{"id":211,"date":"2017-08-14T11:36:53","date_gmt":"2017-08-14T15:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/?p=211"},"modified":"2019-10-25T15:14:20","modified_gmt":"2019-10-25T19:14:20","slug":"effective-techniques-for-unicorn-hunters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/2017\/08\/14\/effective-techniques-for-unicorn-hunters\/","title":{"rendered":"Effective techniques for unicorn hunters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is a follow-up to <a href=\"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/2017\/06\/08\/the-unicorn-rant\/\">my earlier rant about unicorns.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>As with <a href=\"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/2017\/06\/30\/the-ever-gathering-storm\/\">the data challenges of genomics<\/a>, I feel like we&#8217;ve been talking about this unicorn thing forever, or at least long enough that it&#8217;s awkward to keep pretending that it&#8217;s a new thing.  There has been <em>plenty<\/em> of time (years!) for the community to pivot and for people to train up to meet our needs.  If they haven&#8217;t done that, I think it&#8217;s because we&#8217;ve been unclear.<\/p>\n<p>Terms like &#8220;unicorn&#8221; allow sloppy thinking.  Instead of &#8220;unicorn,&#8221; we should go ahead and post the <em>actual<\/em> requirements.<\/p>\n<p>A typical unicorn posting might be fleshed out like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Must have worked at a Silicon Valley startup that imploded because of culture issues.<\/li>\n<li>Must already know our VCs \/ founders from the climbing gym and\/or Burning Man.<\/li>\n<li>Must be white, male, and creepily fascinated with virginity.  Horn optional.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m just kidding, of course.  Here is a more serious attempt:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Full stack development experience, including node.js and python<\/li>\n<li>Devops experience with continuous integration, test, and deployment tools like Jenkins, Travis, and Bamboo<\/li>\n<li>Systems engineering experience, including container technologies like Docker, orchestration tools like Kubernetes, infrastructure tools like Terraform, and configuration managers like Puppet.<\/li>\n<li>Solid grounding in Agile development<\/li>\n<li>Familiar with information security principles.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Admittedly, that&#8217;s a lot of tools, but unlike the list up top, it is <em>actionable<\/em> on the part of the job seeker.  With a couple of years of evenings and weekends, a bright tech person could spin up on that whole stack.<\/p>\n<p>Well written job descriptions also serve to <a href=\"https:\/\/recruiterbox.com\/blog\/remove-hiring-bias-from-recruitment-process\/\">counteract existing biases<\/a> in your hiring process.<\/p>\n<p>If we want to solve the unicorn shortage, this is the path.  Clear, actionable, specific job requirements.  The local climbing gym just isn&#8217;t big enough to satisfy the needs of a growing industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a follow-up to my earlier rant about unicorns. As with the data challenges of genomics, I feel like we&#8217;ve been talking about this unicorn thing forever, or at least long enough that it&#8217;s awkward to keep pretending that it&#8217;s a new thing. There&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-equity","category-management-leadership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1158,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions\/1158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}