{"id":248,"date":"2005-03-25T14:50:55","date_gmt":"2005-03-25T22:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/2005\/03\/25\/how-not-to-get-hired-at-yahoo\/"},"modified":"2005-12-17T12:06:24","modified_gmt":"2005-12-17T20:06:24","slug":"how-not-to-get-hired-at-yahoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/2005\/03\/25\/how-not-to-get-hired-at-yahoo\/","title":{"rendered":"How not to Get Hired at Yahoo!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

\nBut 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.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe Resume<\/em>
\nYou have 10 seconds to impress me. Better try your hardest not to.<\/p>\n

    \n
  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.\n<\/li>\n
  2. Put your resume up on a site like HotJobs<\/a>, 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.\n<\/li>\n
  3. Don’t include any experience in your resume. I’ll assume you have none.\n<\/li>\n
  4. List examples of websites you’ve built in your resume that are clearly broken or poorly built.\n<\/li>\n
  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.\n<\/li>\n
  6. Lie.\n<\/li>\n
  7. Misspell basic words like ‘Senier’.\n<\/li>\n
  8. Throw in random acronyms that have nothing to do with your skills. Make some up.\n<\/li>\n
  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 Maybe make it outdated, or protected by an overagressive spam filter so you’ll never see my email.\n<\/li>\n
  10. If you do get my email, don’t answer it.\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \nThe Phone Screen<\/em>
    \nWhere you have your chance to get out the hassle of meeting me.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Don’t answer the phone at the time scheduled for your phone screen.\n<\/li>\n
    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.\n<\/li>\n
    3. Don’t shut up. Answer every question with long, irrelevent soliloquies. Don’t give me a chance to speak.\n<\/li>\n
    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.\n<\/li>\n
    5. Get frustrated and simply hang up on me.\n<\/li>\n
    6. Say you have another offer and unless you get an offer from me tomorrow, you’ll have to take the other one.\n<\/li>\n
    7. At the end of the phone screen, reveal that you have no interest in moving or commuting to Yahoo!.\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      \nThe Interview<\/em>
      \nThis is your big chance to prove to us that you don’t want to work here – in person!<\/p>\n

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

        \nThe Offer<\/em>
        \nUh oh, this is your last chance to do something stupid.<\/p>\n

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

          \nThat’s some pretty valuable advice. Now as practice, please don’t read this job description<\/a> and whatever you do, don’t send me your resume<\/a>. You’re doing great!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          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. \ud83d\ude09 But apparently not …<\/p>\n

          Continue reading ‘How not to Get Hired at Yahoo!’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}