of Friedman to interview his daughter's roommate. Why not
include other sources? At least he mentioned the relationship.

I don't begrudge Sharef for using the connection. It's another reminder of how
important networking is.

~~~
d0gsbody
Tom Friedman quit writing real articles back in the 90s.

~~~
caw
This showed up on HN a while back: <http://thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com/>

~~~
d0gsbody
Hah!

When i was younger and trying to educate myself into a higher class, I read a
couple of his books. The only good one was From Beirut to Jerusalem, which was
published in 1989. Everything after that was just crappy analogies.

I really don't understand how an "expert" in Middle East affairs could think
that the USA going to war in Iraq was a good idea.

------
kenster07
This is a bandage to the problem, perhaps even a good bandage, but not a cure.

The issue is so much deeper than this.

On the "physical labor" side of the economy, the college system, in its
current form, will not efficiently fill America's production lines with
workers. It will not create more craftsmen. It certainly does not cure the
average American college graduate of the mentality that they are above being a
gardener in their own backyard.

On the knowledge side of the economy, MOOC can potentially add enormous value.
The distribution of credentials (aka a degree from an elite university) is
being decoupled from the educating of the knowledge workforce. Rather than a
couple thousand or tens of thousands of people having access to the highest
levels of education, it is now accessible to anyone with an internet
connection.

P.S. I take issue with anyone who is 28 years old being considered a "veteran"
at her job, let alone at McKinsey. Perhaps I think too old-school.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _Rather than a couple thousand or tens of thousands of people having access
> to the highest levels of education, it is now accessible to anyone with an
> internet connection._

The printing press has been around for hundreds of years. The problem has
never been _access to knowledge_. It has been:

1\. Selecting what people need to know (curricula), and

2\. Checking that they know it (credentialling).

If people want to learn about anything, about any topic, to any depth, public
library systems enable that and have done so for a long time.

Plus, the reductionist view of Universities as mere generators and
disseminators of knowledge is inaccurate. Attendance at universities
introduces you to new people, many of whom have similar interests. This leads
to friendships, business partnerships and romantic relationships that MOOCs
can't replicate (and libraries only poorly).

~~~
thaumasiotes
> If people want to learn about anything, about any topic, to any depth,
> public library systems enable that and have done so for a long time

About a year ago, I decided to read through what I considered the most
interesting topics in my old discrete math textbook, on basically this theory.

The first few sections were fine. Then I started getting different answers to
the ones published in the back of the book. Lacking someone who could tell me
what I was doing wrong, I gave up. :/

~~~
jacques_chester
Did you try a different book? When I get stuck on a subject I often turn to a
different book to get me over the hump.

------
rollo_tommasi
So the Detroit woman who taught herself Excel and outscored Stanford and
Harvard grads, and is held out as validation of Friedman's thesis - she's only
referred to as a "top applicant". Did she get the job? And if not, what was
the background of the person who did?

Otherwise, my only take-away from this article is that in a column ostensibly
about meritocracy, Tom Friedman managed to turn 3/4 of his column inches into
a PR piece for a company run by his daughter's Yale buddies.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape
from reality...

~~~
esharef
Hi, Elli from HireArt here. She didnt get the job because she lived in
Michigan and couldn't move to SF but she made it as a finalist. I was directly
involved and was astonished at how well she did given her lack of "formal"
education. I wish more people were like Patti. She really inspired me. The
fact that Michigan is struggling economically and that she was unable to leave
is a different and very interesting topic.

------
schrodinger
This feels a lot like an advertisement to me

------
cm2012
I took a hireart interview recently, really excited for a chance to show off
my skills. However, the responses asked for were basic interview questions
like, "Describe yourself" and other personality questions. Which is fine, but
I thought it had more potential.

One caveat is that it was time consuming and cost the company doing it
nothing. I really hope such time consuming tasks do not become the first line
of defense against job seekers, but are only used on already vetted resumes.

------
kefka
I'm injured. Right arm can lift much more than 5 lbs above horizontal. On Voc
rehab, yet disability says it's not one.

Been without a job for 2 years. Before that, fired from wal-mart because I got
injured (faulty equipment) and had to go to hospital.

What the hell do I do? I look and apply for jobs. I'm in school for drafting.
Every sign and indication says if you're without a job for 6 months, you're
screwed.

Do I just start and lie about my credentials? If they catch me, all they can
do is just fire me... I'm already up shits creek.

~~~
lambda
No, you're not screwed. Acquire a useful skill that's in demand and which can
be done from a desk: drafting, CAD, graphic design, 3D modeling, video
editing, web design, programming. Do that craft, and develop a portfolio of
work. Find a non-profit that you like that needs that work and spend some time
donating that work to the non-profit so you can have some real world
experience in that field, that demonstrates that you can work with other
people.

Almost every reasonable hiring manager (which may be a minority of hiring
managers, but is still non-zero) will value someone with a good portfolio
who's shown that they can get the job done over someone with credentials and
years of experience in the industry who doesn't have a good portfolio to show
(as someone who's been doing technical hiring recently, I've always wondered
about people who apply for a job with 20 years of experience and not a line of
code they can show me; I realize that there may be many jobs where you work on
proprietary code that you can't show to someone else, but not having a single
side project, one-off hack, a few patches to the mailing list of an open
source project, or even a former employer you can ask for a code sample to
show under NDA in your whole career seems a bit odd).

~~~
kefka
I already am going for drafting, which includes Autocad and Solidworks. I
already am decent at general 3d design (and still have plenty of classes to
go).

Still, because I'm past the 6 month employability gap, NOBODY will touch me.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-
terr...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-terrifying-
reality-of-long-term-unemployment/274957/)

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/04/16/after-
six...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/04/16/after-six-months-
unemployment-turns-into-permanent-unemployment/)

~~~
michaelochurch
It's actually easier to do "creative career repair" on a 6-month gap than a
4-month one.

Don't get me wrong. You always want to avoid being unemployed for 6 months if
possible; but there are ways of touching that up.

If you were in full-time school, just use that. You don't even need to lie.
The truth is always better-- not because there's major risk of getting caught,
but because it's always better to form relationships based on the truth, and
the cognitive load of maintaining a lie will take steam out of you even if you
never get caught. The "6-month problem" doesn't include full-time students. If
you were a part-time student, maybe you can make it look full-time?

However, if you are stuck needing to lie, I advise the "odds and evens"
strategy. Rank your choices 1, ..., N. Odd-numbered choices get full
disclosure of the truth. Even-numbered choices get the story you want to tell.
(Or, if you think your history is that damaged, tell the truth to evens and
your new career history to the odds.) This gives you a sense of whether the
issue you are covering up is an actual employment problem, or whether it's
something else.

------
naner
What is the HN term for "slashvertisment"?

~~~
oftenwrong
"submarine"

------
lmg643
having been on both sides of the hiring equation, my sense is that the current
system is broken by design.

For myself, I've read positions at a company that are a perfect fit, only to
see things like (paraphrasing) "5-10 years of prior experience at a digital
media company required". To get that, there are a small handful of companies
one could have ever worked for. why wouldn't the hiring manager just call the
5 people you know who are a fit? right - because HR says we have to post the
job.

From the hiring side - it is important to understanding managerial objectives
in hiring, which frequently diverge from company interests beyond a certain
size and maturity. Job security and minimizing headaches come to the
forefront. The most understandable is training - even a smart pup needs time
to learn. the remaining motives are questionable, and hard to surface.

No doubt there's room for a company like HireArt, but when i read the
description of what the company expects to solve, my first thought is that
rather than fix a broken-by-design hiring market, it will mostly relieve the
guilt of HR employees who know hiring is intentionally broken.

~~~
jonnathanson
I don't know if hiring is "intentionally" broken, so much as it's a casualty
of bureaucracy. Very few companies invest strategically in HR, and for the
most part, they treat the hiring process on an ad hoc basis. It's a nonissue
until it becomes an issue, at which point, it's a fire drill that nobody has
really thought through. The hiring manager has other things on her plate, and
the HR manager has a few dozen other positions to fill out. And then there are
the legal requirements, the risk mitigation, the forms and procedures, the pay
bands, and so forth. Nobody's set out to create a broken system; the breakage
in the system is the result of a couple dozen microscopic fractures that have
built up along the way.

What seems intentionally broken is the general approach to human capital. The
workforce is massively, ridiculously undervalued. Most companies -- especially
the bigger ones -- would rather churn and burn through their employees,
replacing them as they leave, than invest seriously in training, retaining,
and developing a strong and long-term workforce. The inefficiencies resulting
from this attitude are hidden, but massive. But the short-term ROI is, sadly,
quite positive. So nobody's got any incentive to change the approach.

~~~
jared314
Isn't that the reason most unions formed in the first place?

I wonder how many generations it will take to fix the current approach to
human capital. The current pessimism around employee training and development
will rub off on the next generation, like a downward spiral, but without some
of the reasoning or perspective.

~~~
geogra4
We had a fix. Unions. They were dismantled by Nixon, Reagan, et. al. from 1968
to the present because the professional classes believed that they were
insulated from the problems of the working class.

They were wrong, and we are paying the price, the profits going directly to
the owners of capital.

------
lumens
HireArt's approach is an interesting one, but culling through 500 video
interviews by hand is time intensive for the reviewer and the 499 candidates
who don't get the job.

We're working on these problems at Mighty Spring
(<https://www.mightyspring.com>), with a focus on talent whose time is more
highly in demand.

Our approach is to reverse this process: you have an anonymous profile that
companies view. If a company sees your profile and they're interested, they
can request an interview. You receive these requests via email and can choose
to accept or decline. The anonymity means you can both freely decline
interviews and use the site while employed with no repercussions.

The goal is to provide a similar service to working with a really great
recruiter, but without the hassle.

As most of the readership here is in our target audience, we'd love any
feedback and welcome questions. We'll expedite invites to HN signups - also
feel free to email me: lumen@companydomain

------
orangethirty
The correct term is advertorial. It is when the editori staff does an
advertisement disguised as an article. It works wonders, more so when it comes
from the NYT. This company is now front and center. Well done to your
marketers. You will get a lot of flack here, but this is one more way to jump
start growth. Good luck.

------
breakyerself
I think a big factor in this discongruety between education and the job market
is the fact that students cannot write off student loan debt in a bankruptsy.
It alleviates the banks from their due diligence of making sure their loan
will create a return on investment. There is virtually no risk on their side.
They can be certain. That no matter what you do or where you go you will have
to pay them and the longer it takes is just more interest for them to collect.
You can be certain that if student loans required the bank to take a risk
there would be a lot more engineers coming out of colleges in america and a
lot less degrees in ancient Greek philosophy. The banks would require people
to choose majors that will pay enough.

~~~
sokoloff
I agree that's a possible outcome, but I think an equally likely outcome is
that banks would require parental co-signing of loans, from parents with
income and credit ratings sufficient to mitigate the risks.

Which overwhelmingly means that the economically disadvantaged (or those
estranged from one or both parents) would be shut out, which would make
"college degree required" a proxy for "upper middle class or better".

I agree that it's a different outcome, but I don't agree that it's a better
outcome. There are benefits to easy availability of student loans; with those
benefits come some risks. You can't eliminate only the risks and leave all the
benefits.

~~~
king_jester
> Which overwhelmingly means that the economically disadvantaged (or those
> estranged from one or both parents) would be shut out, which would make
> "college degree required" a proxy for "upper middle class or better".

Considering the overall education picture in the US, this is already true.
Students from low income families already have a hard time getting to a point
where they can apply and be accepted to a university. See
[http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/21/news/economy/income_college/...](http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/21/news/economy/income_college/index.htm)

------
lpvn
>So what does she advise? Sharef pointed to one applicant, a Detroit woman who
had worked as a cashier at Borders. She realized that that had no future, so
she taught herself Excel. “We gave her a very rigorous test, and she outscored
people who had gone to Stanford and Harvard. She ended up as a top applicant
for a job that, on paper, she was completely unqualified for.”

I don't know if I'm too cynical but the first thing that came to my mind after
reading that was if her pay is gonna be the same of someone who went to
Stanford or Harvard.

~~~
supahfly_remix
Isn't excel just a tool? The challenging parts are knowing what numbers to put
in and the analysis of the results.

------
jerryhuang100
such a shameless advertisement on NYT that you can't even call it a placement
marketing

------
seferphier
This is a very interesting approach to solving an old age problem: how do you
match the right people to the right employers?

The solution for most people used to be stacking credential and hoping the
competition wouldn't have the same level of credentials as you.

What type of jobs are available on HireArt? How do you decide on what metrics
and skills are useful for that particular post? How many test have you
devised?

~~~
esharef
Hey, Elli from HireArt here.

We work only with non-technical jobs like marketing, biz dev, sales, etc (we
think technical jobs are quite different). And then we have two different
types of challenges: 1) Challenges that individual employers create 2) General
industry challenges that candidates can use to apply to lots of jobs.

In terms of how we come up with the questions, we mostly just ask employers:
"What does this employee do at work" and then we ask candidates to do similar
tasks.

~~~
jacques_chester
I'd be interested in hearing how you got such a high-profile writeup.

This is not a snark attack. Genuine interest.

~~~
npc
> Sharef (who was my daughter’s college roommate)...

~~~
Kurtz79
In the end, connections still matter then...

------
lifeguard
This read to me like think tank backfill. Friedman has definitely got his own
angle on things. I think reading _Linchpin_ would be more useful advice, “The
job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the
factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.

Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you
can.

The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.

Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your
art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo,
and changing people.

I call the process of doing your art 'the work.' It's possible to have a job
and do the work, too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.

The job is not the work.” ― Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

~~~
b1daly
Does anyone else find Seth Godins advice to be totally devoid of actionable
suggestions? It reads to me as "the key to being successful is to be awesome!"
It has some hand-wavey concepts, a few cherry picked anecdotes, and a pithy
title. I don't get it...

The original article had a similar quality when it came to the question of how
to actually acquire advanced skills. How many jobs exist in which the main
skill is knowing Excel? Maybe there are, but usually if it is listed it's as
part of a laundry list of required skills.

~~~
jarek
> Does anyone else find Seth Godins advice to be totally devoid of actionable
> suggestions?

Same as most motivational and self-help advice, then?

~~~
b1daly
Point taken!

------
31reasons
Personally I think this is not a Friedman level article, more like a HireArt
advertisement.

------
romeonova
After reading the article, I didn't really catch any tips on how to get a job
other than use HireArt. I guess that was the message?

------
georgeoliver
There certainly are multiple ways to attack this problem, but when the vast
majority of jobs now are never advertised it makes me wonder how many people
will find jobs with this kind of service.

