Custom resume from someone who wanted to work at Airbnb (2015)(nina4airbnb.com) |
Custom resume from someone who wanted to work at Airbnb (2015)(nina4airbnb.com) |
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...
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-...
Inconsistency is my trigger! :P
She gives a possible reason in her blog:
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”
* 2011:
https://kathleenkowal.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/custom-airbnb-resume/
Kathleen went very physical, but it wasn't a good fit for Airbnb in 2011
* 2012:
http://www.ericlovesairbnb.com/
Eric more or less pioneered the "microsite" approach [at Airbnb, at least] and is still there today
* 2013:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2600264
Loren was not extended an offer, and has unfortunately taken down his "resume" site
* 2014:
http://www.katielovesairbnb.com/
Katie was successful and is working on killer stuff at Airbnb these days
As for the "hadn’t worked at facebook or google or studied at stanford" from the recruiter ... well, sometimes startups become BigCos and idiots are tasked with interview duties.
Bedouins are a seminomadic group of people sort of like the gypsies of Europe. Most of the citizens of Arab countries are not bedouins. They're permanently settled in one location/area, and they do not identify as bedouin.
This cultural gaffe indicates that she should have done more research before making such a prominent statement. "Arab hospitality" or "Middle eastern hospitality" would have been more appropriate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_busiest_airport
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_world%27s_busiest_...
That combined with the text-as-images make the whole experience rather disconcerting. I understand she's not a designer, but as a marketer her presentation needs to be polished. As it is, the visual mistakes undermine the content.
As I typically browse unfamiliar sites with scripts disabled, loading a blank page is instant failure for the site.
You build a barebones static page first, and then you add bells and whistles.
But then, after enabling script, what do I see? Images filled with mostly text. Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrgh... I bet they weren't even crushed.
Luckily for her, no business in its right mind would ask someone like me to evaluate any new marketing hires. Engineer-types and marketer-types in the same company are like mortal enemies, forced by circumstance to work together toward a common goal.
She's a marketer. This is the equivalent of nice PDF, which is the output of most marketing departments to their higher ups.
i have very little sympathy for her
we should take this more seriously, dont help tyrants ... or their wives
This bullshit about A players was just his way of forcing everyone that worked for him to fear not delivering on his absurd expectations lest they become a "B" player.
This was explicitly from some doofus at Airbnb. One can at least hope that outside the Unicorn Ranch (and the FaceGoog) that people are more reasonable.
My question is, what are the qualifications of the person that actually got the job?
Must have 3 years experience as a molotov professional.
However, I'm more inclined to believe the entailments of my own experience than the informal inferences of some stranger. I encourage everyone else to do the same.
I might argue that I even have "data" in the form of a reasonably large group of professional acquaintances. "Luck" is nothing but statistical noise, and a large number of people and a large number of job applications helps damp down the noise. There is a very obvious trend in the form of more meritorious people performing better when applying for jobs.
However, when you have the veterans who have already done something great, an ambitious person may seem like a rare opportunity to do something big again.
In the words of Ip Man, it is difficult for a student to find a great teacher. It is more difficult for a teacher to find a great student.
Too much ambition can lead to losing sight of practicality, burn out, high stress, anxiety, depression, high turnover, as well as losing site of the bigger picture.
Given the limits imposed by Job's comment, which parameters the construct, it may be that the set of "B Players" are (failed) A players, who've involuntarily been forced a step down the ladder, or, alternatively, they are C players who've convinced some unspecified hiring intermediary that they're on the rise...
However one becomes a B player, by definition, one is constrained...one can only hire C players...dimming the prospects for success...so, for B, there appears to be little chance of ascending, or re-ascending, to A player status...
Whimsical, but fun to think about...
So A players end up hiring B players when they don't want to, and sometimes A players sneak through the B player's filter.
And this is why, when people that are apparently very good leave your company, you have to wonder if you have to much B team, and you are letting them run amok.
Sometimes whole teams are formed with B and C players because company cannot pay A wages/benefits, and it just stays in B or C arena.
I always strive to have people better than me on my team, and support them and keep them happy.
I've heard that too, but I also hear they work less hours, have better vacation, and other benefits. You'll have to balance something out if you really want great employees.
For example, if you know someone who works with PHP then contextualizing their experience could follow these steps: understand that PHP is a programming language, look at their code and see it is well architected, decide to hire them even despite inexperience in Ruby because they have the core skills.
Being unable to contextualize experience isn't the same as not having emotional empathy. It is being unable to have an actionable intellectual grasp of a topic.