That discussion was part of my inspiration for writing about this.
The point I'm trying to make here is that the idea that you need to invest vast amounts of effort into side projects in order to increase your chances of being hired is misleading.
But... putting just a small amount of effort into having e.g. a couple of blog posts and a single public project on GitHub CAN give you most of that value.
Hiring managers faced with five candidates, one of whom has a blog post about the technology they are hiring for, are more likely to bump that candidate through to a phone screen or interview round.
But if that candidate only made the blog posts and put stuff on github to help them get work, and not, say, because they were interested in the subject?... Then that becomes a reason to ignore their blog and github.
> “Oh God,” they answered. “No, anything but that. Nothing says ‘person exactly like every other bright-eyed naive new doctor’ than wanting to help people. You’re trying to distinguish yourself from the pack! [...] Okay, tell you what. You have any experience treating people in disaster-prone Third World countries? [...] Talk about how you want to become a doctor because the people of Haiti taught you so much.”
> During my interviews, I talked about my time working in Haiti. I got to talk to some of the other applicants, and they talked about their time working in Ethiopia, or Bangladesh, or Nicaragua, or wherever. Apparently the “stand out by working in a disaster-prone Third World country” plan was sufficiently successful that everyone started using, and now the people who do it don’t stand out at all. My interviewer was probably thinking “Oh God, what Third World country is this guy going to start blabbering about how much he learned from?” and moving my application to the REJECT pile as soon as I opened my mouth.
Honestly that wouldn't make a difference for me. If it was obvious that they had only put up blog posts to help them get work, but the content of those blog posts was good, they'd still bump themselves up my list of candidates compared to candidates that hadn't done that.
The signal I'm looking for here is proof that the candidate can write, can think and can do some aspect of the work. A resume usually won't prove that to me on its own.
Sure, ok, fair enough. p.s. I did enjoy the article, thanks for that. :-) It's encouraging to be told you don't need to feel like you need a gapless decade on github and/or blogging, that anything is still something.
> But if that candidate only made the blog posts and put stuff on github to help them get work, and not, say, because they were interested in the subject?... Then that becomes a reason to ignore their blog and github.
they only wrote their resume to help get work, not because they're... i dunno, interested in resume writing. should i ignore their resume?
it's all just a source of stuff to talk to them about.
It's hard to believe you're arguing in good faith - you allow that a resume is written only to get work and so consider it, but if they write a blog only to help them get work you dismiss it with the reason "they only did it to help them get work"? How is that consistent?
The point I'm trying to make here is that the idea that you need to invest vast amounts of effort into side projects in order to increase your chances of being hired is misleading.
But... putting just a small amount of effort into having e.g. a couple of blog posts and a single public project on GitHub CAN give you most of that value.
Hiring managers faced with five candidates, one of whom has a blog post about the technology they are hiring for, are more likely to bump that candidate through to a phone screen or interview round.