
Lessons from Both Sides of an Interview Desk - grinnick
https://davidtuite.com/posts/lessons-from-both-sides-interview-desk
======
sageabilly
Having been on both sides of the interview desk and read pretty much every
piece of resume/interview advice out there, basically don't take any resume or
interview advice from anyone who hasn't done extensive
hiring/interviewing/vetting of candidates.

~~~
tacostakohashi
I can't agree more. For whatever reason, this seems to be an area where
everybody feels qualified to give advice (in many cases, it seems to be older
people who have not interviewed in a _long time_ who advise any younger /
fresh graduate who will listen).

Examples:

* Customize your resume for each job you apply to.

This is completely impractical these days, when any given job is likely to
attract hundreds of resumes, and your chances of getting a response from any
single application are slim. It's far more practical to work on something
generic and breif that you can use for any appealing job in your field, and go
into more detail if and when an interview is held. Also, if you have to bend
their skills and experience in different ways for different jobs, you're
probably applying for positions that you're a marginal fit for, instead of
waiting for finding a job that you're a better, obvious fit for on the basis
of your generic, undoctored resume.

* Always wear a suit to the interview.

Again, often said, but a gross simplification. Obviously you need to dress
well for the part, but in many industries / cities, you'll end up on the other
side of the table from a guy in jeans and a T-shirt, and have a tough time
building a connection.

Definitely worth taking any advice in this area with a huge grain of salt
unless it's really from an expert in the relevant area.

~~~
Karunamon
Small rant:

 _your chances of getting a response from any single application are slim._

Every company beyond a certain size is using some kind of ERP to keep track of
applicants, and even the smaller ones use something like Outlook or a similar
calendaring app to keep track of people they've interviewed.

Is it really asking so much to get a "We decided not to hire you at this time"
email? Without that, you don't know if they decided to skip you, or if you're
still in process because the company's hiring process moves at a glacial pace.

The sheer amount of deception and silly dance nonsense required to get hired
is insane.

~~~
exelius
> Is it really asking so much to get a "We decided not to hire you at this
> time" email? Without that, you don't know if they decided to skip you, or if
> you're still in process because the company's hiring process moves at a
> glacial pace.

The answer is often a mix of this. Usually a company will have 3-5 candidates
for an opening. Of those, 2 are usually not right personality/culture wise, 2
will be good but maybe slightly mismatched (i.e. you need a senior Rails
developer and they're a senior Java developer with some Rails knowledge), and
1 will be really good and probably take a job elsewhere.

Companies never want to turn people away, because there's a good chance you
extend an offer to the 1 good guy, dance with him for a couple weeks over
salary/benefits, then find out he accepted an offer elsewhere. So they go back
to the stack of "maybe" resumes; though by this point yours could be at the
bottom of the stack and they never get back to you.

Whenever hiring frustrates you, realize that recruiters (and HR in general)
are not staffed by people who think about the big picture. I don't necessarily
mean that as an insult -- the HR function simply requires someone who doesn't
think too much about the reasons behind what they do and follows policy to the
letter (this is how companies keep from getting sued). Add to this that pretty
much every request is urgent, so they're very interrupt-driven in trying to
get people in the door and service any additional open requests.

------
Galanwe
tl;dr Guy landed his first developer full time job at 30 and thinks he has
valuable experience to share. Follows up some cliches of SF tech bubble
recruitment tips.

~~~
smikhanov
He's not in SF, but your comment is mostly spot on. I liked this part
especially:

    
    
        This first example is a docx file. It means you’re
        likely using Windows, which is a negative in the Ruby world.
    

Sure, file format is absolutely a right metric to use when going through
resumes.

~~~
learnstats2
Being able to send files in an appropriate format is a communication skill, a
basic skill for any employment, and .docx is almost never appropriate.

You're going to be dinged for a Word doc by some people, some of the time. You
created a % chance that your job application got thrown away for something
easily remedied. At least take one second to convert to a more generally-
viewable PDF.

Besides which, the article is talking about code. Why would anyone cut and
paste code into a Word doc at all? A waste of time for everyone involved.

~~~
exelius
.docx is often very appropriate; it's one of the most widely used formats out
there and is readable by pretty much any word processor out there.

Agreed that it's probably not the best choice for sending code, but the
author's point wasn't that it's a terrible format, just that it's a terrible
format for code reviews. PDF is equally awful for the reasons the author
describes (lack of syntax coloring, inability to run the code, etc.)

Though IMO the author should just be explicit about what he wants; playing
mind games with people is never a good idea, and it just self-selects for
people who have used GitHub professionally. Choice of SCM system is almost
never up to an individual developer anyway, are you going to ding someone with
otherwise great credentials because their company uses Mercurial? It takes all
of an hour to learn how to use GitHub anyway.

Anyway, I echo the comments I've seen elsewhere that a guy who got his first
"adult job" at 30 then hired some people less than a year later is probably
not the best person to take career advice from. This guy makes a lot of novice
mistakes in his interviewing practices; so take this as a perspective on how
some companies do hiring and not a definitive guide of the right way to do
things.

~~~
nadams
> Though IMO the author should just be explicit about what he wants; playing
> mind games with people is never a good idea, and it just self-selects for
> people who have used GitHub professionally.

I was thinking this exactly. Perhaps the interviewee should have asked what
format - but I would argue just be professional and don't try to trip them or
play mind games. Put your expectations up front in simple writing (just say
"submit in github gist").

There are so many formats and mediums - if you allow the interviewee to guess
what you are expecting they will most likely guess wrong.

------
zhte415
This advice states:

For example, consider the file format you use when you respond. Here’s a
couple of examples of response formats I’ve dealt with and what it makes me
think of you. [screenshot] This first example is a docx file. It means you’re
likely using Windows

But the [screenshot] is from OSX. Is asking someone for prepared source code a
good idea? I don't know, and have never asked. Sure I've looked at source
online that's been referenced, but asking for a bunch of code... desperate
copy paste from an existing non open sourced project seems a likely response,
and not a good one.

> If definitely means you didn’t go out of your way to make it easy for me to
> read your code because there’s no syntax highlighting and the font is
> horrible.

'If' is a typo If -> It). I only get pedantic when pedantic is necessary. A
blog post getting pedantic while not eating your own dog food isn't great.

Cover letter:

Seemed short and flippant. Perhaps this in is vogue where you are. I know a
lot of Irish developers that would tailor something a lot more detailed and
specific by default.

Agree with the author's points saying "I don't know" and general CV tips.

一半 [e-ban]. Half full advice, or half empty; basics with no real insight.

------
FLUX-YOU
>I had about 3 years of professional freelancing and contract experience and a
handful of side projects. I have a reasonably active Github account with a
couple of open source projects. I even sometimes write code related blog posts
and put them on the internet where nobody ever reads them.

>I probably came across as your average “better than junior but not quite
senior” developer.

Man, I hope you're just being modest otherwise that's bad news for me.

~~~
wheaties
3yrs experience is not senior. He's right on the money there.

~~~
67726e
I mean, that damn near fits the bill for me last year when I left my first job
and was looking for a mid level position. 3 years professional experience, had
been doing some limited freelancing/consulting in that time, and for a couple
years before that. Even have a blog post where I log pain-in-the-ass problems
and the solutions to them. Titles are a giant fog since every company has
their own system, but I view Junior X as someone with no experience beyond
maybe an internship, but your mileage _will_ vary. That's how it's been at the
places I interviewed/talked to back then, and right now. Having 3 years good
experience puts you on the bottom rung of middle tier.

------
oliverc2
This one is much much better: [http://ortask.com/a-better-way-to-hire-
developers-and-tester...](http://ortask.com/a-better-way-to-hire-developers-
and-testers/)

