Pro Poker Players as Job Applicants

[bkholdem]

Yeah any poker player worth his salt (i.e. successful decision maker who outsmarted/decieved others for a living) would leave out the poker player gap and have solid references and an employment history free of gaps lol

[TStoneMBD]

what if you had filed 100k-200k on your tax returns for 2 years with your sole income being from gambling. would the employer then be impressed? i know that i would be if i was the employer. although many people have made good points here about how someone who has been selfemployed would probably not be a prime candidate for starting off at the bottom of the barrel. if you wanted to hire them as leaders they would probably be very well equipped if they actually had an interest in the company. you would also have to question why it is that they are leaving their 100k-200k income to come and work a job instead and unless they have a very good answer that is believable, i wouldnt necessarily trust them.

[d10]

From a recent MONEY magazine article:

"The similarity between poker and investing has long been Wall Street dogma. Some firms look for card-playing skills when hiring; others use poker to train traders. None other than Peter Lynch, the legendary chief of Fidelity Magellan in the 1980s, has said that poker, of all games, is the most like stock investing."

Although for any other job, I wouldn't mention poker.

[Al Schoonmaker]

Dan,

You have written many insightful posts, but I think this one is WAY off base. You forget one extremely important difference between you and most hiring managers: You play poker, and they don't.

You understand what it takes to play winning poker, and you respect those qualities. As I argued in "Nobody Understands Us," most people don't differentiate between poker players and other gamblers. You can read it at cardplayer.com; click on magazine, writers, and my name.

There is a HUGE stigma about playing poker, especially for a living. There have been dozens of posts here about negative reactions from wives, husbands, friends, children, bosses, neighbors, and so on. Televised tournaments have reduced the stigma, but it is still VERY powerful.

Even if someone does not have a negative stereotype, he will want RELEVANT experience for any significant job. How does a poker player prove that his experience is relevant to most jobs?

Because of my respect for you, I would normally send you a PM rather than reply so openly. However, you did say, "Want to argue against these points? Come and get me."

Regards,

Al

[MicroBob]

I pretty much agree Al.

although I do believe that the reduction of the negative stigma from the televised tournaments has even more significantly made an impact into 'mainstreaming' the game (and those who do it full-time) then we fully realize.


basically...all my friends and relatives pretty much think it's cool and it's something my Dad feels he can talk about openly to his drinking buddies at the Elk's club.
I doubt this would have been the case even 2-3 years ago....but more and more are okay with it now.


now whether it can actually come across decently on a job-application....well, that's a different story.


I specifically remember bisonbison's post in the general forum saying that he was getting out of playing poker full-time and getting a real job at google (g-mail specifically I believe).
He had a friend who recommended him and already had qualifications...but he was simply forthright about what he had been doing for the past year plus and said that "he had been a successful poker-player during that time and found it to be challenging, enjoyable and profitable...but he missed working in a 'team' atmosphere and really craved the opportunity to work with other people in a goal-oriented environment."
something like that anyway.
I thought his quote was pretty damn impressive (I remembered the general idea of it afterall).
He said that google nodded...seemed fine with it...and moved on to the next question. It just wasn't dwelled on.



So....I think it IS possible to do okay with poker in your background. But you have to still do well in the interview.


There is likely a tendency among SOME (not all) poker-players trying to get a 'regular' job to blame any rejection on their poker-background when they simply might have not done very well in the interview in the first place.
Most are not going to say, "they turned me down because I'm just not very impressive." They might say, "I blame poker and their unwillingness to understand ME."


I think of the Robert Varkoni job interviews as shown on the A&E show PokerKings last year.
He complained that the reason he wasn't able to get a job was because he suddenly became a famous poker-player and wasn't bashful about that.
but from what I saw of him on the tube he just wasn't gelling with them in his interview and just did not look like an exceptional job-applicant.



I know I'm going back and forth on this topic a lot.
That's how I operate...I'm kind of back and forth.

But I think there are a lot of things at play...
In short - Yeah...we pretty much aren't understood by the masses.
But many pro-poker players DO have issues that make them bad potential employees. And even the good poker-players fall into this category too.

[gomberg]

FWIW -

When I was looking for a job 7 months ago, I put high-stakes poker player on my resume as I am in the trading industry in Chicago and it is usually a good thing. I interviewed w/ two firms - one told me that poker was good for traders but not for financial engineering. The guy was a real a* hole and I didn't interview well there anyway.

The other one thought it was a good thing and I got an offer within the week.

If I have to look for a job again, I think I'll keep poker off the resume, as it really doesn't have much of a positive effect and has the possibility of having adverse reactions, thus not getting you an interview. At the same time, if the hiring manager is a player, then it can make you stand out.

[LImitPlayer]

You are 1 of the few who understand that poker is skill based and over the long term luck is not a factor.

[ QUOTE ]
I'd be intrigued now, because this candidate employee would have some mastery in aspects of personal discipline, personal psychology, statistics (EV, standard deviation, variance etc), mathematics, money management, risk management, game theory, statistics, finance, general psychology, etc. You get the idea...



[/ QUOTE ]

How many people actually view poker in this way?

Most of society still view poker as gambling and would look down upon someone who gambled for a living.

[Degen]

[ QUOTE ]

Therefore, successful poker players, especially young, trainable, moldable ones, absolutely make the best employees.


[/ QUOTE ]

not necessarily...how about the 'f* this job, i can make the same money grinding it out on partypoker' mentality? a lot of people stick it out in 9-5's they hate simply because they have no other outs...well the pro player does. he can at least quit and play while looking for a more desireable job.


Andre

[Dan Mezick]

Dr. Al,

Thanks for your reply, as I was hoping you might.

OK:

"You forget one extremely important difference between you and most hiring managers: You play poker, and they don't."

Poker has always been part of USA culture- a subculture. Now it's out there on TV. Mainstream. A good poker-playing candidate will recognize this and probe the manager a little bit, maybe speak in a little poker slang, and observe. My basic retort is thus: each day, more and more people (hiring managers) understand poker and respect what it takes to play well.



"As I argued in "Nobody Understands Us," most people don't differentiate between poker players and other gamblers."

Yes. I agree. My basic premise is that this sentiment is changing rapidly, that many successful entreprenuers have always enjoyed poker tremendously and are VERY familiar with it, and that any smart poker-centric candidate will AUTOMATICALLY screen opportunities for a high likelyhood of poker awareness in the hiring manager. This is good game selection, generalized.

Also, I read the article and for reference, others can find it here:

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_maga...19&m_id=61




"There is a HUGE stigma about playing poker, especially for a living. There have been dozens of posts here about negative reactions from wives, husbands, friends, children, bosses, neighbors, and so on. Televised tournaments have reduced the stigma, but it is still VERY powerful."

Yes. But if a candidate looking for a job practices good "game selection", he will identify situations where poker may actually break the ice. Small businesses, sales jobs, jobs that require real independence and initiative, these are the prime places to look.

Smaller businesses die if they do not adapt. Adaptation means being quick to change your beliefs when they are no longer working. (poker teaches this.) Small business people are some of the most adaptive, open-minded people on earth for this reason. Always open. My advice is if you want a job, target firms under 150 people in size in a new and growing segment of the economy. Here you will find people who are open, and may actually understand poker better than average.




"Even if someone does not have a negative stereotype, he will want RELEVANT experience for any significant job. How does a poker player prove that his experience is relevant to most jobs?"

How does a poker player prove that his experience is relevant to most jobs? Here is my answer: The applicant can encourage the interviewer to give him a typical business-problem scenario involving a group, a team, or customers, and then the applicant can describe his thought process in arriving at a solution. In the scenario the applicant may be cast as a leader, peer or subordinate.

Any open-minded hiring manager (even with no poker understanding whatsoever !!) would be very impressed by the insightful questions, quality of thought, and tremendous attention to detail, and psychological insight demonstrated by any truly **winning** player.



"Because of my respect for you, I would normally send you a PM rather than reply so openly. However, you did say, "Want to argue against these points? Come and get me."

Dr. Al, I appreciate your response to my post.


I will be back to reply to all others who responded by 6/2, Thursday evening.

[turnipmonster]

I think people worry about resume gaps way too much.