[bpires]

Reminds me of http://www.nina4airbnb.com/ who made an extensive analysis of where airbnb should target next in an attempt to convince airbnb to hire her.

After her website went viral, she did eventually get an interview with airbnb. While making such an analysis is no guarantee of a job, she was rejected because the interviewer couldn’t contextualize her experience because she "hadn’t worked at facebook or google or studied at stanford".

She did however in the process land several interviews with different companies and picked a company called upwork in the end. So this kind of work can have several positive side effects even if your initial objective is not reached.

Her complete report can be read here: http://eatwritewalk.com/2015/07/14/the-good-the-bad-and-the-...

[ffumarola]

Yikes. If the CMO of Airbnb actually said that, that's awful.

[daveguy]

According to Nina Mufleh [0] it was the person who had been interviewing her that said that rather than the CMO. Apparently she did not get an interview with the CMO (it was cancelled).

[0]https://eatwritewalk.com/2015/07/14/the-good-the-bad-and-the...

[IshKebab]

Of course he didn't.

[ffumarola]

Why is that?

[IshKebab]

It's exactly the sort of thing people who didn't get a job say was the reason ("ah they didn't like me because I'm not from Harvard") and it's exactly the sort of thing interviewers don't actually say.

Maybe he thought it - he might have said something like "I don't think we're looking for someone with your background" or "we're looking for someone with different skills", but people always read what they think into comments like that.

There's almost no chance he actually said "Sorry we're looking for someone from Harvard" (especially as that is obvious from the CV so you wouldn't even get an interview).