Comments on: Who Wouldn’t Hire You If…

By: Ilya Kipnis

Ilya Kipnis — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:57:25 +0000

I’m now going to play devil’s advocate to Seth’s post, because as much as I utterly want to believe in it, from personal experience, I find that it’s not the magic-cure all. Who wouldn’t hire you if you went down that list?

Renaissance Technologies.
D.E. Shaw for the Quantitative Analyst role.
Google for a scientific role.

I’m an immigrant from Kiev (came over when I was 4). I majored in information and systems engineering (aka management science aka operations research) at Lehigh University and was exposed to statistics, OOP, databases, web programming, optimization, and even finance (of my own volition) as well as economics and other things. I speak fluent Russian (though reading and writing is harder).

I’ve been looking for work for 12 months and haven’t even had a single offer in this entire duration. I’ve done some of the things on that list. My blogs are read by less than ten people. I’ve never been asked about my Russian skills. Now while I may not have a developer’s mastery of SQL/Java/Javascript/HTML, I’ve written code to help me with some homework once, and did a few web programming projects (such as programming the game of 15, and for a grand project, writing a web site that had users register, log in, go through a simulation, and recorded their score), so I’m hopefully beyond “dummies” knowledge.

No dice. Now maybe with a BS degree I’m biting off more than I can chew by trying to get to Wall Street, but I find finance intellectually fun due to the objectivity of markets, and want to do something brainy for my career. Am I on the wrong trail here, by actually wanting to use my head at work like I did in school, rather than doing entry-level grunt-work which would bore me to insanity?

If I have one weakness, it’s a low tolerance for boredom. I want to always be intellectually stimulated. Is that wrong?

By: Yuriko

Yuriko — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:30:43 +0000

I haven’t been seriously job searching for a while — but now I am — with my workplace in economic heck. (I work for the state of California.) And it’s frustrating with our wages being low in the first place and then they put furloughs on us. My husband and I are considering moving out of state just to live and work some place where we won’t be scraping by each month.

I find it’s really hard to do a long-distance job search… even for an entry level job. Did you know they want you to be a state resident before applying for a state job in Colorado?
So, I understand how hard it is for young people. I suggest volunteering, learning anything you can, and networking with just about everyone… you never know where your big lead will come from.

By: N.S.

N.S. — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 03:29:48 +0000

All well and good, but what about grads with student loans and no help from mom and dad? You have to work a LOT of minimum wage hours to make rent, which doesn’t leave much time for learning languages and such. At least in law school you get to put off that grind for a while.

By: Mits

Mits — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:41:44 +0000

What if you replace learining programming with graphic design? Suppose this list can be adapted to your own needs as well?

By: Seth Godin

Seth Godin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:54:47 +0000

thanks for the shout out, Willy.

I appreciate it.

By: Mak Fiavi

Mak Fiavi — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:41:55 +0000

This post is money. I think the same concept can be applied to a job-less summer as well.

By: Alex Peerenboom

Alex Peerenboom — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:24:40 +0000

Seriously, that was such a great post by Seth this morning. A lot of people say that looking for a job is a job itself. But that’s only part of it. You need to be continuously challenging and improving yourself, especially when you are looking for a job. Add to your experience by volunteering, expand your skills by learning, etc.

And I believe these are things that you should keep doing once you have a job. You have time during your commute if you take a bus, lunch breaks, weekends.

I’m glad you brought that blog post up today.