>Many hiring managers have told me— I’m not making this up — that people cut and paste from the job description into the resume and don't even reformat it. They don't change a single word, and they go to the top of the hiring list, even if it's completely obvious that it's a cut and paste.
>Jack Cable won the Hack the Pentagon contest several years ago, genius programmer. By definition, he’s one of the most qualified people possible to work on the Pentagon’s cybersecurity. He then submitted a resume for a job at the Defense Digital Service, but instead of cutting and pasting from the generic job description, he included a list of the programming languages he knows.
>And he was rejected something like five times. They told him, “If you want to get a job here, you could go work at Best Buy selling computers for a year and then reapply, and then you'll qualify.” So there's this insane down-select: whose resume most closely matches the job description?
>The second down-select is a self assessment where they send those candidates a form to fill out that says, “Here are the characteristics we're looking for. How would you rate yourself?” The way to get through that down-select is to rate yourself as “master” on every single one.
>So you’ve down-selected twice. Let's say we now have 100 resumes. Then you can apply “veterans preference” to that candidate pool. And that's your slate. Technically you have done everything right, but you have not given the hiring manager anybody competent in anything but cutting and pasting – and lying.
>The second down-select is a self assessment where they send those candidates a form to fill out that says, “Here are the characteristics we're looking for. How would you rate yourself?” The way to get through that down-select is to rate yourself as “master” on every single one.
When people think of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, they typically think "incompetent people tend to think they're more competent than they are." But there's a second, complimentary half to Dunning and Kruger's research on the subject: because of their high degree of expertise, *actual* masters are painfully aware of their own flaws and imperfections — they know just how much they do not know! — and so are more likely to not consider themselves masters. So this "down-select" is basically a perfectly-calibrated mechanism for hiring arrogant twits and driving away the best of the best.
One clear example of the second variety that I've seen is fantasy author Brandon Sanderson. He's "kind of a big deal" in the world of epic fantasy, and has been for over a decade now, but the guy is ridiculously humble about it. If the subject ever comes up, he commonly downplays his massive success, saying that the true "big names" in contemporary fantasy are George R. R. Martin and Pat Rothfuss. (Before certain recent controversies, he would typically add J. K. Rowling to the list.) This despite the simple fact that none of these authors have produced anything in years, and they *certainly* don't draw in fandoms so massive that the only reasonable way to do a release event for the new books they aren't producing is to literally hold a convention, the way Sanderson does.
But somehow he seems to consistently underestimate just how big and influential he is. (Tongue-in-cheek "B-Money" antics notwithstanding.) I think this might be the second half of the Dunning-Kruger effect at work. His writing is far from perfect, but he's still a top-tier elite author and he consistently seems to fail to realize this.
I don't know. This is Sanderson's claim, not my own.
If I had to guess, based on several years of context following these remarks and his career in general, I think he's measuring "bigness" or "success" by Hollywood. Rowling got a series of movies based on her books. Martin got a massive cultural phenomenon of a TV show. Rothfuss was going to get a Game Of Thrones-style show of his own, though I haven't heard much about that recently. (Is it still happening?)
Meanwhile, for all the significant effort that he's put into it over many years now, Sanderson has never *quite* managed to get anything greenlit.
While I do enjoy Brandon's own writing a lot, I was never a huge fan of his takes on what *other* authors were good. I distinctly remember an interview he had in which he was asked if he had anyone in mind to continue Cosmere series were he to unexpectedly die, and and he said he considered Brent Weeks. Yeah.
You don't like Brent Weeks? I have some minor quibbles with his writing but I thought the Lightbringer series was great. Genuinely curious why you don't think he is a good author.
Look, I think it is *possible* to write a good plot where the main plot device is memory erasure, but it can in fact get to the point where it is too chaotic. Also the entire thing with atemporal fallen immortals Abaddon/Belial plot point that never got anywhere was quite out of place. I just feel like Brent Weeks has a tendency to add flashy stuff that's unnecessary.
And that's with Lightbringer being his best series; I'd say that much. There's even more of that in Night Angel.
I had personal experience with when I was a college student trying to get a summer job at a National Park. It was entry level stuff, just taking people's money when they came in. My brother managed to get a job there previously, and he warned me: "you have to apply on this one website, they'll ask you how much experience you have in a lot of different categories, just pick the most experienced option for all of them. If you don't then you won't even end up on the list of possible candidates to interview."
So I did that, but I felt bad about it. Still feel bad about it. Lying just to get a low level summer job. It's terrible that honest people are filtered out.
Meanwhile, on the civil service hiring side, here's a good example of the non-meritocracy: https://www.statecraft.pub/p/how-to-actually-implement-a-policy
>Many hiring managers have told me— I’m not making this up — that people cut and paste from the job description into the resume and don't even reformat it. They don't change a single word, and they go to the top of the hiring list, even if it's completely obvious that it's a cut and paste.
>Jack Cable won the Hack the Pentagon contest several years ago, genius programmer. By definition, he’s one of the most qualified people possible to work on the Pentagon’s cybersecurity. He then submitted a resume for a job at the Defense Digital Service, but instead of cutting and pasting from the generic job description, he included a list of the programming languages he knows.
>And he was rejected something like five times. They told him, “If you want to get a job here, you could go work at Best Buy selling computers for a year and then reapply, and then you'll qualify.” So there's this insane down-select: whose resume most closely matches the job description?
>The second down-select is a self assessment where they send those candidates a form to fill out that says, “Here are the characteristics we're looking for. How would you rate yourself?” The way to get through that down-select is to rate yourself as “master” on every single one.
>So you’ve down-selected twice. Let's say we now have 100 resumes. Then you can apply “veterans preference” to that candidate pool. And that's your slate. Technically you have done everything right, but you have not given the hiring manager anybody competent in anything but cutting and pasting – and lying.
>The second down-select is a self assessment where they send those candidates a form to fill out that says, “Here are the characteristics we're looking for. How would you rate yourself?” The way to get through that down-select is to rate yourself as “master” on every single one.
When people think of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, they typically think "incompetent people tend to think they're more competent than they are." But there's a second, complimentary half to Dunning and Kruger's research on the subject: because of their high degree of expertise, *actual* masters are painfully aware of their own flaws and imperfections — they know just how much they do not know! — and so are more likely to not consider themselves masters. So this "down-select" is basically a perfectly-calibrated mechanism for hiring arrogant twits and driving away the best of the best.
One clear example of the second variety that I've seen is fantasy author Brandon Sanderson. He's "kind of a big deal" in the world of epic fantasy, and has been for over a decade now, but the guy is ridiculously humble about it. If the subject ever comes up, he commonly downplays his massive success, saying that the true "big names" in contemporary fantasy are George R. R. Martin and Pat Rothfuss. (Before certain recent controversies, he would typically add J. K. Rowling to the list.) This despite the simple fact that none of these authors have produced anything in years, and they *certainly* don't draw in fandoms so massive that the only reasonable way to do a release event for the new books they aren't producing is to literally hold a convention, the way Sanderson does.
But somehow he seems to consistently underestimate just how big and influential he is. (Tongue-in-cheek "B-Money" antics notwithstanding.) I think this might be the second half of the Dunning-Kruger effect at work. His writing is far from perfect, but he's still a top-tier elite author and he consistently seems to fail to realize this.
On Dunning-Kruger: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/all-are-unawarehtml
How is Rothfuss bigger? My understanding is he's only written two books, and only the first of those was especially well-received.
I don't know. This is Sanderson's claim, not my own.
If I had to guess, based on several years of context following these remarks and his career in general, I think he's measuring "bigness" or "success" by Hollywood. Rowling got a series of movies based on her books. Martin got a massive cultural phenomenon of a TV show. Rothfuss was going to get a Game Of Thrones-style show of his own, though I haven't heard much about that recently. (Is it still happening?)
Meanwhile, for all the significant effort that he's put into it over many years now, Sanderson has never *quite* managed to get anything greenlit.
While I do enjoy Brandon's own writing a lot, I was never a huge fan of his takes on what *other* authors were good. I distinctly remember an interview he had in which he was asked if he had anyone in mind to continue Cosmere series were he to unexpectedly die, and and he said he considered Brent Weeks. Yeah.
You don't like Brent Weeks? I have some minor quibbles with his writing but I thought the Lightbringer series was great. Genuinely curious why you don't think he is a good author.
Look, I think it is *possible* to write a good plot where the main plot device is memory erasure, but it can in fact get to the point where it is too chaotic. Also the entire thing with atemporal fallen immortals Abaddon/Belial plot point that never got anywhere was quite out of place. I just feel like Brent Weeks has a tendency to add flashy stuff that's unnecessary.
And that's with Lightbringer being his best series; I'd say that much. There's even more of that in Night Angel.
I had personal experience with when I was a college student trying to get a summer job at a National Park. It was entry level stuff, just taking people's money when they came in. My brother managed to get a job there previously, and he warned me: "you have to apply on this one website, they'll ask you how much experience you have in a lot of different categories, just pick the most experienced option for all of them. If you don't then you won't even end up on the list of possible candidates to interview."
So I did that, but I felt bad about it. Still feel bad about it. Lying just to get a low level summer job. It's terrible that honest people are filtered out.