It isn't possible for a user with a rep under 30 to be in trending or hot (at least not one who hasn't been flagged a lot in the past). New users start at a rep of 25. A vote from me is enough to bump them up to 27, and my vote is only worth $0.04 on a new post. To get into the "hot" category your post needs to be at more than a $1.00 (there are some exceptions, but this is generally true).
If a brand new user with a rep of 25 made a post that got to a dollar, their rep would already be over 30. If a brand new user got to the trending page (this happened to my girlfriend on her first post), their rep would be over 50 by the time it got there.
Thanks for explanation didn't know about it. What is the formula for reputation value?
I've seen the formula before, but can't find it at the moment.
The more Steem Power that upvotes you, the higher your reputation will go. The opposite is also true, the more SP that flags you, the lower your reputation will go.
The reputation system uses a log10 scale with some tweaks. This means:
A score of 60, is about 100x stronger than 40 and 1000x better than a score of 30.
It takes far fewer upvotes to move your score from 25 to 35 than it does to change your score from 62 to 63.