News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Silicon Valley hiring is not a meritocracy (2013). Parent comment

Re:Silicon Valley hiring is not a meritocracy (2013) by leeny on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:58PM (#9552386)
Author here. The issue is that, much of the time, people reading the paper just look at proxies (for speed reasons and because they're disincentivized to select wild cards). You can do a fantastic job of explaining your projects, but if you don't have pedigree, the reader's eyeballs may never go far enough down the page. It's a matter of how these things are weighed, and the weight assigned to credentialing >>> the weight assigned to everything else.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Silicon Valley hiring is not a meritocracy (2013) by iamthepieman on Friday May 15, 2015 @02:25PM (#9552619)
I don't even have a degree. I've always made it to the interview stage by putting myself on the cover letter and, to a lesser extent, in the resume. I might say what I would like to do for the company, mention some changes or improvements I would make to their products or tell them why I think they could use a geospatial engineer even if they don't use GIS in an obvious way in their publicly facing APIs/products.

This is just as much a filter for me as it is for the company.

One thing I've learned in my job searches is that I'm looking to filter just as much and quickly as the companies I'm applying to.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Silicon Valley hiring is not a meritocracy (2013) by Swizec on Friday May 15, 2015 @02:07PM (#9552464)
> but if you don't have pedigree, the reader's eyeballs may never go far enough down the page

Solution: put your pedigree at the bottom of the page. Someone looking at my CV needs to get through all my projects and past successes before they get to the bullet point that says "5 years college, no degree".

Why on earth would you put your weaknesses first?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Silicon Valley hiring is not a meritocracy (2013) by leeny on Friday May 15, 2015 @02:15PM (#9552526)
Recruiters are good at quickly scanning for pedigree before incurring the cognitive load required to grok projects. So, I don't think placement/layout matters that much. And pedigree doesn't just refer to your degree -- it's also the brand name factor of where you've worked.

Not saying this is OK, for the record.

[ Parent | on HN ]