While I would love to work at Apple, I honestly don't think I want to work somewhere that isn't happy to see a picture of me holding a beer.

If they don't want my whole personality, they can't have my intelligence.

I refuse to turn myself into a "corporate robot" for the sake of a paycheck.

To play devils advocate, Linkedin is professional profile site. Personally I would not put a photo of myself holding a drink for this reason and agree or not, its reasonable to expect people wont like this. If someone said the same cause they saw a Facebook picture of you holding a beer then I would be in absolute agreement.

On a whim, I recently updated my LinkedIn picture to a photo of myself in a multi-coloured clown wig. This put an immediate end to all messages from recruiters.

just wait until the circus recruiters get a whiff of your profile

Don't worry, they will come back

They only grep the CVs for words, if you put you're a lion tamer, archeologist, but has the word PHP in your CV (or something similar) you'll get a flood of IT jobs

Yep. A good while ago, I added T-shirts, short hair, fig newtons, beer, speeding and disorderly conduct to my list of skills. Doesn't matter.

Here is the evidence: https://twitter.com/wundercounter/status/570454045099307008

That's amazing. I was going to post that here as a follow-up, but you beat me to it. :)

That says authenticity. You're thought leader material now!

I once worked for a design agency that was building the website of a major super PAC run by the son of a governor that most people on HN probably despise. I was tasked with turning the designer's PSDs into a Wordpress site and one section was bios of all the officers.

My contact at the client gathered up all the photos and bios and emailed them to me. Maybe 25% of the photos were professional headshots. The majority were just crappy cell phone pictures.

The rest were people at parties holding a beer. I emailed my contact to make sure he wanted me to use these and he told me to go ahead. Sure enough, a day after we went live I get a pissed-off call from him demanding to know why I used those photos.

Where do you draw the line? is it OK for me to have a shaggy beard? How about long hair? Tattoos?

My personality is my personality, and when you hire me you're going to get the whole thing. If you can't handle it, I rather you don't even talk to me in the first place.

I look forward to a future where nobody cares about this stuff.

One should note that Apple has basically no dress code, at all. Sandals, dreads, etc. and it has a history of this culture.

If your personality needs beer to work then it has a problem. LinkedIn is for business, not partying.

Shaggy beard, long hair, and tattoos are part of what's going to be at the job. You're not going to be drinking beer on the job.

I was more surprised that after four successful interviews, my poor web-presence was enough to nullify that success.

I also want to work with religious nuts, boring fuckwads, skiing junkies, food fetishists, and closet crocheters, as well as fellow social drinkers; and I want them all to be able to keep their oddities out of the workplace. It doesn't suggest a human amount of social intelligence to have a divisive image on your public profile.

That was my thought.

Was it like a Miller Lite or some other macro beer? If so then I can totally understand their rationale.

Pacifico. On a sailboat.

Poe's law in effect here.

I believe you, but they actually admitted that was the reason?

not really. I had a close contact part of the process who revealed this to me.

Probably couldn't have hurt to reach out to the recruiter and/or hiring manager and make a personal case for yourself.

Why would you lower yourself to the level of having to justify drinking beer to get a job?

This is rationalizing. Just because some stuffy suit caught a glance at his profile and nixed him doesn't mean the team he would work with has any issue with it.

As with all interviews, you gotta do a little dance to get in, but they're not reflective of daily experience.

"Think different. But not too different."

I'm not sure if your parent was referring to interviewing at Apple.

It was. Now edited

"Drink different. Beer is too mainstream."

I drink beer I've made, you've probably never heard of it.

Wouldn't they have seen that before they brought you on-site? Isn't that how they found you? I'm a little surprised this was the reason; we had beer bashes all the time at Apple.

You'd think so. I think it just didn't pass a final filter.

It would probably be worth a point or two for me, fwiw :) This can be a stressful business, it's important not to take things too seriously.

Is there more legitimacy/recourse to pay another company for services than to hire an employee (with the skill to back it up) to do the same work in-house? That level of indirection sounds inefficient...

Sometimes there is, yes. If you pay another company for services, it's strictly business. Hire an employee, and all sorts of primate emotions, politics, laws and so forth come into the picture. Sometimes that can more than outweigh the cost of the extra level of indirection.

On the bright side, this is one of the things that stops the entire economy being swallowed up by a handful of megacorporations.

how did you find out you were not given the job because of a beer in your Linkedin picture? - I never wanted to work for apple, but if this story is true it's very sad