I want to provide an alternative to Ben West’s post about the benefits of being rejected. This isn’t related to CEA’s online team specifically, but is just my general thoughts from my own experience doing hiring over the years.
While I agree that “the people grading applications will probably not remember people whose applications they reject,” two scenarios[1] come to mind for job applicants that I remember[2]:
The application is much worse than I expected. This would happen if somebody had a nice resume, a well-put together cover letter, and then showed up to an interview looking slovenly. Or if they said they were good at something, and then were unable to demonstrate it when prompted.[3]
Something about the application is noticeably abnormal (usually bad). This could be the MBA with 20 years of work experience who applied for an entry level part-time role in a different city & country than where he lived[4]. This could be the French guy I interviewed years ago who claimed to speak unaccented American English, but clearly didn’t.[5] It could be the intern who came in for an interview and requested a daily stipend that was higher than the salary of anyone on my team. If you are rude, I’ll probably remember it. I remember the cover letter that actually had the wrong company name at the top (I assume he had recently applied to that company and just attached the wrong file). I also remember the guy I almost hired who had started a bibimbap delivery service for students at his college, so impressive/good things can also get you remembered.
A big caveat here is that memories are fuzzy. If John Doe applies to a job and I reject him and three months later we meet somehow and he says “Hi, I’m John Doe” I probably wouldn’t remember that John Doe applied, nor that I rejected him (unless his name was abnormally memorable, or there was something otherwise notable to spark my memory). But if he says “Hi, I’m John Doe. I do THING, and I used to ACCOMPLISHMENT,” then maybe I’d remember looking at his resume or that he mentioned ACCOMPLISHMENT in a cover letter. But I would expect more than 90% of applications I look at fade completely from my mind within a few days.
I think that it is rare. I have memories of less than a dozen specific applications out of the 1000s I’ve looked at over the years, and if you are self-aware enough to be reading this type of content then you probably won’t have an application bad enough for me to remember.
The other thing I would gently disagree with Ben West on is about how getting rejected can be substantially positive.[6] My rough perspective (not based on data, just based on impressions) is that it is very rare that getting rejected from a job application is a good thing. I imagine that there are some scenarios in which a strong candidate doesn’t get hired, and then the hiring manager refers the candidate to another position. That would be great, but I also think that it doesn’t happen very often. I don’t have data on “of candidates that reach the 3rd stage or further of a hiring process but are not hired, what percent have some specific positive result from the hiring process,” but my guess is that it is a low percentage.
Nonetheless, my impression is that the hiring rounds Ben runs are better than most, and the fact that he is willing to give feedback or make referrals for some rejected candidates already puts his hiring rounds in the top quartile or decile by my judgement.
To the extent that the general claim is “if you think you are a reasonable candidate, please apply,” I agree. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. If you are nervous about applying to EA organizations because you think a rejection could damage your reputation at that and other organizations, if your application is better than the bottom 5-10%, you have nothing to worry about. Have a few different people check your resume to make sure you haven’t got any low hanging fruit improvements, and go for it.
I’m thinking about real applications I’ve seen for each of these things that I mention. But they are all several years old, from before I became aware of EA.
I remember interviewing somebody in 2017 or so who was talking about his machine learning project, but then when I poked and prodded he had just cobbled together templates from a tutorial. And I’ve had this linguistically a few times, when a resume /cover letter claims a high level of competence in a language (bilingual, fluency, “practically native”), or something similarly high, yet the person struggles to converse in that language.
I’m 100% open to people taking part-time jobs if they want them, and I don’t mind someone “overqualified” doing a job. But if the job is in-person and requires you to speak the local language, you’ll have to at least convince me why you are a good fit.
His English was very good, far better than my French, and I assume that he spent many hours practicing and studying. But it was noticeably not American English, and that particular job required incumbents to be native English speakers.
There is the general idea getting rejected from MEDIOCRE_COMPANY enabled you to apply and get hired at GREAT_COMPANY. But that seems bland/obvious enough that I’ll set it aside.
I want to provide an alternative to Ben West’s post about the benefits of being rejected. This isn’t related to CEA’s online team specifically, but is just my general thoughts from my own experience doing hiring over the years.
While I agree that “the people grading applications will probably not remember people whose applications they reject,” two scenarios[1] come to mind for job applicants that I remember[2]:
The application is much worse than I expected. This would happen if somebody had a nice resume, a well-put together cover letter, and then showed up to an interview looking slovenly. Or if they said they were good at something, and then were unable to demonstrate it when prompted.[3]
Something about the application is noticeably abnormal (usually bad). This could be the MBA with 20 years of work experience who applied for an entry level part-time role in a different city & country than where he lived[4]. This could be the French guy I interviewed years ago who claimed to speak unaccented American English, but clearly didn’t.[5] It could be the intern who came in for an interview and requested a daily stipend that was higher than the salary of anyone on my team. If you are rude, I’ll probably remember it. I remember the cover letter that actually had the wrong company name at the top (I assume he had recently applied to that company and just attached the wrong file). I also remember the guy I almost hired who had started a bibimbap delivery service for students at his college, so impressive/good things can also get you remembered.
A big caveat here is that memories are fuzzy. If John Doe applies to a job and I reject him and three months later we meet somehow and he says “Hi, I’m John Doe” I probably wouldn’t remember that John Doe applied, nor that I rejected him (unless his name was abnormally memorable, or there was something otherwise notable to spark my memory). But if he says “Hi, I’m John Doe. I do THING, and I used to ACCOMPLISHMENT,” then maybe I’d remember looking at his resume or that he mentioned ACCOMPLISHMENT in a cover letter. But I would expect more than 90% of applications I look at fade completely from my mind within a few days.
I think that it is rare. I have memories of less than a dozen specific applications out of the 1000s I’ve looked at over the years, and if you are self-aware enough to be reading this type of content then you probably won’t have an application bad enough for me to remember.
The other thing I would gently disagree with Ben West on is about how getting rejected can be substantially positive.[6] My rough perspective (not based on data, just based on impressions) is that it is very rare that getting rejected from a job application is a good thing. I imagine that there are some scenarios in which a strong candidate doesn’t get hired, and then the hiring manager refers the candidate to another position. That would be great, but I also think that it doesn’t happen very often. I don’t have data on “of candidates that reach the 3rd stage or further of a hiring process but are not hired, what percent have some specific positive result from the hiring process,” but my guess is that it is a low percentage.
Nonetheless, my impression is that the hiring rounds Ben runs are better than most, and the fact that he is willing to give feedback or make referrals for some rejected candidates already puts his hiring rounds in the top quartile or decile by my judgement.
To the extent that the general claim is “if you think you are a reasonable candidate, please apply,” I agree. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. If you are nervous about applying to EA organizations because you think a rejection could damage your reputation at that and other organizations, if your application is better than the bottom 5-10%, you have nothing to worry about. Have a few different people check your resume to make sure you haven’t got any low hanging fruit improvements, and go for it.
Actually, it is just two variations of a single “application is bad” scenario.
I’m thinking about real applications I’ve seen for each of these things that I mention. But they are all several years old, from before I became aware of EA.
I remember interviewing somebody in 2017 or so who was talking about his machine learning project, but then when I poked and prodded he had just cobbled together templates from a tutorial. And I’ve had this linguistically a few times, when a resume /cover letter claims a high level of competence in a language (bilingual, fluency, “practically native”), or something similarly high, yet the person struggles to converse in that language.
I’m 100% open to people taking part-time jobs if they want them, and I don’t mind someone “overqualified” doing a job. But if the job is in-person and requires you to speak the local language, you’ll have to at least convince me why you are a good fit.
His English was very good, far better than my French, and I assume that he spent many hours practicing and studying. But it was noticeably not American English, and that particular job required incumbents to be native English speakers.
There is the general idea getting rejected from MEDIOCRE_COMPANY enabled you to apply and get hired at GREAT_COMPANY. But that seems bland/obvious enough that I’ll set it aside.