Job ad - "with a difference"

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Zeon

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#151745 4-Sep-2014 00:12

Hey guys,
So I'm a bit loathed to put an ad on Seek because you will get >9000 responses to your general boring advertisement. So I've decided to make it a bit interesting. The main point is the questionnaire - do you reckon its too hard to put people off?
http://www.seek.co.nz/Job/27206166

A very fast growing start-up company working in the area of A.I. is looking for a highly skilled, passionate and innovative infrastructure manager to lead the design and setup of its complete infrastructure. The company runs a cloud based service that wraps around its core A.I. functionality. It's SaaS scale everything and massive parallelism/computing - although that sounds more complex than it is, at least at the infrastructure level. Ideal candidates would possess substantial real world experience in working in an infrastructure role and working with a wide variety of systems and areas of IT. We are looking for smart people who understand a lot about the technology they work with but are perhaps sick of corporate IT limiting their innovative streak. Required skills:

Extensive networking knowledge including IPv6 (the company's entire global network runs on IPv6)
Storage - SAN, NAS, object-orientated etc.. Ideally experience with systems like Gluster or Ceph. Understanding the basics like how disks work, disks vs. SSD wearing etc. is important.
Virtualisation. Experience and knowledge based on any kind of platform e.g. Hyper-V, Vsphere, openstack etc.
Could keep listing but really its someone with wide but deep experience in a variety of systems. If you think that you have this then apply.
ACTUAL Experience with Hadoop, grid computing etc. could be a big help but not absolutely needed. We have a short questionnaire for pre-screening. Please provide answers no longer than one sentence to these questions in your covering letter:

If I have a IPv6 subnet which is 2300:12cd:4900::/56, how many SLAAC enabled subnets could I have within this?
If I have a server with 10x 7200RPM SATA disks attached to an LSI 2208 based controller in RAID10 with write back enabled, how many IOPS could I expect?
CPU speeds are increasing and power usage is dropping as manufacturers like Intel use smaller fabrication methods. When do you think fabrication will drop below 1Nm?
My datacentre is in the middle of a desert with 0% humidity. Why would I introduce humidity into the air circulating my datacentre even though low humidity could cause less (theoretical) degradation to my hardware?
I have a 1gbps internet connection but can only download a file from Microsoft's Seattle based servers at 300KBps. Why am I an idiot for complaining to my ISP that I should be getting 100MBps for the download? (this answer can be up to 3 sentences long)

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freitasm

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#1121509 4-Sep-2014 07:40

desert
degradation
such as

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Inphinity

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#1121535 4-Sep-2014 08:33

It depends, are you trying to weed out the applicants for whom "I can't be bothered with that just to apply", or are you trying to weed out the applicants who don't have the knowledge? Unfortunately, if you're trying to get rid of the latter, I'm not sure it will help - simply because it's pretty easy to google the answers, except for the theory-opinion one about manufacturing processes. And most of the chaff for whom answering is too hard, they'll apply anyway and just ignore the questionnaire, so you'll still likely have to wade through the applications, heh. That said, it is a slightly different take on asking for applications, and I have a feeling it will work out as some of the sort of people you want, will treat it as a challenge and put a bit more in to their responses.

Coil

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#1121539 4-Sep-2014 08:39

I have a 1gbps internet connection but can only download a file from Microsoft's Seattle based servers at 300KBps. Why am I an idiot for complaining to my ISP that I should be getting 100MBps for the download? (this answer can be up to 3 sentences long)

Ha ha, Tish Tish.

Zeon

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#1121636 4-Sep-2014 10:09

freitasm: desert
degradation
such as

Ah thanks for that! Updated.

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Coil

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#1121637 4-Sep-2014 10:10

How many applicants have you had so far out of curiosity.

khull

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#1121642 4-Sep-2014 10:14

Wow Hadoop, that is quite specific. Many more business in NZ should be using that for BI

Dynamic

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#1121653 4-Sep-2014 10:28

Nice one! We did something similar but less complex for our last 2 hires. Half of the responses ignored our stated requirements (which involved an attachment to the emailed application) and my DEL key got some exercise as a result. That certainly made sorting through the applicants much easier. If someone can't follow a relatively simple instruction in a job application, their ability to follow instructions in employment is likely also rubbish.

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wasabi2k

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#1121669 4-Sep-2014 10:59

Hope you pay well!

Also have fun reading copy pasted Wikipedia entries.

Coil

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#1121670 4-Sep-2014 11:07

wasabi2k: Hope you pay well!

Also have fun reading copy pasted Wikipedia entries.

Someone will probably be decent enough to link the actual article.

Zeon

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#1121726 4-Sep-2014 12:01

We will pay what we need to, to be honest looking for someone passionate about these technologies where the salary, while obviously reasonable is not a huge decision making factor.

We have made very good hires under the same philosophy elsewhere.

So far 1 candidate - a guy from Libya. Interesting background including one area which is so suspicious I can only assume based on the type of work was for Gaddafi's spy agency... I would have been interested but.... didn't answer the questions. I reckon it would be near on impossible to get him a work visa also considering there isn't really a government there so can't get papers etc. for immigration NZ. Having enough problem getting those sorted for a Belorussian guy we just hired from Belgium.

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deadlyllama

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#1122059 4-Sep-2014 18:28

If you really just want very smart, quick learners, with some experience in the areas you list, that ad may well put them off. Such people probably already have jobs they like. The people I used to work with at my previous workplace were incredibly smart but they now mostly work at Google, Mozilla, and some Japanese E-learning company. Your ad goes into great detail about what you want, in a way that may exclude people which you would want to hire. It doesn't tell me why I should work for you.

Do you really want to exclude people who don't know about the foibles of a particular LSI chipset? Are you so early stage that no infrastructure has been built yet, and do you need someone who can build it? Then say so!

deadlyllama

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#1122086 4-Sep-2014 19:05

Also, it's great that you're a fast growing start up. Will you still be around in a year or two? How long will you current funding last? This is another part of "so why should I leave my current job for this?"

The general problem is you are looking good for staff who are scarce. This changes the power balance. You are the one trying to woo them, not the other way around. I don't know if advertising on seek is a good way to find people of that calibre.

Zeon

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#1122241 5-Sep-2014 00:32

Yea I guess it could put people off and you are right, those people we really want won't apply. However besides this or recruitment agents, there aren't too many options unless you find the right people and shoulder tap them. Have you got any ideas on alternative approaches or people you you think would fit that would be worth talking to?

Money wise, not really a problem. We are projected based on currently contracted business to be profitable within the next 6 months with plenty of cash spare in any case so its not so much of a concern.... Trying to communicate that to candidates and give them the confidence may be hard. Planning starting up the PR engine in the coming few months which should give people more comfort with our company if not to buy from us, to work for us!

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raytaylor

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#1123435 6-Sep-2014 23:58

I dont think its too hard considering google is known to put a bunch of funny symbols on a billboard and expect people to apply

Ray Taylor

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itxtme

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#1123500 7-Sep-2014 09:08

Reminds me of the xero billboard for recruitment in Wellington written in javascript