How not to get hired at Socialtext

Step 1: Send us a résumé without a cover letter.
We get a lot of applications for each job we post. Something about working with interesting people, from the comfort of your own padded toilet seat, and being paid well is a huge draw. The first group of people that vet incoming applications are the developers. Not our HR guy, the developers. This saves time. We also pretend it eliminates false positives (it doesn't).

Now, as I said, we're interesting people (and humble, too :-). We hire really talented people in all areas and we don't skimp. We expect you to be interesting, too. As developers at Socialtext, Yet Another Startup, we don't have a lot of time to read through your application. One of the ways most of us reduce the amount of wasted time is with a first pass filter set to: "Did this person write a cover letter or not?" This is roughly translated into: "Is this person interesting?"

I know this may sound harsh, but the truth is that unless you're compelling we will probably overlook you. If you don't think you're compelling enough to write about it's hard for us to be compelled to read about you. If your standard method of applying for a job involves attaching your CV to an email that says "See attached." that's translated into:

Hello,

I'm not interesting and here's why:

Step 2: Rapid Fire Applications
If you send us a cover letter that's generic and clearly intended for all possible open positions matching the word "compensation" that's translated into:

Hello,

You're not interesting but I'm available:

Step 3: Sending a non-text résumé
Speaking of Resume.doc, most of us don't have Microsoft Word, many don't bother to install OpenOffice.org. I'm going to give you a great tip on how to improve you chances of being noticed!

Tip: We're a software company specializing in online collaboration using tools such as a wiki. Where do you think your résumé ends up when you send it in? How might you format it to have the greatest impact? Hopefully I won't have to go any further and resort to actually tapping on the glass.

Step 4: Having no experience with social or collaborative software
This is what we do, it's what we work so hard for. You should at least be a user of some social or collaborative software system. You should know how to use a wiki. Here's the great part, you don't even have to know how to use our wiki! If you want to work here, though, you should get a free personal account on our hosted service, or install our Open Source package, or something. At least try.

We will ask you about your experience with our software during an interview. We will ask you why social software rocks your world. We will ask you how you want to change the world.

Tip: Tell us how you would make our software better, or what you think sucks. Bonus points for bringing those things up in your cover letter.

Step 5: Show no enthusiasm
Lots of books tell you that during an interview you shouldn't show how excited you are to have that job. They claim that if you slip, showing your enthusiasm, you're giving away valuable leverage for negotiations. They're dead wrong!

First, at Socialtext we have a fixed and internally public salary structure. There are three options and you're going to take one of them if you accept a job here. Second, you're losing your chances of inspiring us when you play the poker face. It's especially critical since almost all of our interviews are done over the phone. We only have one physical sense to get a feel for you: hearing your voice.

If you don't tell a story – with words and inflection – that suggests you're excited about working here and making a big impact we'll assume you don't really want to work here. You will lose leverage in being offered a job.

Job Description: Senior Software Engineer

Title: Senior Internet Applications Developer

Are you a top-notch software person? Does the idea of solving challenging problems in social and collaborative software with exceptional peers set your pulse racing? Are you interested in being on the bleeding edge of what distributed development teams are accomplishing? Are you driven by using your skills to solve problems for users?

Socialtext is looking for creative problem solvers to enhance our existing social software offerings and help invent new ones. At Socialtext, you're not just implementing somebody else's spec. Engineers work as mix-and-match peers on a variety of projects: sometimes architecting, sometimes designing, sometimes coding. And you'll get 20% of your time here to spend on self-directed R&D projects and open-source software of direct or indirect benefit to Socialtext.
Required attributes

• passion about social and collaborative applications
• ability to creatively solve problems
• comfort working in a distributed team
• ability to communicate clearly in writing, by phone, and in person
• high productivity
• willingness and ability to adapt to new technologies
• breadth and depth of computer programming expertise
• experience developing software applications, not just libraries
• ability to launch new projects and follow through to completion
• desire to solve real problems for real users
• motivated by making customers happy

Desired attributes

• 5+ years programming experience
• 3+ years web application development
• familiarity with Perl, *nix, and Internet technologies
• experience developing in a variety of programming languages and environments

Recommended interests

• web services APIs through web services
• writing scalable, globably distributed applications
• UI and human-computer interaction design
• enterprise application integration
• .NET application development
• blogs, wikis, folksonomy
• "Web 2.0" interfaces, including XHR, DOM and JavaScript, and RPC

You don't have to move! Competitive compensation including equity options and full benefits.

Job Description: Sysadmin

Socialtext is looking for a kick-ass Linux SysAdmin to join our SysAdmin team and help us build and maintain the infrastructure for our award-winning web-based collaboration tool. The ideal candidate will be a SysAdmin ninja, and enjoy working with a diverse bunch of hard-working, fun-loving folks.

We'd like someone who has experience with:

• Building and managing a server farm
• Backups
• Monitoring
• Resource planning
• Responding to outages
• Picking up drycleaning for the CEO (kidding)
• Perl
• Apache
• All that other fun sysadmin stuff
• LDAP would be nice
• Postgres (other DBs a plus)

Requirements

• Likes to work from home
• Passion for social software and helping the people who use it to work together
• Good written & verbal communication skills
• Blah blah self-starter, work with little direct supervision blah blah
• Ability to rapidly gain in-depth knowledge of Socialtext application
• Solid Linux/Unix, Apache, and Perl (we're even happier if you can use other scripting languages as well)
• Aptitude for streamlining process to make one's job more efficient