As someone who is known to hire people once in a while I always get really suspicious when "What other say about me" sounds like the stuff I see further down the page.
Who would ever actually say something a long the lines of
“Matthew brought a combination of vision, strategy and execution that can rarely be found in one individual. His brand development and messaging at launch resulted in demand that exceeded expectations…an ideal talent for the product marketing executive that is looking for the next rockstar to add to their growing team.”
I mean "his brand development..." really?
That is so written to sound serious not to actually sound like something other people would say about Matthew.
I would much rather trust stuff like:
"Matthew is one of those guys who get it. He is fun to work with and very knowledgable and have a good track record of successes"
In my experience it's not uncommon for a boss to have people draft up their own recommendations when it comes time to find a new place to work and then just sign them afterwards.
As a programmer this resume repells me, it is full of bullshit marketing terms and this appears to be the kind of guy who wants to earn top dollar just for being an important marketing guy who supposedly can do wonders, of which there are droves.
In my experience, using buzzwords is really useful...if you want to work for the kind of company that is impressed by buzzwords. On the other hand, if you want to work for thoughtful, innovative people, it is best to be genuine, passionate, and knowledgeable about the product(s) you wish to market. I'm also a firm believer that marketers who want to work in technology should learn to program - inevitably, they will have to learn from engineers and a little bit of experience programming makes that process so much easier.
Unfortunately, when I suggested those things at a recent alumni meeting, the response was less than positive.
I've downloaded this guy's resume (http://googlepleasehire.me/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Resume...) and while I'm aware he's doing something that I don't know much about, I am puzzled by the 'technology' thing in his skills chart. Can someone give me a hint what does he mean by giving himself 6 skill points in it? Same question for 'research & analytics' and 'social media' - these terms are so vague that their meaning is close to none for me.
Generally, I do like skill charts that look like RPG character sheets (so much so, I've been using this paradigm for my own skill profile http://udos.name), however as you said this particular one seems indeed a bit devoid of actual information. Even if the categories were meaningful, what's the point in having a scale of 1 to 7 when the lowest outlier rating you give yourself is 4?
Character sheet is pure awesomeness. I realized how subjective the interview process when my last interview --- yesturday --- was entirely composed of: "From 1-10, 10 being the creator of the language, how are you with X? How about y? And Z?"
This kind of online resume gets past all that kind of stuff. I see real value in being able to cleanly present this kind of high-level skillset info to employers PRE-interview.
True. Of course even if you could trust it, it's a gross simplification. In reality, those dots mean different things in different contexts. But I still liked the idea of conveying some measure of experience related to a given subject instead of just listing buzzwords indiscriminately.
So, am I the only one here who feels like this is an obvious (and funny) parody? Or are all the "serious" comments critiquing the video/website/C.V. just another level of irony?
The only way I'd hire this guy is if it was a parody. As a parody, it's pretty good, but as an actual reverse resume it just seems really weird. I'm sure he'll get a bunch of offers from other companies besides Google. I just don't see this type of stuff fitting in with Google's personality.
the "waah I didn't get to play all my cards" thing is weird. he wanted a google interview, he got a google interview, holster your guns matthew, the fight's over
I don't really know about this kind of reverse applications.
Looks like the guy would work for Google just for the name.
I invested over $3,000 of my own capital to create a
marketing campaign that would get you to notice me.
I haven’t been that desperate to get someone to notice
me since my first highschool crush.
Desperate? Really? What if Google calls to offer an under payed job?
But, hell, marketing is a so different universe that this could really work.
Unhealthy yet totally not surprising. From lowest-common-denominator pop culture all the way down to some obscure programming language community you see the same thing.
I doubt he will say no if facebook/twitter/zynga/any other large internet company comes calling. Its a effective campaign which aims at google, but of course can go viral enough to be noticed by everyone else. Clever.
Was this an attempt at a Rushmore parody? As that's what it felt like.
On a serious note, it concerns me slightly that over the entire website the moustache is mentioned more than any credible reason why Google would actually want to hire him.
Equally, on his resume - his top ranking skill is 'Using Microsoft Office' - when compared to his other attributes ranking, I would say that's slightly worrying. i.e. You rate yourself more of a master of Microsoft Office, than you are of digital marketing skills.
Finally, this seemed to be released on the 29th of July, and only has 506 views - currently, it seems to be failing slightly on a digital marketing front. (Although this may change now with a top of hacker news / inevitable post on Techcrunch, effect)
Aaron Stanton actually has a product, which is what he was trying to get in front of Google - www.booklamp.org
It's an interesting concept - Pandora for books. I spent some time looking at it as a potential complementary technology for a reader app I worked on a few years ago.
Fairly rudimentary algorithm at that time, but it's conceptually interesting and worth burning a couple of cycles watching the intro video.
I tried sending a reverse resume to Google. I sent in cupcakes with the URL of the custom-domain-resume-website on it. Got lots of hits from Mountain View and Atlanta on the day, but in the end didn't even an email saying "no thanks".
Oh well.
This guy's app is clearly way better than mine was :)
Is it just me, or does anyone else feel these "please hire me" news stories are irrelevant on a site that is centered around people starting their own companies?
I don't agree. Interviewing and employment are vital for any start-up company. And those reverse applications certainly have some ideas that enrich that field.
I think there is a need for a reverse job portal which is open. So candidates can post their resumes, profiles, videos etc. to this portal and also select the categories or companies for which they want to be considered. Any employer can search for the candidates on this portal and contact them.
The idea is that the data is open and not in control of a job portal. There can be some security measures to keep the data safe and stop the spammers.
Not sure about linkedin. First of all you need an employer subscription to see the data for all the users. Also, for most of the users the data they put on linkedin is not very structured. It is mostly the dates of employment and sometimes a very general description about them.
The features that can distinguish such a site is that candidate data can be open and there is more structure to it and the primary purpose of the site is getting a job rather than business networking.
Using a platform is not nearly so 'go-getter' as building your own web property and making a gutsy proclamation of your own value. Using a platform is relatively conformist. By using a mechanism that takes some of the difficulty and creativity out of building and distributing a reverse app - you're really defeating its purpose.
They both go very much hand-in-hand. Not saying they should be a single entity, but when you are at-least designing a website you should be aware of what "SEO" tricks are good and bad for the site.
SEO is so bad anyway in my opinion - should be more about User Experience and Usability
My understanding (from what I've read on HN, and similar sites) - getting a Google interview isn't too hard. A PhD helps, a stunt like this helps, but you really just need to convince them that you might be useful.
Getting through Google's possibly broken interview system is the difficult part.
Still, this looks like more fun than writing a traditional resume.
Yeah what was running through my mind when watching was why Google? Why not something a bit more challenging? I read that they are hiring 6,000 people this year. Why not start a startup instead, and try and get into a great incubator program?
You can't really tell that much from this video. He had others involved (for shooting at the very least) and we don't know if he edited it, wrote the script or if any of the ideas were his or a friend. Not that anything was spectacular of course.
He should have at least put at the end some "credits" or even commentary on what part of it he was responsible for.
The video is trying to say "I'm creative and resourceful enough to do this video" but we don't know his actual role in the video other than that he was able to appear in this part.
He has credits of people who helped him at the bottom of his website. We live in the same city and I have a similar website out as well www[dot]hiremeaccenture[dot]com
I'm an intern on the Mid-Market Product Marketing team. I reached out to Matthew to see if I can give him any help/advice now that he's already got the referral in.
Not gonna judge his skills or resume. But, I'm sure that he'll get a call from Google. Only very few guys can do anything like this. What if Google rejects? Will any other employer be able to work with him then?
Those questions were reasonable. It is supposed to test your strategic thinking skills. The attitude seems a little cold, according to your description in the article.
I'm getting a 503 error. I would hope Google would hire people that can keep a site online.
I know, usually it would be very mean. But given the purpose of this site, for it not to be able to withstand the "HN effect" (is there a term for this? Penny Arcade have "wanged", which is my personal favourite) seems like a fairly gross oversight.
I don't see his online marketing savvy reflecting on the way he chose to promote his own skills in the market.
Especially that he's saying "In this case the product is me, Matthew Epstein.". You're calling yourself a _product_ and yet you don't market that product remarkably, IMO.
Best of luck anyway, hope you'll get a good offer out of this.
Who would ever actually say something a long the lines of
“Matthew brought a combination of vision, strategy and execution that can rarely be found in one individual. His brand development and messaging at launch resulted in demand that exceeded expectations…an ideal talent for the product marketing executive that is looking for the next rockstar to add to their growing team.”
I mean "his brand development..." really?
That is so written to sound serious not to actually sound like something other people would say about Matthew.
I would much rather trust stuff like:
"Matthew is one of those guys who get it. He is fun to work with and very knowledgable and have a good track record of successes"