As a engineering manager in a quickly growing company, I spend a lot of time trying to hire people. I spend hours poring over resumes, talking to candidiates and trying to convince them why Yahoo! is a great place to work – especially if you aren’t spending all your time hiring. 😉

But apparently not everyone wants to work for Yahoo!. They actually expend a lot of effort trying NOT to get hired. I’ve seen a lot of examples of this. Just in case you too don’t want to work at a highly innovative, profitable and successful company, here’s exactly how to do it.

The Resume
You have 10 seconds to impress me. Better try your hardest not to.

1. Don’t put your resume anywhere. That’ll make sure I never find it. Also, don’t go to conferences, post to technical websites, or generally do anything of public significance.
2. Put your resume up on a site like HotJobs, but do absolutely nothing to make it readable. Leave lots of strange characters in there like %20=, ??, or u>. Include no line breaks and generally make it unparsable. Don’t include a link to a nicely formatted version.
3. Don’t include any experience in your resume. I’ll assume you have none.
4. List examples of websites you’ve built in your resume that are clearly broken or poorly built.
5. Include a “glossary of terms” in your resumes, defining things like “PHP” and “Oracle”. Since I’m just a dumb manager, I’ll have no idea what these mean or why I would want to hire for them. Make sure that some of the definitions are wrong.
6. Lie.
7. Misspell basic words like ‘Senier’.
8. Throw in random acronyms that have nothing to do with your skills. Make some up.
9. Don’t include a working email address in your resume. Maybe make it outdated, or protected by an overagressive spam filter so you’ll never see my email.
10. If you do get my email, don’t answer it.

The Phone Screen
Where you have your chance to get out the hassle of meeting me.

1. Don’t answer the phone at the time scheduled for your phone screen.
2. Answer the phone, but do it on a cell phone along a busy street. It helps if your phone loses signal a few times too.
3. Don’t shut up. Answer every question with long, irrelevent soliloquies. Don’t give me a chance to speak.
4. When I ask you to rate your skills, give yourself a 10 out of 10 on at least one. Be unable to answer even moderately complicated questions about that skill.
5. Get frustrated and simply hang up on me.
6. Say you have another offer and unless you get an offer from me tomorrow, you’ll have to take the other one.
7. At the end of the phone screen, reveal that you have no interest in moving or commuting to Yahoo!.

The Interview
This is your big chance to prove to us that you don’t want to work here – in person!

1. Show up late or not at all.
2. Don’t even attempt to answer questions, just say “I don’t know” and stare back blankly.
3. Refuse to go up to a whiteboard and write code or draw architecture diagrams.
4. Mumble. Use incomplete or incoherent sentences. Engineers don’t need to talk to anyone anyway. (Except in interviews.)
5. Don’t make eye contact with anyone while you answer their questions.
6. When asked why you want to work here, give an answer like “it’ll be a shorter commute” or quote verbatim the company mission statement.
7. Don’t bother to familiarize yourself with the product beforehand. Have no suggestions about how to improve it.
8. Insist on continuing on with a problem, even when it’s clear you have no idea how to solve it.
9. Provide a code sample that is easily proved to be plagarized with a quick web search.

The Offer
Uh oh, this is your last chance to do something stupid.

1. Demand a ridiculous salary, say twice what you are currently making.
2. Ask if there are higher-level or higher-paying positions available.
3. Say you’re going to take the offer, then change your mind.
4. Actually sign the offer, then change your mind!
5. Take weeks to decide.
6. Disappear completely!

That’s some pretty valuable advice. Now as practice, please don’t read this job description and whatever you do, don’t send me your resume. You’re doing great!