
I have been hired for more than 10 years, and I have this simple rule - DyslexicAtheist
https://twitter.com/rakyll/status/1114643660912517120
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acjohnson55
I'm very much against hidden criteria used to filter people. It's a lazy,
bias-driven way to convince yourself you're selecting the best people. The
author of the original tweet (who this person is replying to) is trying to
select for some sort of work characteristic she thinks correlates with
success. It would be much better to identify that characteristic and focus
part of the interview on trying to evaluate the candidate against it.

I haven't been hiring people for more than 10 years, but I swear by the simple
process of being transparent about what I'm looking for in a new hire. The
hard part is the reflection on exactly what _that_ is.

I wrote about this several years ago:
[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/were-hiring-
engineers-a...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/were-hiring-engineers-
all-wrong_b_7973484). It's basically a re-presentation of interview training
I've gotten.

~~~
Cthulhu_
> I'm very much against hidden criteria used to filter people.

I'm not, or at least, not everything should be spelled out; what you want to
avoid is people 'cheating' at their job interview by trying to bullshit their
way through the application process.

We have a technical assessment, but look at (and ask a lot of) things outside
of what was asked exactly; basic expected software development skills such as
unit testing, documentation, a grasp of technology used, a drive to keep up to
date and learn new things, that kinda thing.

I guess you could fake those? But I think that if you've got the drive to
"fake" learn a new technology you've got the drive we're looking for.

~~~
tomp
But if you don't tell the candidate what to do, how do you know if the
candidate _can_ do that or not?

Most programming exercises that companies use in interviews are much simpler
(trivial really) than actual software projects, and personally I don't see the
need to write 1 page of documentation and unittests for code that can fit on 3
pages... Does that mean I'm against documentation and can't write unittests?
No, I'm simply being pragmatic.

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m0nty
I know organisations which would automatically disqualify candidates who send
"thank you" or any other kind of emails. They would call it "canvassing",
which is forbidden for job-seekers in these organisations.

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rubinelli
What's the context I'm missing, here?

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
The twit is a response to

 _Hey, I wrote something! … I’ve been hiring people for 10 years, and I still
swear by a simple rule: If someone doesn’t send a thank you email, don’t hire
them._

~~~
mcv
Even if they'd have to hunt down that email address themselves, according to
the article she links to.

A thank you email to someone you're already in an email conversation with is
not at all unreasonable, but expecting people to hunt down your email address
just to send you a thank you, is downright weird.

~~~
Radle
Only hiring people who send a thank you email is totally weird. "It shows
resourcefulness, too, because the candidate often has to hunt down an email
address the interviewer never gave them." To be honest my time is pretty much
to valuable for this kind of teenager games. I am busy solving real problems
for real customers. I don't have the time to search for your Email address, I
also don't need to do that, people usually hire me for point 1), I get shit
done.

"To be clear, a thank-you note does not ensure someone will be a successful
hire. But using the thank-you email as a barrier to entry has proved
beneficial, at least at my company." the author says. Blatantly ignorant
towards all the genius they've lost in their broken process. "The handful of
times we've moved forward with a candidate despite not receiving a thank you,
we've been ghosted, or the offer we make is ultimately rejected." The author
says, because changing the strategy for a handful of cases out of thousands is
definitely really scientific and stuff. "As a hiring manager, you should
always expect a thank-you email, and you should never make an offer to someone
who neglected to send one." as the last quote just showing the pure
entitlement the author suffers...

That's exactly the kind of thing that makes me happy to be in Software, people
who bring trouble usually don't get promoted into responsibility...

~~~
Cactus2018
"The handful of times we've moved forward with a candidate despite not
receiving a thank you, we've been ghosted, or the offer we make is ultimately
rejected."

Perhaps this is selecting for desperate job hunters who send thank you notes.

~~~
renholder
> _Perhaps this is selecting for desperate job hunters who send thank you
> notes._

That's entirely plausible. I mean, you're probably <insert arbitrary
percentage here> more likely to _not_ turn an offer down, even if it's below
the cost-of-living for the area in question, if you're willing to go to those
lengths, yeah?

Their solution to the problem of having offers turned down seems to be not to
investigate why but to just hire the people most willing to take them... I
mean, they found a loop-hole but to quote the Big Lebowski: " _You 're not
wrong, Walter, you're just an asshole._"

~~~
Cactus2018
New theory... the original twitter's annual performance metric is based on
number of successful new hires (turned down offers and candidate who realize
they are a bad fit are negatives)

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soniman
The real solution here is, Don't go into an industry where supply vastly
outnumbers demand and employers can delete half the resumes for no reason.

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marcv81
I've had stalkers before and it'd freak me out if I received a thank you note
from someone I did not exchange contact details with.

~~~
corodra
Interviewers typically email you to schedule the interview or share their
business card with you during the interview...

~~~
bluntfang
I've interviewed ~5 times in the last year...did not receive any business
cards or email addresses. The recruiter/HR person actually denied my request
for their email address when I asked for it in order to send a note on more
than one occasion.

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Nasrudith
I wonder why HR people keep on doing this shit - they get deservedly heckled
by everyone who is stuck with their crap.

I'm not sure if it is a vapid bubble or they are just callous morons who don't
get why people would get pissed off over being denied a job for arbitrary
reasons and don't learn from experience.

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Daniel3
_actual link_ [https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-write-thank-you-
email...](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-write-thank-you-email-after-
job-interview-2019-4)

~~~
didymospl
"It shows resourcefulness, too, because the candidate often has to hunt down
an email address the interviewer never gave them."

So basically the author expects the candidate to send a thank you email even
though she didn't exchange her email address. Well, I think such email is
natural when you make a personal contact with the interviewer, but in this
scenario(when you receive emails from noreply@bigcorporate.com) it feels
unnecessary and intrusive to me.

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gumby
I grew up in the age of _handwritten_ thank you notes for everything and I
still wouldn’t expect them for an interview. I’d also be dismayed if the
company’s didn’t feel “thankful” to see me.

Companies need good employees. VCs need companies to invest their customers’
money into. The implicit power relationship in these situations is unhealthy.

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stunt
There is no golden rule. You are interacting with humans, and every situation
is different. A recruiter with good people skills doesn't use one golden rule
to filter everyone with it.

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corodra
I mean... I was taught in high school to always send a thank you email to an
interviewer after an interview.

Not only for the courtesy, but also to stay in the interviewer’s head if they
were undecided. Most people don’t send these, thus, you’ll be a bit unique and
might tip things in your favor.

An interviewer that uses it as a hiring requirement probably wants someone
thoughtful and willing to do a little extra compared to others. Seems minor
compared to multi hour programming tests.

~~~
nicoburns
> someone thoughtful and willing to do a little extra compared to others

Seems to me that you'd be more likely be selected for people are willing to
comply with arbitrary social conventions for the sake of getting ahead. Or
even just those who happened grow up in an environment that passed on the folk
knowledge that this is necessary. How many people who send these "thank you
notes" are truly thankful for the experience?

> Seems minor compared to multi hour programming tests.

It is minor _if you know you need to do it_. The thing is, that some
applicants will, and some won't (entirely independently of their capacity to
do the job).

~~~
corodra
I’m sorry, but a thank you is now considered arbitrary? Come on, seriously?
What environment are you not taught to respect someone that gave you time of
day?

And does it matter if they are truly thankful? It’s not like people share
things on the internet to truly SHARE, out of their own good will. They either
want fake internet points, recognition, or traffic to end up selling something
down the road.

~~~
nicoburns
> I’m sorry, but a thank you is now considered arbitrary? > And does it matter
> if they are truly thankful?

A thank you that is 1) Expected and 2) Not truly meant seems pretty arbitrary
to me. I would show respect to the person who took time out of their day to
interview me by not taking any more time out of their day by making them read
a thank you message.

To be clear: I don't think there is anything wrong with sending a thank you. I
just don't think it should be considered necessary, and it _definitely_
shouldn't be a primary signal on hiring decisions.

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seba_dos1
Wait, you're expected to write a "thank you" mail after an interview? Is this
some American culture thing?

~~~
ixwt
I was told to do so by career services in the past while trying to get my
first job. I got my first job without doing so though.

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purplezooey
Who is upvoting tweets here. Nobody cares about somebody's single sentence
thought. Stop.

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subjectsigma
Thanking someone for their time is free and takes only a minute. If I don't
really want the job I won't be bothered, and if I do I will try everything I
can to make myself stand out throughout the interview process, including
sending a short email. Recruiters are not stupid, they know this. TIL this
behavior is: classist, archaic, possibly sexist, possibly racist, and
definitely "problematic". Who knew?

~~~
acjohnson55
It seems like you're flipping it around. I don't see anything wrong with doing
this as a candidate. What strikes me as biased is making it a secret
handshake, from a hiring perspective, that rules out people who don't think to
do it.

~~~
subjectsigma
I disagree. If qualified candidates do something, hiring managers will
naturally look for those things in all their candidate, so it's a two way
street.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect your problem is actually with the
automatic dismissal part - and I agree, there are probably many cases where it
would be inappropriate (or at the very least, stupid) to not consider someone
for not sending a follow up. We can argue specifics all day, but in general I
don't think it's unreasonable for hiring managers to expect that kind of
communication.

~~~
acjohnson55
Yes, the automatic dismissal part is both problematic and foolish.

But beyond that, I _am_ a hiring manager, and I really can't tell you which
people I've hired have sent me thank you notes. I'm pretty sure it's a small
minority. I have yet to hire someone who's a "bad egg" or just doesn't care
about their coworkers.

Beyond that, expecting people to adhere to a protocol they simply may not know
is unfair. As I've said elsewhere, the original author should take the things
she thinks a thank you note shows and just screen for them directly, rather
than extrapolating from a norm that some people may have and others may not
for reasons that have nothing to do with anything.

If I thought an applicant knew they should send a thank you note but that they
just dropped the ball, that would be a negative sign. But I see no reason to
assume that.

