Friday, December 09, 2011

Why Would I Hire You?

So you sent me email saying you want to join my company, along with your CV attached or at least with the request asking me to provide my recommendation. It's funny because of three things:

One - I'm not the owner of my current company nor the decision maker in my company's hiring process.
Two - How can I provide recommendation if I never meet or work with you personally? Do you expect me to just blindly believe in everything you said in the email or your CV?
Three - You expect me to provide recommendation but your email contains basic grammatical errors. Your CV can't be read easily, it contains unnecessary information, it doesn't tell who you are, what you are looking for, and what you are capable of, and it contains many spelling mistakes.

Let's just say I was the owner of the company. Or at least I had big influence in company's hiring process. Why would I hire you?

I would hire someone who has better skills than me. So go ahead, impress me.

I would hire someone who has extensive experience in multiple roles. Who has real experience in different type of customers. Who has been in many challenging situations.

I would hire someone who can work with minimum supervision, but at the same time can get along with the team.

I would hire someone who can adapt quickly. Who is open for options. Who's willing to look from another perspective. Technical competency can be built but someone attitude may not change after many years.

I would hire someone who will bring new values to the team. Who comes with different mindset. Who will bring up new and fresh ideas.

But above all, I would definitely hire someone if I could say: Hey, I know you. I have seen your work. And I heard lots of good things about you.

Now you just need to change the question to: why would (insert your dream company name here) hire you?

Good day.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good advice. Success is a journey , challenge ....

Nha

Anonymous said...

Why would Cisco hire me?

Anonymous said...

Hi Himawan,

all what you said is correct but in real life 99% of the multinational companies look for the above as secondary. what they look at is " who can support your application inside your dream company?". who do you know inside???? i know many guys who has more than what you mentioned above but they and the hiring staff inside their dream company are from different nationality? which means " no luck :-(
correct me if i am wrong.

regards

Anonymous said...

If Cisco doesn't hire..there is Juniper / Arista...

Anonymous said...

I believe that startups and owning your own company has and will always be the way to go. Let not you send out a CV but people send you a CV and convince you why you should hire them.

Himawan Nugroho said...

Hi Anonymous #3, I don't know which multinational companies that you meant, but I have been in 3 of them including Cisco and yes, it's true you need connection, but connection only can bring you to the door for the interview. It's still who you know (or who knows you), what you know, and what you have done. In my case personally to join Cisco I have many people from inside Cisco as well from customer (VP level) as my reference and yet I needed to pass 7 interview steps, 4 were really technical, to get in. Some people may be "lucky" as you said, but in my case it's still connection, real expertise and experience or reputation that matter

Himawan Nugroho said...

Hi Anonymous #5,
the context in this post is clearly written in the first sentence. And frankly even in my own company in the future it would be too small to have a hiring frenzy, so I would still ask the same question...

Anonymous said...

Survival of the fittest. If you're good you'll survive anywhere....Cisco ain't that special. When the sacking/redundancy comes...all reputation, experience, brand name goes down the shoot.

Himawan Nugroho said...

No company is special, except our own :) But if one can have at least half from what I asked, the person should be able to survive anywhere

Fabio Mendes said...

Awsome post Himawan !

I specially loved the part:

"Technical competency can be built but someone attitude may not change after many years."

I have met a few guys who have extraordinary technical expertise but they miserably lack sense of teamwork.

Sometimes I wonder if this kind of thing can really be changed in someone's mind.

Some weeks ago people had a very interesting conversation about this topic in nanog's mailing list: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/engine?do=post_view_flat;post=146800;page=1;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;mh=25;list=nanog