The bigger story here is that given that she's clearly way above average at what she does - she couldn't find a job for a year and did this as a last resort - an act of desperation.
Which also did not work out - she ended up with Elance. If we measure success by job vs no job, then yes, otherwise... eh...
People 'say' they want creativity, passion, etc - but in reality, most people who work in successful companies didn't get there based on merit but largely, just dumb luck. If you know you're in a cushy spot, do you want to hire people who are way better than you?
Nope.
The job market is broken, and most people you know are the reason why. The people holding down the jobs are interested in keeping it that way - or else they'd get replaced.
Imagine a basketball player who could choose his/her own teammates and knew that if he/she gets kicked off the team, nobody will hire him/her ever again... They'd rather see the whole team destroyed, they'll get to collect cheques a while longer that way.
With regular jobs - this is much less obvious but truth of the matter is - there are too many young people hungry to replace the old, that the only way to prevent the whole system from beginning to collapse is to impose classicisms in subtle and not so much ways.
While what you say can often be true, it is a sign of weak leadership. Strong leaders promote the best people and thereby lift themselves and the whole team. Bad leaders see strong subordinates as threats to their power and suffocate the team. Not saying there aren’t a LOT of bad leaders out there, but what you describe isn’t a law everywhere.
The bigger point I think is your first sentence. She’s way above average and couldn’t get a job for a year. “Woe is us, the shortage of qualified candidates“. Like I was telling one friend who was complaining about not being able to find someone good, “The reality is you can’t find someone good at the price you want to pay.” There’s a shortage of talent that wants to live in a one bedroom apartment with their family for scraps of equity while the boss lives in a mansion and makes millions, that’s the real shortage in SV.
"Professionals i admire were calling my work impressive, but the person interviewing me was saying he couldn’t contextualize my experience because i “hadn’t worked at facebook or google or studied at stanford”."
Here's another:
"despite my 10 years of marketing and social media experience and despite the reach of my latest campaign, i was told i wouldn’t be that person."
This lady is clearly qualified. She's just not a good 'culture fit'.
I get that a fair bit myself - there's an apparent shortage of iOS developers and I happen to be one looking for work currently. Do you know how many companies explicitly say 'do you have a bachelor of computer science? no? ok bye'?
A lot! A college graduate being able to do iOS should be a 'wait, he/she must be good, that's unusual', instead it is straight to the garbage bin.
I could of course just start straight up lying on my resume and get better results but I just can't bring myself to do it.
Which means the hoardes of shameless liars who will say anything to get the job, get ahead. So it goes...
I constantly hear "We can't find any good techs". After interviews, I ask how it went, and I constantly hear "He was great, but he wanted too much money!"
So I whistle and get back to work. I've tried bringing it up before, but it just seems to fall on deaf ears.
Regarding dumb luck, that's exactly how I got my first real job out of grad school. I had specialized in kind of a risky way. It would have made me less generally employable, but more desirable in the sector in which I wanted a job.
Looked like it wasn't going to pan out. I was totally unemployed in a bad market with skills not generally in demand. Student loans were looming and I was just about out of cash.
In a stroke of dumb luck, I went to the grocery to get a 6 pack of beer, a luxury at the time. On the way out, ran into my former boss from an internship who didn't even live in that area of town. She said they just got an opening and I would be perfect, as she knew my skillset.
>most people who work in successful companies didn't get there based on merit but largely, just dumb luck
Do you have evidence for this, or are you just speculating? My experience (based on my employment history and the employment history of those close to me) is that ability to get hired correlates very closely with merit (including technical skill, amicability, etc.)
Do you have any evidence, or you're just speculating on your own experience? Most people would, of course, never admit they got hired based on luck instead of merit.
This made the circles ~a year ago when it was published, unfortunately didn't work out at AirBNB for Nina.
"Now, three months later, Mufleh tells Business Insider that Airbnb decided she wasn't the right candidate for the marketing role she had been considered for." (1)
But it's been succesful enough as a marketing piece to get her interviewed far-and-wide and - like a good marketer - she wrote a white paper to double down on the success.(2)
Holy shit, putting on my protective suit before all the "DONT BREAK MY BROWSER'S BACK BUTTON" comments come pouring in :).
Actually, I don't think it would break browser interaction, but yeah, I think she should consider re-creating the page as text rather than screenshots of text. First of all, much easier to edit (and style) when it's just text. Second, makes it much easier for the employer to Cmd-F search for keywords.
My other recommendation would be to have a prominent resumé link, and have it point to a standard PDF. Though maybe a linkedin link is good enough? I know Airbnb is probably more tech-forward than most employers, but there are still some HR shops that print out candidates' resumes to read by paper..and if your web-ready resumé does _not_ print out well...you may be at a disadvantage.
While this may not be the most technically well-executed page...have to give credit to the applicant for even trying to do something different, even if she's not a web developer. I've often introduced web dev to newbies by just pointing out that when they really need to get something online for the whole world to see...an image works just as well in a jiffy. The Web isn't just about HTML, but about having that URL that anyone in the entire world can freely and relatively instantaneously access. It's something we take for granted as web developers but it's a very different paradigm for those who are not webdevs.
Not to mention, all of the images take a hell of a lot longer time to load than text plus a font. I had a 16 second load time, granted my connection isn't the best.
But she's not applying for a web designer/software position, so I guess we shouldn't be too hard on the site...
Exactly - she's not being judged on her CSS skills, so why does it matter. She did something that is the top of HN right now. Seems like whatever she did (however bad) accomplished what she wanted, to get noticed.
I have a habit of compulsively selecting text on webpages for no real reason. So I quickly realize when pages like this one aren't actually using text, and then I find it so distracting that I can't actually pay attention to anything and just give up.
Speaking as someone who works in a Middle Eastern country, most of these countries would totally lose their minds if AirBnB made serious penetration into the Middle East. They absolutely do not want/tolerate these types of services (Uber also comes to mind).
I care what my closest neighbors do with their apartment as I share a floor, ceiling, and common spaces with them. If I owned a car, I might care what neighbors on my street do as it could reduce availability of on-street parking (there's little off-street parking here).
But I think the main point was not about the citizenry but the governments in the Middle East. The governments there would care for the same reasons governments in other countries do, companies like Airbnb and Uber are violating and/or inciting violation of zoning laws, regulations, avoiding relevant taxes & fees, etc. Relative to countries like the U.S. they might "lose their shit" because it's more novel to have such disruption. Such outfits might also not fit well with their forms of corruption, reducing bribe opportunities (e.g. why pay a bribe to get a zoning change for a hotel when you can just call the rooms "apartments" and list them on Airbnb?).
This is awesome and a great way to get hired. Finding a company(or several) you really want to work at and targeting them specifically with a tailor made strategy is probably better than a shotgun approach.
FWIW, she did this in April and talks about it as her most successful campaign yet. I don't think she got a job at Airbnb, but she did get an interview.
Unfortunately, the kinds of talent she showcases on her website is the kind of talent "RESERVED" for higher ups. I see "too much ambition" there and HR may not exactly be willing to approve of her.
(Such is the impression I have received from working in big corporate like places.)
I thought this too. But I am in the middle of my job search (applied for several on the ASK HN thread) and the calls I have received back are for jobs I did not write a cover letter or at most a paragraph that I sent with my resume.
The two companies where I spent almost a week each writing a cover letter and editing it until I thought it was perfect, have not even bothered to send me a "not interested." Obviously anecdotal, but not sure if I will continue to put in that effort as it does not seem to make a difference for me.
I've had the same experience. Written ~10 unique cover letters (for positions I really wanted), done a couple 'practice problems' but the only positive responses have been from 4 sentence long emails I sent out to people who posted on Ask HN.
I work at mega corp. Finding a small company is key. A hiring manager here wouldn't even be able to submit this to HR. Maybe her resume which would go into a giant stack, as if submitted online to be reviewed by committee.
It looks like this from earlier in 2015 and there's a follow up post on her blog[1]. Ultimately she didn't get a job at AirBNB but seems like she did end up landing a job elsewhere as a result.
If she doesn't have CSS chops, then it makes a lot of sense. Much easier to build the components in photoshop or whatever and just get them stitched together. It doesn't look like she's interested in any sort of development role, so it's not a skill I would expect her to have.
Readit News
2. This is actually a case study in how to market yourself: https://web.archive.org/web/20150714043548/http://media.wix....
3. From the case study:
These are the numbers:
• 445,000+ Visits to Nina4Airbnb
• Hundreds of thousands of Tweets and millions of impressions
• 30,000+ New visitors to my personal blog
• 14,000+ LinkedIn profile views
• 2,000+ Emails and messages of support from around the world
• Global media coverage
• An interview with Airbnb
• A pipeline of interviews with dozens of other high impact companies
4. This is her blog post about it: http://eatwritewalk.com/2015/07/14/the-good-the-bad-and-the-...
5. Fireside chat: https://youtu.be/tcjaqeXjKuc?t=7m14s
This part was especially interesting to me:
the person interviewing me was saying he couldn’t contextualize my experience because i “hadn’t worked at facebook or google or studied at stanford”.
Regardless it's still a well done effort.
Which also did not work out - she ended up with Elance. If we measure success by job vs no job, then yes, otherwise... eh...
People 'say' they want creativity, passion, etc - but in reality, most people who work in successful companies didn't get there based on merit but largely, just dumb luck. If you know you're in a cushy spot, do you want to hire people who are way better than you?
Nope.
The job market is broken, and most people you know are the reason why. The people holding down the jobs are interested in keeping it that way - or else they'd get replaced.
Imagine a basketball player who could choose his/her own teammates and knew that if he/she gets kicked off the team, nobody will hire him/her ever again... They'd rather see the whole team destroyed, they'll get to collect cheques a while longer that way.
With regular jobs - this is much less obvious but truth of the matter is - there are too many young people hungry to replace the old, that the only way to prevent the whole system from beginning to collapse is to impose classicisms in subtle and not so much ways.
The bigger point I think is your first sentence. She’s way above average and couldn’t get a job for a year. “Woe is us, the shortage of qualified candidates“. Like I was telling one friend who was complaining about not being able to find someone good, “The reality is you can’t find someone good at the price you want to pay.” There’s a shortage of talent that wants to live in a one bedroom apartment with their family for scraps of equity while the boss lives in a mansion and makes millions, that’s the real shortage in SV.
Here's from her blog:
"Professionals i admire were calling my work impressive, but the person interviewing me was saying he couldn’t contextualize my experience because i “hadn’t worked at facebook or google or studied at stanford”."
Here's another:
"despite my 10 years of marketing and social media experience and despite the reach of my latest campaign, i was told i wouldn’t be that person."
This lady is clearly qualified. She's just not a good 'culture fit'.
I get that a fair bit myself - there's an apparent shortage of iOS developers and I happen to be one looking for work currently. Do you know how many companies explicitly say 'do you have a bachelor of computer science? no? ok bye'?
A lot! A college graduate being able to do iOS should be a 'wait, he/she must be good, that's unusual', instead it is straight to the garbage bin.
I could of course just start straight up lying on my resume and get better results but I just can't bring myself to do it.
Which means the hoardes of shameless liars who will say anything to get the job, get ahead. So it goes...
So I whistle and get back to work. I've tried bringing it up before, but it just seems to fall on deaf ears.
Looked like it wasn't going to pan out. I was totally unemployed in a bad market with skills not generally in demand. Student loans were looming and I was just about out of cash.
In a stroke of dumb luck, I went to the grocery to get a 6 pack of beer, a luxury at the time. On the way out, ran into my former boss from an internship who didn't even live in that area of town. She said they just got an opening and I would be perfect, as she knew my skillset.
Weeks later I started my career at my dream job.
[1] http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...
Tangentially, I've always wondered, in that model, how B players ever get hired.
Do you have evidence for this, or are you just speculating? My experience (based on my employment history and the employment history of those close to me) is that ability to get hired correlates very closely with merit (including technical skill, amicability, etc.)
"Now, three months later, Mufleh tells Business Insider that Airbnb decided she wasn't the right candidate for the marketing role she had been considered for." (1)
But it's been succesful enough as a marketing piece to get her interviewed far-and-wide and - like a good marketer - she wrote a white paper to double down on the success.(2)
(1) http://www.businessinsider.com/the-resume-that-got-nina-mufl...
(2) http://www.nina4airbnb.com/#!whitepaper/c1e1m
Actually, I don't think it would break browser interaction, but yeah, I think she should consider re-creating the page as text rather than screenshots of text. First of all, much easier to edit (and style) when it's just text. Second, makes it much easier for the employer to Cmd-F search for keywords.
My other recommendation would be to have a prominent resumé link, and have it point to a standard PDF. Though maybe a linkedin link is good enough? I know Airbnb is probably more tech-forward than most employers, but there are still some HR shops that print out candidates' resumes to read by paper..and if your web-ready resumé does _not_ print out well...you may be at a disadvantage.
While this may not be the most technically well-executed page...have to give credit to the applicant for even trying to do something different, even if she's not a web developer. I've often introduced web dev to newbies by just pointing out that when they really need to get something online for the whole world to see...an image works just as well in a jiffy. The Web isn't just about HTML, but about having that URL that anyone in the entire world can freely and relatively instantaneously access. It's something we take for granted as web developers but it's a very different paradigm for those who are not webdevs.
O_o
But I think the main point was not about the citizenry but the governments in the Middle East. The governments there would care for the same reasons governments in other countries do, companies like Airbnb and Uber are violating and/or inciting violation of zoning laws, regulations, avoiding relevant taxes & fees, etc. Relative to countries like the U.S. they might "lose their shit" because it's more novel to have such disruption. Such outfits might also not fit well with their forms of corruption, reducing bribe opportunities (e.g. why pay a bribe to get a zoning change for a hotel when you can just call the rooms "apartments" and list them on Airbnb?).
Best of luck to Nina.
Unfortunately, the kinds of talent she showcases on her website is the kind of talent "RESERVED" for higher ups. I see "too much ambition" there and HR may not exactly be willing to approve of her.
(Such is the impression I have received from working in big corporate like places.)
The two companies where I spent almost a week each writing a cover letter and editing it until I thought it was perfect, have not even bothered to send me a "not interested." Obviously anecdotal, but not sure if I will continue to put in that effort as it does not seem to make a difference for me.
[1] http://eatwritewalk.com/2015/07/14/the-good-the-bad-and-the-...
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Inconsistency is my trigger! :P