Would you use Matlab Central in a job search?

If you have used Matlab Central in a job search, I am curious how. The main way I can think of is to trying to recruit someone who is very active on Answers, fex, or Cody; or documenting Matlab Central activity on a resume. I read this article and wondered "Does Matlab Central count"? Not presently looking for a job nor a job candidate, just curious about this aspect of Matlab Central utility. [If this is an inappropriate question I will delete.]

[Ryan]

Are you looking for a job or looking for someone to fill a job?

Answer 1

[Andreas Goser]

It depends. Approaching somebody indivually seems acceptable to me, but a massive load of message not.

On the other hand, when I am reviewing CVs, then an activity in MATLAB communities is definitely a plus. But as I am looking for recent graduates, this a different story compared to people who look for candidates with multiple years of business experience. Here I would ask and verify when they are active in the community, e.g. too many posting during standard business hours would be a concern.

[Paul Metcalf]

Andreas, Why do you think that too many posts on MATLAB Q&A forums is of concern? I can understand if they're all inane questions about basic functionality, but I can name a lot of other forums and social media websites that you perhaps should be more concerned about than Mathworks.com! I would argue that it is the role of any competent manager to ensure their staff are adequately engaged, stimulated, challenged, occupied and reviewed using measurable performance metrics on a regular basis... If I were a hiring manager, I personally couldn't care less about posts to subject/work related forums...?

[Jan]

@Paul: If I apply for a job as TMW chief manager, I'd be prepared to the question, why I spend so much time in the forum and why my current job allows me to offer voluntary help in this amount. But when I apply for a job, which includes consulting students, professors and institutes concerning Matlab related questions, I cannot imagine a better reference than my work in different Matlab forums.

[Andreas Goser]

I was referring to a situation where a candidate has a 9to5 job in industry and there are obviously strong contributions during work time.

Oh and I was thinking about people giving answers, not asking questions...

[K E]

Excellent concern, Andreas, thanks.

[Andreas Goser]

Just as a humorous side note: I once had a cadidate who openly advocated software piracy in a public forum :-)

[Paul Metcalf]

@Andreas, you make a valid point above about the nature of people's contributions (the person advocating piracy). But to be looking at the number of answers posted and when? To me that's far from a good measure of someone's suitability and is more than a little creepy.

When I've hired people, there are a million things I'd like to know before considering someone's activity on Mathworks.com! I cannot think of anything less important really. Ultimately, any hire is always a gamble until you can assess the performance during probation.

I can't think how in any way you would consider the frequency of answers given on Mathworks.com as either important or negative on someone's record, worthy enough of influencing a hiring decision.

I wonder if your position is an official policy of Mathworks? Because the direct translation I am reading is that all members answering questions and trying to help the community should now limit their activity and support, should they ever seek future employment with Mathworks.com! That's a very interesting statement and not exactly a good support of this community...

Posting on the forum to me shows an interest in MATHWORKS technology, community, problem solving, skill, openness and willingness to assisting others etc. Very negative qualities there! Then you have the regular travellers who would likely be posting in all kinds of different timezones. I think your hiring concepts need a little tweaking?

[Andreas Goser]

You bring up some valid concerns Paul. Certainly, my view is not an official MathWorks position. Actually nothing you read here from a MathWorks employee can be considered as a MathWorks official position.

I agree with you that there a many other factors relevant, but if a candidate mentions contributions to a community as a plus, I certainly have a look at them. This and nothing else is this thread about. But in addition to the quality and involvedness of contributions, I also have a look at the time patterns of contributions and if I notice something, I will ask the candidate very straight forward. I will certainly NOT disregard a candidate based on an assumption.

[Jan]

@Paul: It should be an official strategy to find an e.g. 2 hours per day participation during the work time suspicious. I'm convinced, that it can be an advantage, if the candidate explains, that he is not satisfied in his current manager position, but wants to work in the telephone hotline. Anyhow, there is no doubt that Andreas' hiring concepts include much more details and take into account the individual background.

[Paul Metcalf]

The point that I am trying to make, is that you should be able to easily suss out a quality candidate from a dud via direct and relevant questioning on all the basics long before conducting PI searches on Mathworks.com, so why bother? The chances of ruling out a good candidate would be just as high. For me, it's just not a reliable measure, sorry. Any dud would likely be good enough to come up with a believable excuse anyway. As I mentioned originally, with this generation you're far more likely to see excessive posting on other websites than here. Let's put all this in perspective. My hiring policy would focus on many things but not the level of participation on Mathworks.com. Trust me, I can smell a dud from 100 yards on first meeting. I have yet to see any answers on Mathworks.com which would cause me to strongly question a candidate, after I finished with the other hour of usual questioning. The whole concept just sounds flawed to me.

[Jan]

I think your point became clear already, Paul. Andreas has explained already, that the mentioned point is not the "whole concept". I face the fact, that the Andreas' support team is educated, motivated, active (even Matlab forums) and engaged. Obviously his strategy is not flawed.

However, the discussion got near to be off-topic. I assume a further discussion should happen outside the forum, although it still concerns the original question. Thanks.

[Walter Roberson]

Paul, if you were examining a scientist, would you get as far as an interview without examining their published body of work, their publications? But for a programmer, even in a technical or research environment, you consider it of low importance to examine their (accessible) body of work such as their open source software contributions, and their community involvement?

(opps, out of time now, will continue later.)

[Walter Roberson]

If you are considering someone who is an active poster of answers on technical support forums, you might well get to see how helpful they are and how well they explain matters, and how they deal with frustration (demanding users, user insults.) Those are "soft skills" that are quite difficult to teach, but they can make a huge difference in the workplace.

I used to be in contact with someone who was not the best technically and not continually pushing themselves to learn more about the field, but their workplace was quite happy with them because they did very well in talking to users. A person who is competent enough but makes users feel listened to and not feel stupid, can be far more valuable for some kinds of work than a different person who knows more about technology but "talks down" to users.

So you need to understand what skills are actually important for a particular position. Does the position need someone technically brilliant but difficult to get along with, or is getting along well more important than highest marks on an online exam?

There is a famous essay that urges companies to fire their "rock star" employees: such employees often turn out to be a net drag on the organization.

Anyhow... so once you have found a frequent poster who communicates well, it is fair game to check out what time of day they post. You might establish from their posts that they know a particular technology well... but are you going to be able to get them to work on the project at hand consistently, or are they going to mentally wonder off to answer questions instead of doing what is in front of them? And although it is certainly very valuable to have someone competent answer a whole bunch of questions, is your company willing to effectively pay the person to solve problems for other companies that are not paying you for the service?

But it depends on what your own organization is like. If you would be paying salary instead of hourly, then if you are happy with what the person would accomplish for your company, then you might not care how much time they spend on other activities, or even so much the timing, as long as they demonstrate ability to prioritize well enough.

Answer 2

[Sean de Wolski]

Certainly not inappropriate. It's how I got my job here :) If you want to get ahold of someone on here, why not ask a question?

I'll start: If you're active on here and looking for an awesome job with an awesome company - email me!

[K E]

Very helpful, thanks. I edited my question to say I am not presently looking but if I was, I think I would use Matlab Central in some way.

Answer 3

[Walter Roberson]

This can be tricky.

In my recent government work, recruiting was not allowed: the closest we could get was to happen to notify someone that a position had been posted. Hiring was by the best of the people who actually applied for the position, excluding only those who failed mandatory qualifications.

The hiring procedures were pretty serious stuff, having been developed in response to a number of lawsuits over the years, including multiple government losses at the Supreme Court of Canada level.

That said: one I had someone's application in-hand, it was considered entirely fair for me to examine their public postings with regards to "competencies" that had been listed on the job posting. For example if part of the job included communicating with users, then it was fair to examine how well the applicant explains things. Which is a different matter than how technically skilled a person is, with ability to explain well being rather less common than raw technical skill.

=====

That having been said about recruiting in that environment:

It is a very human tendency to prefer to deal with people one knows, even if only through postings. A person with known skills and known types of reactions can be worked with. There might well (it is statistically likely) be other people with better or broader skills, but an unknown individual is also a risk -- until you know them, you worry that they might "jump the couch".

For example one time that I was looking around to see whom might be available, I discovered that one person I checked out was hostile towards individuals of a certain nationality; that was not acceptable our environment, especially as we had some people of that nationality working for us.

=====

Preferring to work with people one knows is also a disadvantage, to the extent that it interferes with taking the opportunity to meet someone with good skills that one did not happen to have met. There was a period during which we could hire students: some of the students that we hired without having met before the hiring process turned out to be wonderful -- and some of the students we knew something about before-hand turned out to be not so great. Unfortunately, one only has limited resources, so one tends to select from the best one knows.

=====

It has long been my personal opinion that the socialization of programming has changed over the years, that the days of the lone programmer in a basement are mostly gone, and that (except perhaps in some theory work) to really work effectively these days pretty much requires comfort and familiarity with electronic resources such as this forum (or even Facebook). A person searching online for information about how to do something in MATLAB is going to find that there are not many active resources on the topic (though lots of web pages showing how to do specific things.) These days, I expect people interested in a subject to look around for electronic resources, and if they don't, then it gives me pause to wonder if they are the right person.

=====

I have noted that there are some undergrads who offer assistance here. The answers they give are sometimes incorrect or incomplete. But what I look at is not whether they are wrong on any one response, but rather I look at how they are trying and how well they are learning from their mistakes. Facts are learnable in time; the habit of effort to continual improvement is not something that can be taught.

=====

On the other half of K E's question, of searching for employment or contracts here:

Mathworks does not wish this to be a "job wanted" board, and does not wish people to advertise their services here. Some advertisements of services have been removed already. The only area in which one can post one's availability is in one's profile.

I understand Mathwork's position on this matter, but for selfish reasons I do sometimes wish it were otherwise, so that I could advertise myself.

Answer 4

[Adam Danz]

I did.

Answer 5

[Paul Metcalf]

I've been thinking about this as well. For example, would it be appropriate for a job board forum to be hosted by Mathworks where people could easily get in touch and stay on top of jobs involving Mathworks technology, including embedded systems etc? I don't know...

Answer 6

[Jan]

I frequently get offers to earn some bucks by solving homework questions of pupils and students. Of course I reject them and this does not match the term "job", because it is cheating. But some other people offer serious part-time or full-time jobs for some contributors also, when their Answers or FEX submissions match the concerned field.

Answer 7

[Devi]

Yes