Poetry Requirement on a Job Application??
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So, I'm working as an independent contractor doing mostly backend and middleware, and I finally decide to try to pick up some more work outside my current client; business is slow with my current customers, and it's probably a good time to start poking around... Tonight, I came across a promising item that seems to be a good fit: Technologies I'm familiar with, remote work, the whole shebang. The "Apply Now" link takes me to the company's application process, and I start going through the usual 3-5 pages of who/what/when/why... ...and then I get to the last text area to be filled: "Please write a 40-60 word poem about your current or a recent position." Huh? I can only guess that these types of tests are supposed to do something like screen for creativity, or frighten off the less-than-serious applicant. Has anyone else come across this kind of stuff--or something weirder? Just to complete the story, I decide to forge ahead; if they want me to sum up my life as a coder in 40-60 words, who am I to question the wisdom and might of HR? Behold, my Miltonian masterpiece!
Lo! The worlds of knowledge that dance mind,
Building bridges of code to speak both kind.
Arrows of packets, racing through the night,
Sysadmins finally sleep peaceful at night.Look to the Voids, darkness still reigns,
A wish to forge bonds! Break open chains.
Blacksmith! Bytesmith! Job never done,
Still we fight on, our day in the sun.Burma shave.
vuolsi così colà dove si puote ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare --The answer to Minos and any question of "Why are we doing it this way?"
I think it's brilliant. In one fell swoop they've got a guide to how well you communicate, how you respond to unusual requests, flexibility, and all manner of other stuff whilst giving those who might be rather less serious about applying a fence they probably can't be bothered to jump. And they've given themselves a bit of entertainment in the process. Tis a thankless task reading these forms. How University Applications staff don't go stark raving mad is beyond my ken (although, thinking about one from my college days, perhaps they do!)
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I think it's brilliant. In one fell swoop they've got a guide to how well you communicate, how you respond to unusual requests, flexibility, and all manner of other stuff whilst giving those who might be rather less serious about applying a fence they probably can't be bothered to jump. And they've given themselves a bit of entertainment in the process. Tis a thankless task reading these forms. How University Applications staff don't go stark raving mad is beyond my ken (although, thinking about one from my college days, perhaps they do!)
If it's for their own entertainment ("Dance, my puppets, dance!!!"), then I'm all for it--that's my kind of company. My whole family has done the radio-drama thing with telemarketers. Dad and mom pulled an "Oh my god! You're telling me I have cancer!?!" routine on a lady calling about supplemental cancer insurance. And I got 3 levels of supervisors one time while discussing how many of my goats I would have to sell to get into the "great oil futures investment opportunity."
vuolsi così colà dove si puote ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare --The answer to Minos and any question of "Why are we doing it this way?"
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So, I'm working as an independent contractor doing mostly backend and middleware, and I finally decide to try to pick up some more work outside my current client; business is slow with my current customers, and it's probably a good time to start poking around... Tonight, I came across a promising item that seems to be a good fit: Technologies I'm familiar with, remote work, the whole shebang. The "Apply Now" link takes me to the company's application process, and I start going through the usual 3-5 pages of who/what/when/why... ...and then I get to the last text area to be filled: "Please write a 40-60 word poem about your current or a recent position." Huh? I can only guess that these types of tests are supposed to do something like screen for creativity, or frighten off the less-than-serious applicant. Has anyone else come across this kind of stuff--or something weirder? Just to complete the story, I decide to forge ahead; if they want me to sum up my life as a coder in 40-60 words, who am I to question the wisdom and might of HR? Behold, my Miltonian masterpiece!
Lo! The worlds of knowledge that dance mind,
Building bridges of code to speak both kind.
Arrows of packets, racing through the night,
Sysadmins finally sleep peaceful at night.Look to the Voids, darkness still reigns,
A wish to forge bonds! Break open chains.
Blacksmith! Bytesmith! Job never done,
Still we fight on, our day in the sun.Burma shave.
vuolsi così colà dove si puote ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare --The answer to Minos and any question of "Why are we doing it this way?"
In my metropolitan area? You would probably be the only applicant. I once applied for a position with an education agency and they then wanted me to get a certified copy of my degree before sending the stuff to the hiring manager. A year later the same job was still posted on the boards. Clearly that wasn't working for them.
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Considering how difficult it is to separate engineering wheat from chaff, this method is probably as valid as any other. And as recent studies show coding is closer related to language skills than maths, it might actually be more accurate :-\
There is a relationship between being a musician and a good developer. There is none, as far as I know, between being a poet and a good developer. Just some wank in HR trying to be creative.
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Considering how difficult it is to separate engineering wheat from chaff, this method is probably as valid as any other. And as recent studies show coding is closer related to language skills than maths, it might actually be more accurate :-\
Ri_ wrote:
recent studies show coding is closer related to language skills than maths
I just can't let this one pass. That is complete and utter garbage. I couldn't learn a foreign language to save my life, but I can certainly design and write software. In college, I had to take each semester of language twice because I couldn't pass it the first time, one I had to take four times. I spent three times as much time studying for each of those classes, as the hardest of my computer classes. I just barely managed to pull D's in my language classes though all that hard work. In contrast, the computer classes were easy, and required practically no studying for the straight A's I got on them. If there's a brain that's not wired for human languages, its mine.. which if the conclusions of that study were actually correct, would mean that I couldn't possibly write software.
Ri_ wrote:
Considering how difficult it is to separate engineering wheat from chaff
That poetry requirement is obviously just a way for the HR staff to reduce the number of applicants that they have to filter through. In other words, they've found they are unequipped to filter applicants for their technical merits, so they threw something in that will reduce the number of applications to a level they find more manageable. Besides, they probably get to have a good laugh at the attempts of poetry they get from applicants.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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So, I'm working as an independent contractor doing mostly backend and middleware, and I finally decide to try to pick up some more work outside my current client; business is slow with my current customers, and it's probably a good time to start poking around... Tonight, I came across a promising item that seems to be a good fit: Technologies I'm familiar with, remote work, the whole shebang. The "Apply Now" link takes me to the company's application process, and I start going through the usual 3-5 pages of who/what/when/why... ...and then I get to the last text area to be filled: "Please write a 40-60 word poem about your current or a recent position." Huh? I can only guess that these types of tests are supposed to do something like screen for creativity, or frighten off the less-than-serious applicant. Has anyone else come across this kind of stuff--or something weirder? Just to complete the story, I decide to forge ahead; if they want me to sum up my life as a coder in 40-60 words, who am I to question the wisdom and might of HR? Behold, my Miltonian masterpiece!
Lo! The worlds of knowledge that dance mind,
Building bridges of code to speak both kind.
Arrows of packets, racing through the night,
Sysadmins finally sleep peaceful at night.Look to the Voids, darkness still reigns,
A wish to forge bonds! Break open chains.
Blacksmith! Bytesmith! Job never done,
Still we fight on, our day in the sun.Burma shave.
vuolsi così colà dove si puote ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare --The answer to Minos and any question of "Why are we doing it this way?"
Nice. How about a John Donne inspired poem like this: My code doth not float upon a cloud but treads upon the bits of earth. Its view does not inspire unchecked sums of devotion rather it is an efficient declaration of such human contrived variables that inherit from the base and simple.
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There is a relationship between being a musician and a good developer. There is none, as far as I know, between being a poet and a good developer. Just some wank in HR trying to be creative.
may be the HR person read this quote somewhere.. "programs are written by developer and sung by system" :laugh:
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It can be fun ti play with Translator...Like the game we had when you whisper a sentence the next to you in a circle and wait it to come back on the other side. As you can only once to whisper the final sentence rarely resembles the original, which cause much fun... It was, indeed, because I have not read the story or not the Hungarian Hungarian? (I doubt that was the original sentence :-D )
Skipper: We'll fix it. Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this? Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote:
Like the game we had when you whisper a sentence the next to you in a circle and wait it to come back on the other side. As you can only once to whisper the final sentence rarely resembles the original, which cause much fun...
Which in English is named "Chinese whispers" :)
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So, I'm working as an independent contractor doing mostly backend and middleware, and I finally decide to try to pick up some more work outside my current client; business is slow with my current customers, and it's probably a good time to start poking around... Tonight, I came across a promising item that seems to be a good fit: Technologies I'm familiar with, remote work, the whole shebang. The "Apply Now" link takes me to the company's application process, and I start going through the usual 3-5 pages of who/what/when/why... ...and then I get to the last text area to be filled: "Please write a 40-60 word poem about your current or a recent position." Huh? I can only guess that these types of tests are supposed to do something like screen for creativity, or frighten off the less-than-serious applicant. Has anyone else come across this kind of stuff--or something weirder? Just to complete the story, I decide to forge ahead; if they want me to sum up my life as a coder in 40-60 words, who am I to question the wisdom and might of HR? Behold, my Miltonian masterpiece!
Lo! The worlds of knowledge that dance mind,
Building bridges of code to speak both kind.
Arrows of packets, racing through the night,
Sysadmins finally sleep peaceful at night.Look to the Voids, darkness still reigns,
A wish to forge bonds! Break open chains.
Blacksmith! Bytesmith! Job never done,
Still we fight on, our day in the sun.Burma shave.
vuolsi così colà dove si puote ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare --The answer to Minos and any question of "Why are we doing it this way?"
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Ri_ wrote:
recent studies show coding is closer related to language skills than maths
I just can't let this one pass. That is complete and utter garbage. I couldn't learn a foreign language to save my life, but I can certainly design and write software. In college, I had to take each semester of language twice because I couldn't pass it the first time, one I had to take four times. I spent three times as much time studying for each of those classes, as the hardest of my computer classes. I just barely managed to pull D's in my language classes though all that hard work. In contrast, the computer classes were easy, and required practically no studying for the straight A's I got on them. If there's a brain that's not wired for human languages, its mine.. which if the conclusions of that study were actually correct, would mean that I couldn't possibly write software.
Ri_ wrote:
Considering how difficult it is to separate engineering wheat from chaff
That poetry requirement is obviously just a way for the HR staff to reduce the number of applicants that they have to filter through. In other words, they've found they are unequipped to filter applicants for their technical merits, so they threw something in that will reduce the number of applications to a level they find more manageable. Besides, they probably get to have a good laugh at the attempts of poetry they get from applicants.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
My experience has been the opposite. I studied two musical instruments and two foreign languages at school, and was routinely awarded poetry prizes, but left Maths behind very early on (bad teachers :doh: ). For me the thing with music is the structure, the patterns, the chord progression, melody development etc. In language it is the vocabulary, the specific meaning of a word and the different nuances in meaning between two similar words, finding the right word for precise expression (e.g. sad vs melancholy or humiliated vs embarrassed). Those are also the two aspects of programming I enjoy - structuring the app and coding it in an effective way. The satisfaction of solving a difficult problem well and producing software that performs as advertised - best feeling in the world. It's like you beat yourself every time you write better code :cool: As to technical merits - I have no diplomas or degrees, so by your estimation I shouldn't even get a foot in the door, even though I'm a competent coder. Very generous of you :-\ :laugh:
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may be the HR person read this quote somewhere.. "programs are written by developer and sung by system" :laugh:
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I'd have made a Haiku:
New pair of glasses,
Bug never passes,
See sharp ?
