or, using Google Analytics to help other people.
A useful Google Analytics feature: you can find out what people are searching for and then landing on your site. My #1 query, for a while, has been "sedate snail." That makes sense. #2 is "Hyland software poem."
I can only imagine that Hyland Software (where I worked for a summer ... 4 years ago?) has not changed their employment application in the last 4 years. It's a standard application, all the normal questions, but then there's one question that says "write a poem." I have to imagine a bunch of potential interviewees are filling out the application and then they get to that question and they're all like "what do I do?" so they look up "did anyone else write a poem? what did they write?"
Pro tip: nobody cares. Sort of like how there's a slide at Hyland, but nobody ever rides it. You can't transplant "fun" into a company just by cosmetic tweaks here and there. I wish them all the best, but I think they're a pretty conventional company that saw the fun of the dot com boom (or was part of it? I dunno, when did Hyland start?) and tried to inject it into their own place. Maybe I'm a little spoiled. (you know, just a little.)
BUT, for your own fun's sake, you ought to write a poem. The more epic, the better.
(post script: I used to be a lot less politically correct on this blog. huh. balance of "I don't want to be a jerk" and "hasn't bitten me yet." I also used to be a lot more hyper. well, your sense of humor changes.)
...as a current employee at Hyland, I would like to point out that, yes we care about the poem.
ReplyDeleteI don't want anyone who may be applying to us to read this and believe that they can skip the poem part. We get an incredible amount of applications on a daily basis. The poem is certainly not the deciding factor on whether the interview is scheduled or not but it is most definitely part of the decision.
So, don't skip the poem. Be creative and don't be cynical. It can't hurt you if you write one. But it might hurt you if you don't...
Oh. And of course we're conventional...we have to be if we want to continue to the profitable even during these current economic times...
Of course it's a conventional company. It exists to make software and money. And it's succeeding.
ReplyDeleteI can tell by your comments that you haven't had the pleasure of working very many places yet.
ACTUAL Pro Tip: Of course we care about the poem. Did you think it was just put there to amuse the interns?
Oh! Sorry. I said this on the basis of my interviewer looking through my folder while I was there and kinda off-hand saying "oh, you wrote a poem, whatever". Must have just been the particular interviewer, or maybe they consider it at a different point in the process.
ReplyDeleteYeah, and I don't mean to slag on Hyland for being conventional. I just felt that they were trying to force the atmosphere to be more "fun" by little touches here and there instead of it really being part of the company's culture.
And it's personal preference too. I like to work somewhere that's a little less conventional. Some people like to work where it's a little more conventional. The folks I met at Hyland were cool people, and like I said, I wish you all the best of luck.
I used to work there also. I was told flat out that all applications without poems are thrown out. The quality of the poems submitted don't matter, just don't make it about killing your boss or having sex with the interns.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I thought the google-esqe slide, pool table, etc were all a sham. Put there for the sake of visitors. The really sell the 'drink the kool-aid' angle and those who don't are looked down upon.
The company is not what it seems.
Deleteerrmm...as a current Hyland software employee involved in recommending engineers for hire/no-hire decisions I can tell you, we have never ever ever cared about the poems (except if someone writes something really dumb in it). Can you write good code? are you smart? Hire!
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