The bigger story here is that given that she's clearly way above average at what she does - she couldn't find a job for a year and did this as a last resort - an act of desperation.
Which also did not work out - she ended up with Elance. If we measure success by job vs no job, then yes, otherwise... eh...
People 'say' they want creativity, passion, etc - but in reality, most people who work in successful companies didn't get there based on merit but largely, just dumb luck. If you know you're in a cushy spot, do you want to hire people who are way better than you?
Nope.
The job market is broken, and most people you know are the reason why. The people holding down the jobs are interested in keeping it that way - or else they'd get replaced.
Imagine a basketball player who could choose his/her own teammates and knew that if he/she gets kicked off the team, nobody will hire him/her ever again... They'd rather see the whole team destroyed, they'll get to collect cheques a while longer that way.
With regular jobs - this is much less obvious but truth of the matter is - there are too many young people hungry to replace the old, that the only way to prevent the whole system from beginning to collapse is to impose classicisms in subtle and not so much ways.
While what you say can often be true, it is a sign of weak leadership. Strong leaders promote the best people and thereby lift themselves and the whole team. Bad leaders see strong subordinates as threats to their power and suffocate the team. Not saying there aren’t a LOT of bad leaders out there, but what you describe isn’t a law everywhere.
The bigger point I think is your first sentence. She’s way above average and couldn’t get a job for a year. “Woe is us, the shortage of qualified candidates“. Like I was telling one friend who was complaining about not being able to find someone good, “The reality is you can’t find someone good at the price you want to pay.” There’s a shortage of talent that wants to live in a one bedroom apartment with their family for scraps of equity while the boss lives in a mansion and makes millions, that’s the real shortage in SV.
Regarding dumb luck, that's exactly how I got my first real job out of grad school. I had specialized in kind of a risky way. It would have made me less generally employable, but more desirable in the sector in which I wanted a job.
Looked like it wasn't going to pan out. I was totally unemployed in a bad market with skills not generally in demand. Student loans were looming and I was just about out of cash.
In a stroke of dumb luck, I went to the grocery to get a 6 pack of beer, a luxury at the time. On the way out, ran into my former boss from an internship who didn't even live in that area of town. She said they just got an opening and I would be perfect, as she knew my skillset.
>most people who work in successful companies didn't get there based on merit but largely, just dumb luck
Do you have evidence for this, or are you just speculating? My experience (based on my employment history and the employment history of those close to me) is that ability to get hired correlates very closely with merit (including technical skill, amicability, etc.)
This made the circles ~a year ago when it was published, unfortunately didn't work out at AirBNB for Nina.
"Now, three months later, Mufleh tells Business Insider that Airbnb decided she wasn't the right candidate for the marketing role she had been considered for." (1)
But it's been succesful enough as a marketing piece to get her interviewed far-and-wide and - like a good marketer - she wrote a white paper to double down on the success.(2)
Holy shit, putting on my protective suit before all the "DONT BREAK MY BROWSER'S BACK BUTTON" comments come pouring in :).
Actually, I don't think it would break browser interaction, but yeah, I think she should consider re-creating the page as text rather than screenshots of text. First of all, much easier to edit (and style) when it's just text. Second, makes it much easier for the employer to Cmd-F search for keywords.
My other recommendation would be to have a prominent resumé link, and have it point to a standard PDF. Though maybe a linkedin link is good enough? I know Airbnb is probably more tech-forward than most employers, but there are still some HR shops that print out candidates' resumes to read by paper..and if your web-ready resumé does _not_ print out well...you may be at a disadvantage.
While this may not be the most technically well-executed page...have to give credit to the applicant for even trying to do something different, even if she's not a web developer. I've often introduced web dev to newbies by just pointing out that when they really need to get something online for the whole world to see...an image works just as well in a jiffy. The Web isn't just about HTML, but about having that URL that anyone in the entire world can freely and relatively instantaneously access. It's something we take for granted as web developers but it's a very different paradigm for those who are not webdevs.
Not to mention, all of the images take a hell of a lot longer time to load than text plus a font. I had a 16 second load time, granted my connection isn't the best.
But she's not applying for a web designer/software position, so I guess we shouldn't be too hard on the site...
Speaking as someone who works in a Middle Eastern country, most of these countries would totally lose their minds if AirBnB made serious penetration into the Middle East. They absolutely do not want/tolerate these types of services (Uber also comes to mind).
This is awesome and a great way to get hired. Finding a company(or several) you really want to work at and targeting them specifically with a tailor made strategy is probably better than a shotgun approach.
FWIW, she did this in April and talks about it as her most successful campaign yet. I don't think she got a job at Airbnb, but she did get an interview.
Unfortunately, the kinds of talent she showcases on her website is the kind of talent "RESERVED" for higher ups. I see "too much ambition" there and HR may not exactly be willing to approve of her.
(Such is the impression I have received from working in big corporate like places.)
I thought this too. But I am in the middle of my job search (applied for several on the ASK HN thread) and the calls I have received back are for jobs I did not write a cover letter or at most a paragraph that I sent with my resume.
The two companies where I spent almost a week each writing a cover letter and editing it until I thought it was perfect, have not even bothered to send me a "not interested." Obviously anecdotal, but not sure if I will continue to put in that effort as it does not seem to make a difference for me.
I work at mega corp. Finding a small company is key. A hiring manager here wouldn't even be able to submit this to HR. Maybe her resume which would go into a giant stack, as if submitted online to be reviewed by committee.
It looks like this from earlier in 2015 and there's a follow up post on her blog[1]. Ultimately she didn't get a job at AirBNB but seems like she did end up landing a job elsewhere as a result.
If she doesn't have CSS chops, then it makes a lot of sense. Much easier to build the components in photoshop or whatever and just get them stitched together. It doesn't look like she's interested in any sort of development role, so it's not a skill I would expect her to have.
I love this and I'm still surprised AirBnb didn't take a chance on Nina, though she seems quite happy in her current job. I'm still not sure why AirBnb largely ignores the Middle East, especially considering the popularity of couchsurfing in the region. I watched AirBnb explode in popularity in Istanbul, where I lived 2009-2012, and saw many services like Pillow-style concierges spring up there well before we heard of them in the States. As Nina points out, Muslim hospitality is a natural cultural fit with the type of exchange that is core to the AirBnb experience.
>I love this and I'm still surprised AirBnb didn't take a chance on Nina
She gives a possible reason in her blog:
the person interviewing me was saying he couldn’t contextualize my experience because i “hadn’t worked at facebook or google or studied at stanford”
Also, the all lower-case thing in her blog seems a bit overly pretentious. I know she use normal capitalisation in her "resume", but it's still a bit odd that someone who wants a marketing job is writing in that way.
Airbnb has a history of enthusiastic individuals creating microsite "resumes":
* 2011:
https://kathleenkowal.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/custom-airbnb-resume/
Kathleen went very physical, but it wasn't a good fit for Airbnb in 2011
* 2012:
http://www.ericlovesairbnb.com/
Eric more or less pioneered the "microsite" approach [at Airbnb, at least] and is still there today
* 2013:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2600264
Loren was not extended an offer, and has unfortunately taken down his "resume" site
* 2014:
http://www.katielovesairbnb.com/
Katie was successful and is working on killer stuff at Airbnb these days
I'm sure there are more examples, but I thought it would be interesting to contextualize. Some of these folks got jobs there.
As for the "hadn’t worked at facebook or google or studied at stanford" from the recruiter ... well, sometimes startups become BigCos and idiots are tasked with interview duties.
It's strange she emphasizes "Bedouin Hospitality" because bedouins[1] comprise a really small percentage of the natives/citizens of the U.A.E., Qatar, Bahrain, etc.
Bedouins are a seminomadic group of people sort of like the gypsies of Europe. Most of the citizens of Arab countries are not bedouins. They're permanently settled in one location/area, and they do not identify as bedouin.
This cultural gaffe indicates that she should have done more research before making such a prominent statement. "Arab hospitality" or "Middle eastern hospitality" would have been more appropriate.
Perhaps, but that Bedouin hospitality is part of the self-identity of most Arab groups, I believe. (source, was married to a Palestinian from Kuwait for several years and was exposed to a variety of Arab cultures in U.S.)
Off topic, but I feel terrible every time I see him referenced given his very tragic suicide as a result of the endless humiliation he suffered from his one youthful indiscretion.
Yeahhhh... No it didn't. I was very surprised to learn he didn't land a job after he got an interview from Airbnb. I mean, seriously Loren showed some pretty good skill with that site.
I do believe that ATL (Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport) is the busiest airport in the world, and has been so for quite some time. Dubai, indeed, is not.
Looks like it depends on how you count. Atlanta moves the most people, Chicago moves the most planes, Dubai move the most people between countries. Dubai is also #3 for the most people regardless of origin and destination which makes me think they'll remain tops for moving people internationally; all the other top airports would have a much larger proportion of domestic passengers (unless flights between Hong Kong and the rest of China don't count as domestic).
Does it bother anyone else that the colored boxes on the campaign results page seem to have random widths?
That combined with the text-as-images make the whole experience rather disconcerting. I understand she's not a designer, but as a marketer her presentation needs to be polished. As it is, the visual mistakes undermine the content.
Agreed. I viewed the source of the page and immediately saw one of my pet peeves--a blank document body that is dynamically replaced via script.
As I typically browse unfamiliar sites with scripts disabled, loading a blank page is instant failure for the site.
You build a barebones static page first, and then you add bells and whistles.
But then, after enabling script, what do I see? Images filled with mostly text. Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrgh... I bet they weren't even crushed.
Luckily for her, no business in its right mind would ask someone like me to evaluate any new marketing hires. Engineer-types and marketer-types in the same company are like mortal enemies, forced by circumstance to work together toward a common goal.
startupfounder|10 years ago
2. This is actually a case study in how to market yourself: https://web.archive.org/web/20150714043548/http://media.wix....
3. From the case study:
These are the numbers:
• 445,000+ Visits to Nina4Airbnb
• Hundreds of thousands of Tweets and millions of impressions
• 30,000+ New visitors to my personal blog
• 14,000+ LinkedIn profile views
• 2,000+ Emails and messages of support from around the world
• Global media coverage
• An interview with Airbnb
• A pipeline of interviews with dozens of other high impact companies
4. This is her blog post about it: http://eatwritewalk.com/2015/07/14/the-good-the-bad-and-the-...
5. Fireside chat: https://youtu.be/tcjaqeXjKuc?t=7m14s
misterbwong|10 years ago
This part was especially interesting to me:
the person interviewing me was saying he couldn’t contextualize my experience because i “hadn’t worked at facebook or google or studied at stanford”.
samstave|10 years ago
Regardless it's still a well done effort.
alexashka|10 years ago
Which also did not work out - she ended up with Elance. If we measure success by job vs no job, then yes, otherwise... eh...
People 'say' they want creativity, passion, etc - but in reality, most people who work in successful companies didn't get there based on merit but largely, just dumb luck. If you know you're in a cushy spot, do you want to hire people who are way better than you?
Nope.
The job market is broken, and most people you know are the reason why. The people holding down the jobs are interested in keeping it that way - or else they'd get replaced.
Imagine a basketball player who could choose his/her own teammates and knew that if he/she gets kicked off the team, nobody will hire him/her ever again... They'd rather see the whole team destroyed, they'll get to collect cheques a while longer that way.
With regular jobs - this is much less obvious but truth of the matter is - there are too many young people hungry to replace the old, that the only way to prevent the whole system from beginning to collapse is to impose classicisms in subtle and not so much ways.
poof131|10 years ago
The bigger point I think is your first sentence. She’s way above average and couldn’t get a job for a year. “Woe is us, the shortage of qualified candidates“. Like I was telling one friend who was complaining about not being able to find someone good, “The reality is you can’t find someone good at the price you want to pay.” There’s a shortage of talent that wants to live in a one bedroom apartment with their family for scraps of equity while the boss lives in a mansion and makes millions, that’s the real shortage in SV.
elbigbad|10 years ago
Looked like it wasn't going to pan out. I was totally unemployed in a bad market with skills not generally in demand. Student loans were looming and I was just about out of cash.
In a stroke of dumb luck, I went to the grocery to get a 6 pack of beer, a luxury at the time. On the way out, ran into my former boss from an internship who didn't even live in that area of town. She said they just got an opening and I would be perfect, as she knew my skillset.
Weeks later I started my career at my dream job.
tanker|10 years ago
[1] http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...
wyager|10 years ago
Do you have evidence for this, or are you just speculating? My experience (based on my employment history and the employment history of those close to me) is that ability to get hired correlates very closely with merit (including technical skill, amicability, etc.)
aresant|10 years ago
"Now, three months later, Mufleh tells Business Insider that Airbnb decided she wasn't the right candidate for the marketing role she had been considered for." (1)
But it's been succesful enough as a marketing piece to get her interviewed far-and-wide and - like a good marketer - she wrote a white paper to double down on the success.(2)
(1) http://www.businessinsider.com/the-resume-that-got-nina-mufl...
(2) http://www.nina4airbnb.com/#!whitepaper/c1e1m
danso|10 years ago
Actually, I don't think it would break browser interaction, but yeah, I think she should consider re-creating the page as text rather than screenshots of text. First of all, much easier to edit (and style) when it's just text. Second, makes it much easier for the employer to Cmd-F search for keywords.
My other recommendation would be to have a prominent resumé link, and have it point to a standard PDF. Though maybe a linkedin link is good enough? I know Airbnb is probably more tech-forward than most employers, but there are still some HR shops that print out candidates' resumes to read by paper..and if your web-ready resumé does _not_ print out well...you may be at a disadvantage.
While this may not be the most technically well-executed page...have to give credit to the applicant for even trying to do something different, even if she's not a web developer. I've often introduced web dev to newbies by just pointing out that when they really need to get something online for the whole world to see...an image works just as well in a jiffy. The Web isn't just about HTML, but about having that URL that anyone in the entire world can freely and relatively instantaneously access. It's something we take for granted as web developers but it's a very different paradigm for those who are not webdevs.
schnide05095|10 years ago
djsumdog|10 years ago
O_o
unexpected|10 years ago
konradb|10 years ago
inanutshellus|10 years ago
vonklaus|10 years ago
Best of luck to Nina.
nashashmi|10 years ago
Unfortunately, the kinds of talent she showcases on her website is the kind of talent "RESERVED" for higher ups. I see "too much ambition" there and HR may not exactly be willing to approve of her.
(Such is the impression I have received from working in big corporate like places.)
dikdik|10 years ago
The two companies where I spent almost a week each writing a cover letter and editing it until I thought it was perfect, have not even bothered to send me a "not interested." Obviously anecdotal, but not sure if I will continue to put in that effort as it does not seem to make a difference for me.
kirykl|10 years ago
randlet|10 years ago
[1] http://eatwritewalk.com/2015/07/14/the-good-the-bad-and-the-...
jaequery|10 years ago
LargeWu|10 years ago
jaequery|10 years ago
unknown|10 years ago
[deleted]
Linkd|10 years ago
enraged_camel|10 years ago
Inconsistency is my trigger! :P
andrewfromx|10 years ago
rifung|10 years ago
autotune|10 years ago
geverett|10 years ago
cpncrunch|10 years ago
She gives a possible reason in her blog:
Also, the all lower-case thing in her blog seems a bit overly pretentious. I know she use normal capitalisation in her "resume", but it's still a bit odd that someone who wants a marketing job is writing in that way.mazzer|10 years ago
As for the "hadn’t worked at facebook or google or studied at stanford" from the recruiter ... well, sometimes startups become BigCos and idiots are tasked with interview duties.
winter_blue|10 years ago
Bedouins are a seminomadic group of people sort of like the gypsies of Europe. Most of the citizens of Arab countries are not bedouins. They're permanently settled in one location/area, and they do not identify as bedouin.
This cultural gaffe indicates that she should have done more research before making such a prominent statement. "Arab hospitality" or "Middle eastern hospitality" would have been more appropriate.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedouin
djscram|10 years ago
bitwize|10 years ago
eigenvalue|10 years ago
27182818284|10 years ago
http://thewc.co/misc/loren-wants-to-work-for-airbnb/
pen2l|10 years ago
cheez|10 years ago
lemcoe9|10 years ago
extra88|10 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_busiest_airport
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_world%27s_busiest_...
jklehm|10 years ago
hathym|10 years ago
EC1|10 years ago
mdturnerphys|10 years ago
dang|10 years ago
hnal943|10 years ago
That combined with the text-as-images make the whole experience rather disconcerting. I understand she's not a designer, but as a marketer her presentation needs to be polished. As it is, the visual mistakes undermine the content.
blammail|10 years ago
greggarious|10 years ago
anonx|10 years ago
rco8786|10 years ago
logfromblammo|10 years ago
As I typically browse unfamiliar sites with scripts disabled, loading a blank page is instant failure for the site.
You build a barebones static page first, and then you add bells and whistles.
But then, after enabling script, what do I see? Images filled with mostly text. Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrgh... I bet they weren't even crushed.
Luckily for her, no business in its right mind would ask someone like me to evaluate any new marketing hires. Engineer-types and marketer-types in the same company are like mortal enemies, forced by circumstance to work together toward a common goal.
true_religion|10 years ago
She's a marketer. This is the equivalent of nice PDF, which is the output of most marketing departments to their higher ups.
systems|10 years ago
i have very little sympathy for her
we should take this more seriously, dont help tyrants ... or their wives