antipattern

Finding a new job in Silicon Valley is getting weird. I must say, I never really thought much about the process because I never really had to. I always floated between startups via word-of-mouth or while shopping. I once ran into an old co-worker at a supermarket, and he told me they were looking for someone – next week I had a new job. No joke.

I can't remember names and dates that well, so I mainly use Linkedin to keep track of those type of things, thinking someone might ask me one day and it would be really embarrassing if I can't remember the companies I worked for before. Like, “what did you do in 2001” and I totally blank out.

So, all that preparation payed off, and at least I could point the recruiter to my Linkedin page recently. And there is a neat button to turn it into a PDF resume, very convenient.

I believed I was all set, and not much more to do. But the recruiter started acting a bit weird when I said there is only my Linkedin profile to share with others.

That is the whole point of me having having Linkedin, no?

Supposedly it does not show enough effort, I am told. You have to COPY all of that stuff onto something that can be printed too, and it should look different and more stylish than your Linkedin profile. This gets you more points with companies where you apply. OK, so whatever if a bit weird, I do all of that and the recruiter is much happier.

I now actually think the recruiter is right, because I also had this weird experience where I contacted a rather well-known VC connection of mine on Linkedin chat, and he really got pissed off. It seems he hated Linkedin, “it was not working for him”, and he wanted me to send him a PDF resume via email.

So two demerits for Linkedin there.

Anyways next, I get a bunch of links to cool stealth startups from the much-happier recruiter. I can pick and choose what I like and give feedback on startups via a nice web-based portal. Things definitely have improved from the word-of-mouth days!

Some of the startups talk about their culture, very interesting and all.

And good heavens, among one of the startups, I discover one that says “bloviated resumes are crap” and they simply ignore them.

To join this startup, you must have participated in all sorts of hackathons and coding competitions, be able to solve all sorts of puzzle on demand, and also submit your rankings to prove that you are worthy of working there.

Post-resume, post-Linkedin startup guys, it seems. I am wondering how that is going for them.

WTF?