Really? as a CEO those are signals for you? the profile picture is debatable but the endorsements are just a joke and everyone knows it, people just exchange them like they do with twitter follows. If anything, too many of them would be a negative signal for me.
Completely agree with the rest of your comment though.
Who said hiring is fair?
>Any company that would be this lazy as to potentially throw away their best candidates in the first round of filtering on criteria that has such little actual signalling is not one that I would want to work for anyway.
For most companies (not talking Facebook and Google level stuff) it doesn't really matter -- and they could care less if you would work for them or if they get top talent or not. Any decent-ish programmer can do the work they require, so they are OK with being lazy in hiring.
Even the CEO, who has skin in the game, won't be entirely dependent on making the best possible hire (hopefully).
Most job seekers are terrible at job seeking. What does that say about how good managers are at hiring?
(Also, managers has to look at hundreds of different candidates.)
Pro-tip: no one wants to see a Nikon in your profile picture and no one cares about your photography hobby on your resume. I'm talking to you, half of the tech community on Linkedin!
I agree that many of the filters that people use are bullshit.
(You've most likely also read https://web.archive.org/web/20120501193533/http://raganwald.... too, a point in which is that other BS filters act just like the toss-half one in that they aren't really useful when your qualified applicant proportion is small.)
You'd be surprised. Might not be so explicit, but randomness (ie luck) plays a huge role in filtering process.
I am very curious how the balance of power can be tipped so drastically in the other direction in some places.
In my experience it was enormously difficult to find qualified candidates, especially if HR or recruiters were allowed to pre-filter candidates using relatively superficial judgments. A fizzbuzz test easily eliminated more than 80%.
Certainly one wants an edge, what I find confounding is that none of the advice dealt with proving actual ability as much as being shinier and flashier than the next candidate. I guess I was naive in thinking that kind of superficiality had diminished relevance in this industry.
> Remove any controversial political views or disparaging remarks about previous employers.
If a person keeps their stupid political views to themselves while at work, it's really not any of their employers business. As far as disparaging remarks go, if it's an awesome company to work for, there shouldn't be anything to worry about.
If your employees have to be as fake as possible to get hired, maybe you're doing it wrong.
I often pick my nose, scratch my ass, tell rude jokes, love wearing sweatpants, and don't have a problem with embarrassing-to-most sexual conversations. Do I engage in these things on a first date as I might on a day to day basis with friends? No.. I dress up a bit, smell a bit better than usual, steer clear of politics and sexual jokes. So it goes when seeking a job.
That's what I take issue with. I think for most people, the majority of their internet use isn't in a professional context, and I see no reason it should be used to judge them professionally. My Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and even GitHub accounts aren't professional things. I'm an adult, I know the difference between work and non-work, and I only work for companies that also know the difference.
If you present a pretty good face that isn't the expected one, it won't work-- frequently they want the drone.
Of course, politics goes beyond the pageant of professional politicians we call elections. (For example, saying "corporations are illegitimate entities" is political. Or "corporations are structured as dictatorships, and that's where you spend much of your lives". What would we expect a corporate gatekeeper to do, upon seeing that?)
Yes, there are plenty of hiring managers who let their ideology get in the way of making decisions that benefit the business. The companies that have a lot of those won't be around very long. But if you make any political comments online, just pretend that you're on TV and everyone can hear you. In other words, don't be an ass.
I have a few websites. They don't produce much income, but some guys offer their services for hire; thinking I might hire them if they say the right things? I tell them up front, I can't afford to hire them, but some are very persistent.
They send me their resumes, even after telling them I'm a struggling website owner, and I don't make a living doing this work. From my perspective, it's so easy to spot the Real Estate Kings? This one guy wanted me to join his companies, exclusive website forum. He was going to put in a good word, so the the other Winners would let me in. Well, I went to the forum, and it was just this guy and me. Every article was written by him. Every comment on the site was written by this guy. I couldn't belive the verbage this guy was throwing around. His favorite phrase was "Are you interested in monetizing? Followed by "You need to scale!" It's was almost like he memorized that movie about Facebook? And yes, he had a professional, cheesy profile pic. with a tie, and head cocked. Call me old school, but I wouldn't put his picture into Google Image search, but that same cheesy picture came up at least a couple dozen times just in just Images. He used the same portrait pic. in every website--ever created? My point is I had this guy figured out pretty quick. I think, if he didn't try so hard to sound professional, I would have loved to kick around a few ideas I have? And yes, if we meshed, I have a small bank roll I would be willing to risk.
I thought hiring in tech was about abilities? I don't care what a person looks like? It's so easy to spot "The Real Estate Kings" of Coders; I couldn't imagine trying to hide who you are? Yea, scrub the web, if you can, of anything controversial, but be honest? Honesty used to go along way? Do you really need that Starbucks fueled, go, go, save world with my app, never sleep, positive vib in order to get noticed for employment?
Maybe it's just me, but I'll take the well rounded individual, with some finished projects over a Cheerleader?
"As a general rule, the information obtained and requested through the pre-employment process should be limited to those essential for determining if a person is qualified for the job;...employers should not ask for a photograph of an applicant. If needed for identification purposes, a photograph may be obtained after an offer of employment is made and accepted."
It surprised me when you attached any importance to "a great looking but professional profile pic", since it's such an obvious way for discrimination to work, so I checked if that was allowed. I don't recall being asked for a photo pre-employment in 30 years.
They're not allowed to discriminate on whether your resume contains the right collection of trendy buzzwords either, but that's what HR systems sit and do every day.
You play the game that exists, not the one that's written in statute.
Aren't they?
I am surprised that a CEO publicly declares photos to be useful. A photo is clearly bullshit - there's no useful information in a photo (unless it's "here I am accepting $PRESTIGOUS_AWARD last year") - and it raise risk of discrimination claims.
There's lots of useful information in a photo.
A talented HR/CEO can size up a lot of things from it, even from the way the candidate is dressed in the photo.
"Hmm, too old, too quirky looking, doesn't look a good fit for our culture, fucking hipster I hate them, too slopilly dressed don't like working with such guys" etc.
It sounds like I've been wasting my time trying to be a better software developer or hone my skills; the big bucks are waiting for me as soon as I choose to project an artificial persona. My entire life thus far is starting to make a lot of sense.
Another quote is "act as if" - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-robbins/the-law-of-attrac...
Like Mark said, your attitude is at least half as important as your ability to code.
http://www.diyphotography.net/take-professional-linkedin-pro...
Read all the way through, as he points out that it is not the equipment that matters, its the setup with the reflectors, which can easily be improvised...
1/ Don't use your Facebook profile photo
2/ Don't use anything blurry: photo should be well lit and clear
3/ Don't use a photo that isn't a headshot—make sure your face is clearly visible and smiling
4/ Don't use anything where you're engaging in unprofessional behaviour
Not that your advice is bad -- it's about the same as any college advisor would give -- but to those with whom such fakery leaves a foul taste, just remember the tech industry still has plenty of opportunities where that's unnecessary.
Got a job in a great environment with great colleagues - without having to constantly denying myself.
For me these things work as a filter for companies, where I would not want to work. But for the OP I would first say - get any dev job at all and after that look for a great job to then jump ship.
Update your LinkedIn profile as someone has mentioned already. Sweeten it up, get a great looking but professional profile pic up there, get kudos from friends, etc.
Do the online profile cleanse. Make sure everything is very professional looking. Remove any controversial political views or disparaging remarks about previous employers. Looks like this blog post is anonymous. Keep it that way and make sure that email address isn't associated with anything. Employers will google your email address. They'll even drag your profile pic into google image search, so the cleanse includes anywhere that appears.
Get code into GitHub asap and make your profile there sound like you're a team player, super positive, super keen, all that good stuff.
Stop blogging about how tough your life is and don't ever mention it in conversation. Whether you like it or not (personally I don't), that idiotic quote in American Beauty from the motivational tapes is true: "In order to be successful, one must project an image of success at all times.". Yup, that came from the real-estate King himself. Seriously douchey and seriously true.
What employers care about is that you're going to be a great addition to the team, make the rest of the team happier and more productive and be super productive yourself. That's pretty much it besides not being a liability or a risk. Hence the profile cleanse, positivity, demonstration of ability by getting your code into GitHub and so on.
Then go forth and market the hell out of yourself with tons of positive vibe. What I'm telling you here is pretty much to do very much the opposite of what you're doing. Absolutely don't beg. You may get charity but I don't think you're going to be happy with it considering your salary expectations and family situation. You're going to want to land a job earning $75K upwards with excellent benefits in a stable and growing business. That means they need to think that you're awesome, so make yourself awesome and go and kill it.
Best of luck!!
~Mark.